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The Hollow Syndicate (RootJam 2025)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Use of This Year's Theme | #4 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Creativity/Uniqueness | #6 | 4.190 | 4.190 |
| Clarity of Rules/Mechanics | #6 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Includes Law of Root?
No
Includes PnP?
Yes
Includes TTS files?
No
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Comments
Love the way you've added push your luck mechanics for battle and card draw. Very unique! The swarm theme is also really strong with swarms of squirrels pouring in when they spend cards.
It does seem like they would be really strong in a matchup with the WA and no VB though as they'd have plenty of defenseless tokens and ruins to choose from. But they also give others points when they are removed themselves so that's very interesting.
And of course the art is amazing! The anarchist squirrel is just perfect!
As usual the artwork is absolutely top notch, super duper great and supports your factions thematics as a whole so well.
Squatters as your scoring mechanism is also really fun storytelling wise, but also a totally new scoring mechanic that is just way too creative. Really interesting on different matchups too, and some cool decision making since you usually would want to remove the warriors but not the cardboard itself. Good thinking about how opponents can't snipe the cardboard you're defending, and they also gain a point for coming after you! Glad to see you considering their counterplay.
I do think they'll do sooo much better without the VB in the game. The VB offers no cardboard to squat, and they remove ruins which really seem like an easy target for your VP engine. It's tough to tell without playtesting (especially since I haven't played them myself), but I'm wondering if the ruins will almost always offer them the easiest points whenever they're available.
Swarm tactics are really fun and a great new way to introduce aggression to them, especially when they're message to embody chaos itself.
Awesome stuff, and I'm first to see you back with another great faction after last year!
The concept is very cool. I did a squirrels faction last year so i have a soft spot for this one! One thing is it seems quite tough to battle with the right numbers to take advantage of defenseless buildings. How has that worked in playtesting?
Thanks!
Swarms work best with two or more factions with cardboard in the clearing, so that even if you ‘overshoot’ and remove one, there’s going to be something you can score. Ruins are easy sources of points in non-vagabond games (LOTH can often be fought off and mobs removed). Easy points are also scored by squatting on sympathy tokens (although they hate haemorrhaging cards to the WA) or lightly defended cardboard like plots or tunnels.
Like LOTH, this is not a racing faction, but one that scores steadily and needs to slow enemies down. Overshooting and killing cardboard at least slows your enemies scoring down, so it’s not the end of the world Way more playtesting would be needed to stabilise the faction though!
Another great entry this year! I like the idea of leveraging defenseless buildings and tokens, asking the player to decide if its worth it to keep someone's stuff lying around. The push-your-luck card draw adds some spiciness to one of the most standard actions of a faction, and makes me want to take just one more card... Because you're revealing cards, everyone should know what you have in your hand, correct?
The Swarm Tactics look like they provide a lot of chaos to battling, which is very fitting for the theme. If I'm reading it right, there's some potential that you actually lose battles as an attacker? As an example:
- Roll 3/3, choose to add daggers and roll again.
- Roll a 0, deal no hits while the opponent deals 3
Also, when you roll a 1, do both sides only deal a single hit? Or does the defender still get to use their defensive die? (Consider the example above, but the second attacker roll is a 1; does the defender deal 3 hits or 1?)
Thank you! Yes, enemies knowing most of the cards in your hand provides crucial counterplay, as you know where recruits/ swarms may be occurring. As overflowing is fairly predictable, some measure of planning for the next turn’s potential swarms can be made. Because of the risk of going ‘bust’ on drawing, often I found that I would take one fewer action per turn to guarantee at least two cards in hand at the start of the next turn, to prevent it from being a completely lost turn!
Dagger hits are only dealt when specified, so yes, on a 1-0/1-1 roll, only those hits are dealt and any ‘banked’ hits are lost. The syndicate particularly hates battling the WA as the odds are flipped. The 0-0 roll being so savage to the Syndicate both serves the thematics of a disorganised rabble sometimes being easily dispersed, as well as increasing the jeopardy in continued ‘push your luck’ rolls. The most fun part of any push your luck game is the tension as the active player wills for dramatic success while the rest of the table hopes for complete failure - increasing the punishment for being too greedy magnifies this feeling. Might end up being too swingy in the end with further playtesting, but we shall see!
Thanks for the explanation! I really appreciate the time you've taken to make the theme match the mechanisms. I think some of my confusion came from misreading the board. I was thinking that when you rerolled, it was just the attacker die that was getting rerolled, not both. So if you chose to reroll, you had a 50% chance of doing of hitting that 1 or 0 and the attack going awry. Instead, if you're rolling both dice, you're more likely to get that 2 or 3 (unless its against the Alliance, in which case...just wave the white flag ;-P )