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Yeah, it's definitely not 100% smooth, doing it at the start of the next turn. But I figured by doing it as part of Gratuity, you deal with all the VP in one go. As in you gain the VP from the Consulted Healers then, if giving out a Purify marker, you lose a VP.

Thanks for taking the time to comment and for your positive feedback.

I'll be honest - I haven't learned all the factions yet (including moles) so I'm sure there are some balancing issues that I'm oblivious to with certain factions. Good that you think it wouldn't be too harsh on lizards and cats though - I know they need all the help they can get!

You know what, infecting warriors is the first thing I mention in the Law of Root, but I haven't mentioned it once on the actual board - whoops. So Infected warriors are laid down, while virus markers are placed over tokens and buildings (and were designed to be half as wide so you can still see which tokens and buildings are underneath). That was part of the pun with DOWN with the sickness, but it doesn't totally work if it's not clear you lay them down!

Yes, I was trying to get some good push and pull with the two VP systems. I'm sure there would be tweaking necessary for the values. 1 VP per entirely Infected clearing worked pretty well until I played against the rats. They were up against birds and vagabond - birds were having a disaster and vagabond has no presence. So the rats logically put one warrior in as many clearings as possible for Oppress points, but that meant it was easy for the Cabal to entirely infect clearings and they were getting 6+ Endemic points for a few turns and raced away with it.

I'm very intrigued by factions that don't battle and ways to use the dice numbers to represent different things, but it's definitely still a work in progress. Removing such a core concept to Root as the ability to battle probably isn't a smart thing to do, but I'm interested in playing around with it anyway!

Thanks so much for the feedback and questions. I'm really intrigued by factions that don't battle, although it is a pain to make them work well while missing a core component of Root.

To answer your questions:

1. There is not a mechanical way - players just remember. It did cross my mind it could be an issue but in the few playtests I managed, it was usually clear as the Consulted Healer was in a clearing dominated by one faction. Plus I figured even if the Cabal player forgets who consulted who, the individual players wouldn't.

2. Once an Antidote is gained, it is a permanent buff for that player who can use it to cure any infected piece in a matching clearing. So the more Antidotes they gain, the more pieces they can cure at the start of each and every turn. In the Law of Root, I have added a suggestion to place your Antidotes along the Birdsong banner as a visual reminder.

3. When a Purify marker is used, the player who gained it places it in any clearing. All infection is removed from that clearing immediately and infection cannot spread there for the rest of the game. So potentially 4 of the 12 clearings will be unavailable to the Cabal player towards the end of the game.

Oh nice. Well great work on them - they look very cool and really sell the whole puppeting / scrap pawn angle

And did you make the art yourself? If so, what did you use? It's fantastic

This faction is brilliant and one of the clearest to understand that I've gone through so far. 

Feels very unique, some really interesting twists on Root mechanisms and I love the concept of scrap pawns.

My one worry was all the tokens lying about for easy points then I saw you'd factored that in with just 1VP for removing the last token in a clearing.

So well thought out and creative. Tied with The Rot Within for my favourite faction and one I'd really love to play and test out. Great job!

You'll be waiting a while - I'm burning myself out on fan factions looking at everyone's creations 😂

First things first - the textured gradient on your board is divine!

Really love the look of this faction. It feels like there's loads going on but it's not messy to look at and comprehend. And unlike my faction, where we've discussed the lack of decision-making, there is SO much choice and flexibility here. I imagine it could be a hard faction to get to grips with at first, but very rewarding in the long term as it feels like you could develop many different strategies as a result of all the flexibility.

Thanks for clarifying. 

I think you're right to cut the Beacon text on the faction board - like you say, you don't really need it. I think just in the component manifest having the landmark labelled X1 Beacon landmark and adding the cards with X10 Will cards makes it nice and clear.

Ah, I didn't know the term 'activating' was already used in the Law. Although off the top of my head, I can't think of an instance of it on a faction board. If there's not one, I'd still plump for something like 'discard' as 'activating' a card in this case simply means discarding it (as I understand it). And to avoid confusion over cards in your hand, 'Craft by activating face up cards' would just change to 'Craft by discarding face up cards'. 

Oh, one last thing - on the manifest, the beacon is rectangular and I assumed it was a card. Which I was very curious about as I wondered how a single card could function. Then I saw the 10 suited cards below and assumed they were the backs to the beacon card. So could be worth adding the x10 Will cards to the manifest and making it clear the Beacon is a piece or landmark or whatever you intend it to be. Is the idea that it would be wooden?

Very interesting faction - love the uniqueness of utilising paths, the Emerge action, the look of your Meeples and the clever way you use your cards. 

Like Sparky, I need a little clarity on the crafting side of things. As I understand it, like Lizards, the crafting suit means that you can only craft cards that use one suit. The only instance you would be able to craft a card that, for example, cost 1 mouse, fox and rabbit crafting piece, is when the Will was bird suited.

In terms of activating cards to craft, am I right in my thinking in this following example?  - The Will is Fox. You have set aside 6 cards after taking your Daylight actions - you have 1 fox, 2 mouse, 1 rabbit and 2 bird cards.  - You want to craft a rabbit suited card that costs 2 fox crafting pieces. The fact that the card you wish to craft is rabbit suited is irrelevant as the Will is Fox. The important thing is the rabbit suited card can be crafted as the 2 fox crafting pieces match the Will's suit. - To craft this card, you activate your fox card, discarding it. You don't have a second fox card so you activate one of your 2 bird cards, discarding that too. You can now craft the rabbit card with 2 fox crafting pieces, getting whatever reward it states and discarding or keeping the card accordingly. - You now have 2 mouse cards and 1 bird card. Other players, from current loser to current winner, take turns picking those cards if they want and any leftovers are discarded.

If this is correct, I wonder if the term 'activate' complicates things unnecessarily. If the act of activating essentially means spending/discarding that card as if it is a crafting piece, maybe it's just worth using the term 'discard'. Something like 'Craft by discarding cards that match the Will's suit.'

Regardless, I find this a very intriguing faction and I think the loop of consecrating and emerging is particularly inspired. Great job! 

Oh, they look great stacked like that, that totally works! I guess it might be worth adding something in the Law to guide people on how to stack them, as I imagine most would instinctively tuck cards like the decree and retinue. But not worth adding anything to the faction board about it, as I think that could get messy. I just love how well thought out this faction is.

I'm pretty much there - thanks for your patience on this. Seems like a satisfyingly complex system where you'd need a good few games with them to get tactically savvy on where and when you distribute your spore cards, key to which is getting them all back in deck, hence the skip to evening counterbalance.

So just to 100% get it, you're shuffling the entire shared discard pile back into the existing deck, not just the spore cards that have been discarded?

Thanks for clarifying. I haven't actually played as moles yet, so if I had, I'm sure the comparison of the festival board to the burrow would've been a pretty clear one.

And of course, placing abattoirs reveal the icon that moves more warriors into the festival for bloody skirmishes - well thought out faction!

Gotcha - very cool. I think I was thinking the Spore Deck was the discard pile. So when you spend Spore cards, they go in the Spore Deck. And when you discard Spore cards, they go into their own discard pile anywhere  outside of the board, not the discard pile where the regular discarded deck cards go?

Yes, that makes sense. 

I think when we spend a lot of time thinking about things, it becomes extremely hard to then think about it from the perspective of someone seeing it for the first time. We have so much knowledge about our factions that subconsciously, we can fill in the blanks when reading through things. It take fresh eyes to go 'wait a minute, so how does this bit work exactly?!' 

Not that my suggestions should be taken as gospel - it's just an interesting task to try and interpret someone else's vision so that you understand in the clearest way possible. What makes sense for one doesn't necessarily mean it's 100% clear for another coming in and looking at it for the first time. 

But I definitely feel like being ruthless with word count is a bonus - it's hard though - my own faction could really do with a bit of text trimming, especially in the Healers section, but you end up tying yourself in knots with it!

This is a cool faction - love the idea of the festival as this hellish gladiatorial limbo! What guise would the festival take physically? The manifest mentions a festival board...

A couple of questions:
When you succumb to the revel, are you just moving your warriors to the festival, just enemy warriors or any combo?

As I understand it, you can have your own warriors and any other player's warriors in the festival. In Feast, it says you choose the attacker and defender to battle, suggesting you can force two enemy factions to fight each other. You then score 1VP per enemy warrior removed. If this is correct, then why would you ever pick your own faction to attack in the festival? Surely you would get more VP by making two enemy factions fight each other? Would you just battle with your own warriors in a situation where there is only one enemy faction in the festival? I might be missing something here.

Anyway, really interesting faction. I like how their Evening actions all focus around battling and the bloody chaos of the festival. Even having card draw linked to battling seems very thematically sound for this faction. On the theming, I wonder if there could be something else involving removing warriors to do with the abattoirs. At the moment, they are just used for recruiting and crafting (I think). But an abattoir is where things are killed, so it would make sense to me that an enemy warrior finding themselves in an abattoir clearing would not fare well! Just something to think about - perhaps another opportunity for blood to be spilled during The Butcher's Festival!

And I don't know if you'd need to add anything about the Coop Track being where your supply of warriors go. It felt intuitive to me and could simply be clarified in the Law of Root rather than the faction board.

An alternative solution could simply be calling it the Coop Supply or Coop Supply Track. So something like:
'Remove warriors from the supply column by column from left to right, top to bottom. If warriors return to the supply, place them on the track from right to left, bottom to top.'

Totally clarifies my questions - I'm not sure how I missed that in the Pecking Order ability berry. 
I wonder if having Pecking Order info spread around so much of the board is part of it (the berry, the Birdsong action, the card outline). But there's a lot of info to get out there and you wouldn't want it in one big block. Perhaps just trimming some words out and a bit of reordering is all that's needed.

A few suggestions to consider for rewording and ordering:
- With the ability berries, put Pecking Order first, then Calamity as one triggers the other. I feel like the second half of the first Pecking Order sentence can go as it can be later detailed in the Evening phase and on the pecking order slot itself. So it reads 'Your actions are determined by the order of your visionary cards. Whenever a player removes a clutch, discard the top card from the pecking order'. I don't think you need 'enemy player' unless there is a way for you to remove your own clutches. 

- Calamity could read something like 'Calamity occurs when you are asked to resolve a visionary card and none remain in the pecking order. Remove all pieces from clearings you rule, return them to the relevant supplies and score no points for their removal.'

- Then the Pecking Order in Birdsong could read: 'Resolve a number of visionary cards equal to the number shown above the rightmost empty slot on your Coop Track. Check for Calamity.' This is perhaps a shorter way to point players to the Calamity ability berry for more information without having to go into more detail in the Birdsong actions. 

- Set Pecking Order could be simplified to: 'Arrange your visionary cards, including those discarded, in any order.' I think the title "Set Pecking Order" suggests placing them in the Pecking Order slot without having to specify in the text. 

- Then the Pecking Order slot text could read: 'Place visionary cards here in any order, face up so only the top card is visible.' This ensures that exactly what you need to do with the cards is written in the spot you'll be looking at while wondering what to do (if that convoluted sentence makes sense!)

Yeah, it's a tricky one to word clearly and succinctly but worth the effort, as I think it's a really interesting scoring system. 

I completely forgot the cards clearly state 'Add to souvenirs' so I don't think it's unclear - just my slip up.

But it has just occurred to me that it might be worth thinking about swapping the placement of some text on the cards. I assume part of the reason the bulk of the Itinerary goes face up is so that players know what you're aiming for and can sabotage accordingly, like the Decree. But as they stack on top of each other like the Decree, it could be worth having the name of the location at the bottom and the details ('one empty corner clearing', 'a clearing with a building and 2 warriors', etc) at the top, so as they stack on top of each other, other players can see the goal of each card.

I think the fact that my brain's swimming with little ideas and tweaks around this faction shows what a cool and exciting one it is!

And yes, the battle issue with peaceful factions is a frustrating quirk, but not sure how to get around it. I guess you just bring your own logic to it. I could see the battle as jostling people out of the way for a better view, or an attraction being overbooked and fighting for space or something.

Ok, I think I understand it clearer now - thanks for talking me through it. I thought the Contingency Plan might basically be birds but wasn't sure. I think it would be helpful to show that with a bird symbol as it's a handy shorthand for Root players to understand its role at a glance. So maybe just (bird symbol) Contingency as otherwise, you'd have to reduce the font size to make it fit.

I was also thinking you could remove mention of 'face up' and 'face down', and instead just add 'Place plans face down' in small text below the Contingency Plan slot. I feel like you would naturally assume cards get placed face up, so only need to specify the one exception.

I hope you don't mind, but I've had a crack at rewording the Evening phases in a slightly shorter, hopefully clearer way:

- Place a visitor centre in a clearing you rule without one. Score completed plans in that clearing, and in any connected clearings you rule without Visitor Centres.

- If you Scheduled plans, place 1 in the (bird symbol) Contingency. Then, one at a time, add the remaining plans to the Itinerary slot with the fewest plans, excluding (bird symbol) Contingency.

One thing that has just occurred - if you score in a mouse clearing then have another connected mouse clearing, do you rescore the same plans in that slot? Or is a scored plan removed from the Itinerary? That might need clarifying somewhere if that's the case.

I bloody love this faction. The way you describe how it plays is so evocative and really makes me want to play it for real. 

I love the term 'The Rotting Necropolis'. I love the idea of The Rotway and having to create a chain of infection and if it's cut off from the source, it dies. The theming of this whole faction just seems fantastic to me. 

I am curious why you need 50 Spore cards if you're only shuffling in 10. If I understand correctly, you're spending Spore cards in your hand to take Call of the Necropolis actions, placing them into your Spore Deck. Then in Evening, you're taking between 1 and 4 of them from the Spore Deck back into your hand. So it seems quite cyclical and 50 seems like a huge amount. After shuffling 10 into the regular deck during setup, do the other 40 all go in the Spore Deck?

Anyway, outside of the usual balancing concerns that can only come from an insane amount of testing, my first impressions are that this faction is fantastic and my favourite one I've looked at so far. Great job!

Really interesting faction - love the snooty bee artwork - where is that from? Did you create it?!

I really like the swarm mechanics, especially around Avenge Mother Earth. I wonder if the Hive should have a similarly powerful mechanic. It feels like Preserves are far more important than the Hive but surely in bee lore, you protect the hive at all costs. Maybe bump up Save the Queen to make it more powerful, although I appreciate balancing a faction is a nightmare and this could give the bees too much of an advantage. But perhaps something that makes taking down the hive pretty hard, like removing the cats keep.

The Queen's Commands are cool - when you have the 'plus one per bee icon showing', does the bee icon represent warriors on the board? If not, what does it represent?

Interesting faction - I also like the fact that you score in Birdsong and Recruit in Evening, which is unusual. I like the thematic element of the bees heading back to the hive at night after a hard day's work!

It's Chicken Run in Root!
Love the look of this faction - Pecking Order is inspired!

Although I love the concept, I worry that Calamity might potentially be too devastating for other factions, like multiple revolts all at once. I'd love to see it in action though to see how chaotic it could be!

I'm a little confused about the specifics of Pecking Order, Set Pecking Order and how Calamity is triggered. From what I understand reading the Pecking Order description, it sounds like Calamity is only ever triggered when you have almost all your warriors on the board and are asked to resolve 7 visionary cards, an impossible task. Is that correct or are there other instances in which Calamity can be triggered?

I'd also love to know how the visionary cards work step-by-step. Where are all the visionary cards at the start and end of your turn? All in a specific order on the Pecking Order slot? Where do the visionary cards go when you resolve them (like it says 'retrieve discarded visionaries' - from where?). And then on the Pecking Order slot, the 'remaining cards' bit confuses me. The way I currently understand it, there would always be all 6 visionaries on the slot at the point during the Birdsong Pecking Order step, so there would never be remaining cards (ie, any number other than 6). I'm obviously missing something along the way.

Anyway, cool faction, really interesting theme and I think the Coop Track is a very effective, elegant way of scoring. I do quite like the idea of the nameless oppressors swooping in to take the chickens back to the barnyard. However, the idea of some terrifying farmer presence stalking around the board in a random automated way is also really interesting to me and might be worth some thought down the line. Not sure it could work but there might be some sort of mechanic there. It takes a few steps in Evening and if it lands on a clearing with your warriors/clutches, some or all are captured again.

I totally lied - one more thing!

What is the mechanism for using your contingency plan? I could see how you put plans in there but not how you do anything with them.

Oh, also - two other things:
- it would be great to have a spot on the faction board to place your souvenirs if able

- I love your meeples!

This faction is beautiful - I love the idea of peaceful factions and seeing how they can interact with the world of Root.

The artwork is stunning and the theming and descriptions are on point - Buddy System is especially adorable!

I admit I'm still a bit confused about the exact details of scoring and feel I'd have to see it in action to fully get my head around it. I imagine it could be an intricate puzzle ala Badgers to set yourself up just right to score big points on a turn.

I wondered if you had any issues around how/why a peaceful faction battles with warriors. I've struggled with the idea thematically when I've brainstormed ideas for peaceful factions, but removing battle has always led to things getting pretty messy and having to rewrite a bunch of rules and interactions to make it work with a faction that doesn't fight. I suppose you could just write a quick line rationalising what is actually happening when warriors are removed (like you mentioned them wandering off), but it's always been a bugbear of mine that I haven't squared the circle on peaceful factions and battling.

Thanks for taking the time to comment!

Yes, there is a chance they could roll a 0, which is why there's the opportunity to pay to consult again. Depending on where you've prioritised spreading the infection, some players may be forced to consult. Eg, Cats with infected sawmills cannot generate wood, WA with infected sympathy cannot revolt, so they are pressured into consulting at the start of their turn so they can take their regular actions more freely. The counterbalancing idea to that is that the more they consult, the more antidotes they gain, becoming less and less reliant on the healers as the game goes on.

There is certainly a risk it could be frustrating for players to roll a 0 and have to pay again. I tried to make it a bit nicer by allowing payment to be any card, item or (in desperate circumstances) a VP. But perhaps the roll could have a +1 effect like attacking defenceless tokens so you would effectively roll between 1 and 4 and it might not feel as punishing.

I think balancing the speed of the infection growing Vs the ease with which players can counter it would be key (and probably need a lot of playtesting and tweaks!)

Of course, balancing is a nightmare and will only come through more play testing than is realistically possible with a fan faction, regardless of the timescale.

Glad to hear you found it easier to get swarming than I'd assumed. 

And good call on the relationship markers - you thought of everything!

Firstly, love the art (especially the skeleton warriors!) and love the concept. The idea of one powerful warrior overseeing all the chaos is very cool to me. 

I'm with Captainbird in that I've read through it a few times but still don't feel totally clear on things. If I'm correct in thinking Lord of the Flies is the only way to get swarms out, then it does seem like it would be tricky to get lots of them out on the board.

You would have 5 cards max to spend on placing swarms, but only those that matched the Pale Horse's clearing? Is that correct? And you would also want to save some of those cards for scoring in Evening, but again, it depends on if you have cards that match your multiple swarm clearings or not. If correct, I feel like I'd want maybe another way (or an easier way) to get those swarms on the board and really start swarming!

Also, how likely do you see Dawn of the Dead being? It seems like a lot needs to go right to activate it - but I suppose doubling your actions is a big reward for getting there.

Finally, is there any purpose to the two horse squares next to the VP marker?

Sorry for the ramble and all the questions - relatively new Root player here and first Root Jam - it's been really exciting to see all this creativity and inspiration across the community.

Also, love the Infected Warriors, not only because my faction has them too. I really like the idea of laying down warriors to indicate their state changing. It seems like a really clear and simple way to show a change.

Oh also, random idea - think I initially thought of your warriors as some kind of woodland sprites or spirits, guarding the mushrooms to help the forest grow naturally.

It didn't even occur to me to look at other Leder games for artwork! Doh! 

That makes sense on picking a core element and thinking of how to put a twist on it. I'm still very new to the game so I'm often getting carried away with ideas without having the knowledge to see the flaws!

With yours though, like I said, it feels like it's got a real elegant simplicity, and that maybe play testing wouldn't call for huge changes so much as small, easy-to-fix balance tweaks.

Can't wait to have a look at everyone else's creations in detail. I heard about the Root Jam from listening to the old Woodland War Machine podcast and was really happy when I saw it being posted about. 

Cool faction - there's an elegant simplicity to it. I've found I come up with these big ideas that sound great but are nigh on impossible to practically apply without having to rewrite some fundamental rules for various factions, making it very messy!

The artwork is great - did you do it yourself?

Have you had a chance to test this? It feels like it might be a difficult balancing act between the Remove and Score Spores actions - taking enough Daylight actions vs leaving spores on the board to score in Evening. Curious how that would build up over turns.  I suppose the more you recruit, the more you can risk leaving spores in guarded clearings to place and score more of them on subsequent turns.

Only other thing is I wonder if there could be a bit more flavour added as to the warriors, maybe in the Playing the Faction section. Are your warriors sentient fungi? I presume they are from the badass artwork in the bottom right of the board but I was initially a bit confused at the idea of sentient mushroom warriors building non-sentient mushrooms.

That is a very minor nitpick though. Great job!