How to play
First to 30 points wins. Every power scores differently, takes a different kind of turn, and wants something different from the same twelve clearings.
The wood
Each clearing belongs to a suit: fox, rabbit or mouse. Cards carry the same suits; a bird card stands in for any of them. Squares in a clearing are building sites. You rule a clearing when you have the most warriors and buildings there. To move warriors along a path you must rule where they start or where they end.
Battle
Two dice, each 0 to 3. The attacker deals the higher number, the defender the lower, and nobody deals more hits than they have warriors in the clearing. Hits take warriors first, then tokens and buildings, and every building or token you remove is a point. When your warriors are gone you choose which of your buildings and tokens fall. Attack a clearing with no defenders and you deal one extra hit. A defender holding a matching Deadfall may deal two hits before the dice.
Cards
Each of the four Ascendancy cards is another way to win: once you have ten points you may play one in daylight. You stop scoring, and win at the start of a turn on which you rule three clearings of its suit (two opposite corners for the bird card). A discarded Ascendancy card waits beside the map for anyone who spends a matching card. With four at the table, the Drifter plays one to form a coalition with whoever trails and wins or loses with them. Two-player games leave these cards out.
Most cards can be crafted using your crafting pieces in clearings of the suits shown: items score at once, and lasting cards stay beside you. Each crafting piece works once a turn. Everyone discards down to five cards at the end of their turn.
The Mill Court · cats
Each sawpit makes timber at dawn. You get three orders a day: battle, march (two moves), muster a warrior at every muster hall (once a turn), build, or overwork a sawpit by spending a matching card. Buildings cost timber you can trace through clearings you rule, and each one of a kind scores more than the last. Bird cards buy extra orders. While the Stockade stands, nobody else can place pieces in its clearing, and you may spend a matching card to send fallen warriors back to it. Forges craft.
The High Nests · birds
At dawn add one or two cards to your Mandate, under recruit, move, battle or build. Then you must carry out every card, column by column, each in a clearing of that card's suit. If you cannot, you fall into disgrace: lose a point for each bird card in the Mandate, discard it, and take a new leader. Every evening you score for the nests on the map. You rule tied clearings. Nests craft.
The Burrow League · mice, rabbits, foxes
Cards you add to your backers pay for goodwill tokens, which score more the further they spread, and for uprisings: spend two matching backers in a clearing with goodwill to remove every enemy piece there and found a den. Dens let you train captains, and each captain is one evening order: move, battle, recruit or organise. Anyone who moves into goodwill or removes it owes you a matching card. When you defend, you take the higher die. Goodwill crafts.
The Drifter · raccoon
No warriors, only items. At dawn three spent items come back (two more per tea) and you may slip one step for free, even into the trees. Boots walk, a blade fights, the lantern searches ruins or uses your trade, a bow removes a piece without a battle, hammers mend and craft. Any item lets you aid a power in your clearing by giving them a matching card; aid makes friends, and friends are points. Jobs need the two items shown, in a clearing of the right suit. Hits break your items; a night in the trees mends them all. Remove a power's warrior and they turn hostile.
The Garden Rite · lizards
Every card anyone spends goes to the Lost. At dawn the suit most thrown away becomes the Scorned (twice running, or on a tie, the Reviled, and rites cost one less). In clearings of that suit your devotees pay for rites: a procession (move or battle), converting an enemy warrior, or consecrating an enemy building into a garden. By day you reveal cards for rituals in clearings of the same suit: plant a garden, gather a warrior, or spend the card to score that suit’s gardens; bird cards are not wild and instead bring in a devotee. You rule wherever you have a garden, and warriors who fall defending become devotees.
The Ferry Guild · otters
Your hand lies face up, for sale. At the start of every other power’s turn they may buy a card, ferries (the river as paths) or hired paddles (your warriors count as theirs for a turn), paying warriors from their reserve. Those warriors are your funds: commit one to move, battle or draw; spend one to hire by the river, and two belonging to whoever rules a clearing to found a counting house there for points. Funds you still hold at dawn pay a dividend. You swim the river and move without ruling.
The Deep Duchy · moles
New warriors arrive in the Underhall, which touches every clearing with a tunnel. Each day the assembly takes two actions (build, recruit, move, battle, or dig a new tunnel and send up to four warriors through it), then every minister you have swayed acts once. Sway one a day by revealing cards matching clearings where you have pieces: two for a squire, three for a noble, four for a lord. Lose a building and your highest minister walks out.
The Rookery · crows
Lay hidden plots by removing warriors: powder kegs, snares, shakedowns and raids. At dawn reveal any where you still have a warrior, each for one point per plot showing. A hidden plot gives you an extra hit in defence. Enemies with pieces beside one may show a matching card and guess what it is: right, and it is removed; wrong, and you keep their card. You move without ruling.
The Long Tail Horde · rats
Your warlord leads. Items you craft or loot go to the hoard: travelling gear raises how many times you command the horde (move, battle, build), weapons and tools raise how often the warlord advances and how many warriors he gathers at dawn. Mobs you incite raze enemy buildings and tokens each dawn and spread. Every evening you score for clearings you rule with nobody else in them, and each dawn the warlord takes a new mood.
The Iron Vigil · badgers
Relics lie hidden among the trees. Your retinue of cards acts each day, column by column, each card in a clearing of its suit: move; battle, then dig a relic out of neighbouring trees; move, or bring a relic home to a waystation of its kind for its value. Reach beyond what you rule and the card is lost. Knights guarding a relic ignore the first hit, and an enemy who removes a relic scores two.
About this edition
An unofficial fan edition. The structure follows Root by Cole Wehrle, published by Leder Games; the rules follow the published Law of Root for the four base powers and the six from the Riverfolk, Underworld and Marauder expansions, on the autumn map, while the names, card text and pictures here are our own. Bots are labelled, see only what a player in their seat would see, and choose from the same legal moves.
