Marquise de Cat Ultimate STRATEGY Guide for the ROOT Board Game

The Marquise de Cat is perhaps the hardest faction to master in the Root board game. This strategy guide offers all the hints, tips, and strategies you need to win. The Marquise de Cat is often considered the easiest to learn faction in the board game Root, the one that you would get a new player to start with. I respectfully disagree. You need to use a lot of nuance and some crafty strategy to win with this faction. In fact, to beat the Hard AI consistently, I needed to grind much harder with the Marquise than with any other faction. In today’s strategy guide, I’ll walk through initial placements and builds, positioning, the best cards to craft, and all kinds of other juicy strategies.
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=CHAPTERS=
0:00 The Marquise de Cat
1:03 Initial Placement
2:03 Initial Actions
5:35 Early Game Strategy
6:34 Positioning
7:52 Field Hospitals
8:32 Sawmills
8:59 Crafting
11:09 Wild Cards
11:59 Opponents
13:02 Countering The Eyrie
14:07 Countering the Woodland Alliance
15:54 Countering the Vagabond
16:56 Countering the Lizard Cult
17:11 Countering the Riverfolk Company
17:37 Late Game
19:46 Dominance Victory
20:37 Final Thoughts
#marquisedecat
#rootboardgame
#root
‪@LederGamesMedia‬

[@nitrorev386]

You're absolutely right about the Marquise being the most difficult faction to play well. Low rules complexity but a very high skill ceiling. I will never again make the mistake of giving them to a beginner.

[@LegendaryTactics]

I would be very surprised if any new player could win with the Marquise.

[@Gastel]

@@LegendaryTactics So extra reason to give it to the beginners! ;) One less opponent to worry about!

[@LegendaryTactics]

@@Gastel Lol. But come to think of it, none of the factions are really easy. So the rookie is hosed no matter what.

[@Statalyzer]

@@LegendaryTactics vagabond and alliance are way easier for beginners, yeah they probably still won't win.

[@faville]

@@LegendaryTactics Played my first game of this with my kid last week. She played Marquise and I played Eyrie and she wiped the floor with me, but we are both utter beginners with no idea for either faction of any strategy.

[@przemekbozek]

Very good guide - I agree they are the hardest to play. They look the easiest as they follow the usual worker placement rules, but as they are obvious targets for everone else they need to play defensively and bide their time, ensuring they keep control where they need it and countering any faction that can win the game. In many ways they feel like a proper COIN (Counter Insurgency) faction - they have the firepower but not the mobility to tackle everone, so they tend to stick to their urban centres / establish perimeter and then go out and hit anyone they need to.

[@LegendaryTactics]

Great comparison. This is making me want to play the COIN games more and more.

[@FabregasJL]

Do you play COIN online? Be great to have a game with you

[@przemekbozek]

@@FabregasJL Unfortunately I've slowly drifted away from COIN as I actually find it too easy to balance - prefer more "swingy" systems nowdays. But if you're looking for online opponents think on GMT update there was a mention of COIN discord that should match you with opponents😉

[@RoxNotKiddo]

Thank you, Legendary! I just recently discovered Root and am now addicted. I have never seen the Cats win in any of my games (AI or Human Player) so this was a great strategy guide!

[@LegendaryTactics]

It's a really great game. I did the cats' strategy guide last because it was the most challenging faction to dominate with. They get a great start and then seem to slowly fade as all the other powers grow, unless you know their end game. I'm glad this was helpful to you.

[@treyeck8705]

@@LegendaryTactics wouldn't you say the dominance victory is more viable with cats? That's how I usually win with them. Edit: Just realized you spent the last few minutes talking about this.

[@danbrown679]

Thanks for the strategy guide; the tips are quite useful. Another thing to counter the WA if you have an ambush card is to overwhelm one of their clearings if they put lots of warriors out. The WA is piece limited and if they do not have enough to rule their home clearing, they cannot move. If they attack, then you ambush and follow up the next turn by destroying their base.

[@LegendaryTactics]

That's a good idea!

[@coreydill3532]

Tax collector is awesome. Instead of moving my cats back the last couple games I just sacrifice the far away ones

[@LegendaryTactics]

That's the approach I use, unless I somehow have an extra action that I haven't needed.

[@Chocobozpwn]

This was a very helpful guide, I have played the marquise several times and have made big mistakes during the early game that I wasn't able to recover from.

[@LegendaryTactics]

They are a tricky faction - I think most new players think they will be the easiest

[@thomasfevre9515]

I agree that it's hard to win with the marquise but it doesn't mean it's à bad faction to learn the game with. When i learn a game, especially my very first time, i often don't care about winning. I want to learn the mecanics, see what sets the game apart, picture if i could have fun in the long run, and not be overwhelmed. Beginners will never win anyway in any game that is serious enough to peak my interest. That being said it's important to introduce the other factions quickly as to not let new players be stuck with the least powerful faction. Let them get used to the main mecanics of the game with marquise de cat but push them to switch to other factions asap. Then let the most experienced player pick the "weak" faction (generally marquise in 4 players games) so that everyone has fun.

[@LegendaryTactics]

Now that I have played more, I feel like the Vagabond is the most linear faction to learn, but I remember when I first picked them up, they seemed really odd. So I tend to agree with you that the Marquise is a good faction to learn, albeit, a hard one to win with.

[@thomasfevre9515]

@@LegendaryTactics vagabond has too much exceptions to the rules, he doesn't let you learn the basic core rules while the marquise is more "vanilla".

[@___i3ambi126]

Nice~ I would argue that Marquee are the hardest in the game, mostly because you need to know how everyone else plays to play them effectively. For personal advice, Id learn these 2 strategies and be able to cycle between them depending on how the board is looking. If a board is extremely crowded (think marq+eerie+lizards+otters+FA), the marquese can retreat their forces into as little as 4 clearings. Be sure to have at least 2 saw mills and then slowly make as many recruits as possible to get all your warriors on the board. Once you have a lot of them, you can hit the players that need hitting and save your slowly accumulating wood for huge point bursts later. This isnt very fast of a strategy, but its hard to interupt and can win games that otherwise feel impossible. If the board is basically unthreatend (think marq+fa+tinkerer) you are under no real threat but need to compete with the fastest scorers in the game. Build nothing but saw mills and spread them out all over the map so that destroying more than 1 is almost impossible for any other individual faction. Use other actions mostly for overworking wood and maybe the odd recruit. In this case you are making your resources extremely vulnerable, but in the example case you could easily be approaching 30 points before either of the other factions are even capable of attacking you. (Most games will be a balance of those 2 ideas.) Next its extremely important for the marquee to know who is winning at any point and knock the winners down to size. Here is how i estimate a factions effective current score (ES) and Points per Turn (PpT). (Feel free to ask why for anything here.) Marquese ES- Their score + how much wood they have. PpT- Number of Saw mills Eerie ES- Their Score PpT- The points they get at the end of their turn Vagabond ES- Their Score + fresh items/2 PpT- Number of items they can refresh/2 Forest Alliance ES- Their Score + Number of Supporters PpT- Cards drawn per turn + number of officers/2 Riverfolk Company ES- Their score + number of funds PpT- 2 + number of funds/4 Lizard Cult ES- Their Score PpT- Add what they are able to score in each type of clearing. (This is supposed to estimate over the course of many turns, so if you believe someone will win soon you need to look at exactly what they can do to win that turn.) Once you see a player that is either far ahead through effective points or is scoring fast enough to soon be their, the marquese will likely play a large role in planning their downfall. If you keep everyone else from winning, you will eventually be on top.

[@LegendaryTactics]

Thanks so much for your thorough run down. You make some excellent points. Remind me not to go up against you as the Marquise.

[@arthursimsa9005]

@@LegendaryTactics Marquise*

[@Zilong09]

I struggle with the WA having so many ways to cripple your action economy. Move into a land with Sympathy? Pay them a card. Attack and remove that Sympathy token? Pay them a card on top of having to use your cards and actions to just mobilize a handful of cats at a time when your army is the size of an ant colony. I lost my last game thanks to three consecutive engagements with the WA. All three rolls I took the disadvantage die, which were all 0s and they took the 2s and 3s. Widdling down my clearing and just one flick of a revolt, gone. Then it became a loss cause. They had two soldiers there now. They had no issue spending the extra cards to play Sympathy. 3 cards? Wasn't an issue for them.

[@Eidenhoek]

Easy to play and get a general understanding of the game and rules does not mean they are easy to use those rules *effectively*. But I'm totally watching this video!

[@LegendaryTactics]

For sure

[@gorgoramsi239]

The Marquise are super powerful, their ability to conscript a massive army quickly, and then never recruit again is extremally valuable

[@LegendaryTactics]

Yeah, it sucks to be killing them constantly only to have them pop back up from the dead when you knock them down.

[@gorgoramsi239]

@@LegendaryTactics It's awesome to see that you responded to a comment on an old video criticizing you. Cheers!

[@griffincrump5077]

The reason I give it to beginners is because I’ve played mostly with the base set, and Eyre & Woodland alliance have fairly high skill floors, so while the Cats are absolutely one of the hardest factions to master, they are at least semi intuitive to run round to round, and I also pull punches with newer players to give them time to get their feet under them with a few games

[@aak2453]

Cool video

[@LegendaryTactics]

Thanks so much for watching and commenting! We appreciate your kind words

[@rudolfvandijk1739]

I always look at my first 3 cards, where I start... And then I usually go domminace, if I can occupy the clearings with enough warriors it's pretty easy to get.... I've never won with 30 points with the marquise, I find it easier with domminace

[@LegendaryTactics]

Great tip!

[@bluefire8500]

Notification Squaaaaad

[@LegendaryTactics]

Ok cool!