Root - The Underworld Expansion Learning Game Time Lapse (Battle Report in Description)

Description provided by The Cardboard Herald on YouTube:

Just shooting some B-roll for our upcoming review, but I thought some of you might be interested in first impressions. Obviously, 3 player game, Cats, Corvids and Moles. This was the Mole player's (Mrs. TCbH) and Corvid player's (me) first time with our respective factions. Cats won, but if you notice, Corvids and Moles started skyrocketing by the end, such that we were both 1-2 turns away from scoring 30 points ourselves. For Christina, she found the Moles intriguing in that they don't pose much initial threat and are super mobile due to digging. She had to find a way to accrue cards to reveal from her hand so she could sway ministers, but by the time she really got rolling, the cats were enough of a threat that she had little to no pressure on her. She wishes she had focussed more on securing matching clearings early on, which would have jumpstarted her a bit. By the end turns she was accruing MASSIVE amounts of points and had a huge amount of units on the board. She could also take the most actions because the ministers granted her free battle actions. If you notice, she was able to dig into the territory next to the Marquis' keep, move in, and wreck the home base, just a little too late. For myself, Corvids were AWESOME but I played them so wrong. Initially I didn't really wrap my brain around how best to make use of my plots, revealing a raid plot for points (meaning almost no chance of it "popping") and not taking advantage of flipping snares in secure locations then swapping them around to control movement on the board. I found that I was constantly at a disadvantage with units, but the ability to spend a card to add a soldier to ALL clearings of the matching type is huge and gives you a ton of versatile control. Even in spite of some missteps, the points can wrack up super quick, and the potential for bombs and raids combined with the extra damage dealt while defending a face-down plot made people really second guess messing with them. End result was that we BOTH thought that in spite of our losses, our factions were among the most intriguing among all available to play, and that with practice, they are both completely viable. Our biggest issue, aside from general lack of experience with more complicated factions, was that we allowed the Marquis to built up a little too much. We'll have a full review up soon enough, but thought I'd take a moment to share.