Woodland Alliance Strategy & Puzzles, pt. 1

Go in-depth on the Woodland Alliance's opening turn. Learn how to assess a starting position with the Alliance, where to spread sympathy, and how to get off to a great start in a game of Root.
This is the first in a series of videos exploring openings for the Woodland Alliance in the base game of Root.
00:00 - intro
00:59 - Puzzle #1
The video quality will hopefully improve as I get used to posting videos! Good luck and good game.
For a strategy guide that gets you up to speed if you're just learning the Woodland Alliance, check out Lord of the Board's video here: • Root Strategy Guide | ...
Root is an asymmetric strategy wargame in a cute woodland setting. Play as the Marquise de Cat, Eyrie Dynasties, Woodland Alliance, Vagabond, Lizard Cult, Riverfolk Company, Underground Duchy, or Corvid Conspiracy. Typically a 4-player board game, the simplicity of the mechanics leads to impressively complex positions and the overall balancing leads to nail-biting games. Root was published by Leder Games in 2018, art by Kyle Ferrin.

[@SamDeRoest232]

I love this. Root: Advanced Basics. This feels like when you get a new basketball coach and he insists that for the first practice we don't need a ball.

[@waterman121]

Get ready to rethink *everything* you thought you knew.

[@LordoftheBoard]

great great video! thanks for linking my video! I posted yours in my Community :) this is wonderful needed content.

[@bryanvogel9145]

10:55 -“should we craft this crossbow?” Tournament players game 1: “yes.” 😂

[@waterman121]

They certainly gave the vagabond a deadly dare, crafting all those items

[@bgt2701]

Hey man, it's m8chor. Just dropping by to say hi! Great content, keep it up!

[@waterman121]

Thanks! Appreciate it, you too. Keep the streams coming, you're a hero online!

[@secondengineer9814]

Great video! It's always interesting to see the secondary and tertiary effects of a move considered. I always thought the woodland alliance didn't have many decision points in their games, but after watching this their decisions seem more broad.

[@JamesFoxFiles]

Very helpful video, sincere thank you from a new player. I heard on your podcast that you are a chess aficionado, so I absolutely recognized the call out to Agadamator at 3:00. 😊❤️

[@waterman121]

Absolutely! And yes, to me Root at first appeared to be... basically an inscrutable mess. But there's so much in common with chess once you look at it a little differently. Glad you found this helpful!

[@jpwfilmarchives8076]

Great insight. Thanks 👍

[@thisjust10]

Super helpful to go through that process.

[@surelytentpole2183]

Love this more in-depth look at the game, looking forward to more quality content, subscribed ;1)

[@Siennarchist]

Puzzle 1: you wanna take the centre fox and rabbit, then the top left clearing. This gives you two fox clearings you could revolt in and either is in a good spot. Centre is aggressive and good to spread, top right corner lets you avoid dealing with birds or cats breathing immediately down your neck. As a side note, you want to mobilize your mouse card to spread to the centre mouse clearing since thats far from the cats and brids and fairly central so its a good spot for base 2 if you can get it

[@IyDUA]

Well, in my games Vagabond and WA usually wins, so as Vagabond (and Ranger especially) i would focus on stopping WA. And if you give me opportunity to clear 2 tokens, i'll do this. So as Vagabond you go top-left clearing, use your crossbow/sword, then use boots to go bottom-right, torch for ruins and sword/crossbow for second token. Gaining 2 points for 1-2 cards and 2 items is good - better than helping, cuz you don't give cards to your opponents (only supporters) and you slow one of the highest winrate faction at the same time. Cats gonna deal with your token in 5-ways clearing and you gonna lose 1 supporter and won't be able to put your base on turn 2, which is way worse. I would consider going for 5-ways fox clearing, then going right for mouse clearing and going right again for second fox clearing, while aiming for center-right fox clearing base turn 2. Also i don't see Bird's leader. I mean both common starting choices (charismatic and despot) are bad, cuz charismatic has attack, so he may use it to deal with your token, while despot gaining extra point for clearing your tokens. But usually birds gonna just ignore you and go left instead of bottom. And even in worst case noone gonna clear mouse clearing, so you still have a chance to get bird card, or random mouse card for turn 2 revolt.

[@themennoknight]

great vid and walkthrough. were you able to revolt there on turn 2, and where was your second base... and did you win??

[@waterman121]

I *was* able to get that corner Fox base on turn 2! Set me up for a very good game. Hah I'll have to give you the scoop on the rest of the game next time.