How I Won With the Riverfolk Company in the Root Winter Tournament (ROOT: Riverfolk Strategy Guide)

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Once again, thank you to Guerric Samples Games for graciously allowing me to use his footage for this review. You can find the full VOD on his channel here, which I highly recommend watching: • Root Winter Tournament...
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Hope you all have a great rest of your day, and stay safe!
Cheers,
~Elivaras

[@elivaras]

Hey folks! A few notes I want to make real quick: 1. I mention it a lot but don’t explain it super in-depth until the end: The otters have 18 points on their board from trade posts, and thus at least need 12 non-trade post points to cross 30. When I refer to the “12 non-trade post points”, this is why. 2. I mention that there aren’t any good craftables for otters in fox - this is pretty much true OTHER than false orders. It is the one card in fox that can be incredibly useful in the right situations, but it’s not enough to bump the priority higher than rabbit or mouse. 3. When I talk about why I didn’t want to let the birds buy at 2 later in the game, the key point to focus on is the stipulation that I’d have to give them back immediately. I don’t want to outright lie and stain my credibility across games, as if you lie a lot that tends to happen. If the birds did not attach that string to the deal, I may have been more open to it because it does help in the event of a late game burst if I get wiped. That said, it’s still questionable because who is really gonna wipe me off the map at that stage of the game? It would be hard. So all in all it’s a tough decision to make, but these are the kinda points I want you to think about when approached with deals like that.

[@colesrootchannel]

This is an incredible analysis video, I’m only halfway through and I’ve already picked up a couple great Otters ideas I hadn’t considered before! Thanks for making this!

[@elivaras]

Thanks so much for watching Cole! I’m so glad it’s been so helpful!

[@LordoftheBoard]

Great work! This was a awesome watch / listen. And we’ll done on the win. You make me want to play some more RF games instead of just passing them up!

[@elivaras]

Hey thanks so much!! I’m glad I’ve inspired you 😂

[@gingeraletrinker2449]

Congrats on the win. I was actually the first otters win in the 2021 winter tournament and I also feel like there are not a lot of people out there talking about how deep the decision making of this faction is. So thank you for making this video! And maybe I have time again for the next tournament so I too can represent this amazing faction again.

[@elivaras]

Thanks so much for your comment! That's so cool that you were able to do the same for them in the last tournament :D You're very welcome, and I hope you can!!

[@j.prt.979]

Very nice video. I liked the theory on how Marauder meta impacted Otters. Useful for table talk. This is really helpful for explaining the order of actions to take on an Otter turn and for deciding what actions are good to take. I know that most people I’ve played with who had trouble as Otters just found the faction too open-ended in its decision making for them to focus on their win conditions. Moles sabo’ing Eyrie Swap Meet instead of waiting for you to craft False Orders was pretty wacky. Their game would’ve looked a lot better without that error.

[@elivaras]

I'm so glad it was so helpful! Getting the order of operations right can be really critical to putting an efficient turn together. Doing everything you want to do and THEN drawing prop bureau, coins or an ambush can be gut-wrenching. The open-endedness is a huge factor in what makes them hard to play on /top/ of the marauder meta, so that's not surprising. They're just not straightforward; there's so many paths you can take. And yeah haha, honestly a super easy mistake to make when you're in the hot seat. I've made similar errors -- but it certainly would have helped them had they seen that. That said, in the tabletalk birds mentioned they had the other false orders the turn after, so I may not have gotten the cardboard that way, but they would still have been in a rough position after that.

[@longtailgt]

Whooo, that was a lot to take in! An amazing and extensive walkthrough of a great game, and as always, hugely enjoyable to watch! I also did watch the gameplay video on Guerric's channel (haven't finished the 3 hours yet) and there I quickly understood that you guys had a great time and the table talk with the other players was absolutely hilarious! As satisfying as the win must've been, I think it's safe to say the interactions with the rivals were just as fun. Congratulations on your well deserved victory! (and also, I don't know if I should say it but, for going from fiancé to wife :p)

[@elivaras]

Holy! Thanks for watching Rahul! Kind of wild that you just started learning about the game a month and a half ago and are able to ingest such a large amount of information AND watch Guerric’s VOD! It was certainly a fantastic time, and we had some awesome table-talk throughout. Thanks so much for sticking around! Really appreciate you ❤ And yes! I actually mentioned it on discord a little while back, but we got married a little over a month ago! Been a wild ride haha, thank you so much!! 😁

[@wzblackstone]

Great summary and great game! Appreciate you taking the time to help us win with the merchants of the muck!

[@elivaras]

Thank you so much Zach! Appreciate your kind words!

[@petran_kav]

Recently, I have been playing with them as well and I begun to like them a lot. Unfortunately, I don't possess the marauder expansion yet but still their playstyle is really interesting and unique. Keep up the good work and congratulations.

[@elivaras]

They're my favourite faction by far! So glad you've been enjoying them, and I hope this video was helpful! Best of luck with continuing to learn them!! And thank you!

[@Frubs97]

Nice video! I'm really struggling to win with otters and now i have a few interesting things to try so i can take that win, thank you!

[@elivaras]

You got this!! And thanks so much!

[@TheMasterDecoy]

Great Video! And further confirmation that you're much better at Riverfolk than me :P

[@elivaras]

Well I'm flattered you think so 😂Thanks so much Decoy!

[@falloutwubb557]

This was great! Thanks a bunch for posting. I love playing the otters and have so far done well with my table but we're definitely not at a competitive level yet.

[@elivaras]

So glad you enjoyed!! Hope you guys continue to get better and you have great fun playing otters with them! :D

[@evilmurlock]

busin, no cap fr fr

[@elivaras]

😂

[@_DaemonCleaner]

Awesome video, thanks!

[@doubleocbh]

Nice video! Best of luck for your tournament Eliavara! My honor to exchange opinions with you

[@elivaras]

Thank you so much!! It was my pleasure! :)

[@callumfinlayson-palmer8393]

Congrats mate!!

[@elivaras]

Thank you Callum!!

[@dougz5005]

I hadn't thought much about this marauder meta. I mostly play on digital. I played about ten advanced setup games prior to the digital release, and only two of those had river folk. They didn't fare well, but they were with new players. I haven't seen otters win a single game since underground releasing a few weeks ago on digital.

[@elivaras]

Yep, otters have a bit of a dual problem -- at higher skill levels they suffer from the marauder meta, but in general they suffer from inefficiency. The open-endedness of their turns lead to easy mistakes, and those mistakes can be very costly.

[@pedrobernardos]

Hey! Amazing guide!! This content is all I needed to understand the otters :D but one thing I didn't get, why did you moved all but 1 otter while battling the last 3 mole buildibgs? Why not just to keep everyone, destroy alk buildings and the move?

[@MindGobby]

Which deck do most tournaments get played with?

[@elivaras]

Exiles and Partisans!

[@manolios]

Otters is the most difficult faction to win with!

[@PaddyRoon7]

Eh, I'd say Corvids. Riverfolk are certainly tough though, table talk is a big factor

[@evilmurlock]

also congrats on the win

[@elivaras]

Thanks so much Murlock!

[@georgevarelas3424]

congrats... you mention the average role is 2-1, could you elaborate ....?

[@elivaras]

It would take a decent amount of math to work it out, but basically it stems from the fact that the attack always takes the higher roll. Each roll of (0, 1, 2, 3) on the dice are equally likely, but since the attacker gets the higher one, it's more likely that they will get the higher numbers (2, 3) and the defender will be more likely to get the lower numbers (0, 1). You'd have to do some probability calculations to work it out exactly, but that's the gist of it.

[@georgevarelas3424]

@@elivaras ok, I 've done the calculation, since the last message, because I was intrigued. Every equal result, 0-0, 1-1, 2-2, 3-3 has a 6,25% probability and all other results have a 12,5% probability. Use this information to your benefit :)

[@revdavidpeters]

How many people in the tournament were not he/him or she/her?

[@Reggie1408]

Which round 3 game are you in?

[@elivaras]

Since I won both my round 1 and round 2 game, I actually got a bye to the semi-finals! So I'm not playing this round.

[@Reggie1408]

@@elivaras Ah ok. The Otters in R3G7 really could have benefitted from watching your video btw 😁

[@elivaras]

@@Reggie1408 Hahaha oh yeah?? I think I saw that one, though I missed the start of it.