Rootjam 2023

A duck themed faction based around placing event tokens, each of which grant different abilities, and promoting them to increase their effectiveness and score points. As travellers from a far off land, you start your turn as the Cirque du Mallard by placing 2 warriors on opposite sides of the board. In Daylight you may craft using placed events, then use up to 3 actions to place events in clearings you rule, move warriors (and optionally an event with them) or promote an event by removing a warrior from the same clearing. In Evening you battle by discarding cards matching clearings then activate events in order. First Gladiator Arena gives points if hits were dealt in its clearing, then Circus lets you recruit extra warriors in its clearing by discarding a matching card then Gambling House lets you draw extra cards at the end of your turn. After activating an event, it must be moved to an adjacent clearing if possible (ignoring rule). The Cirque perform combat best in front of an audience, with their House Edge ability giving them an extra hit if their die shows on odd number as attacker in clearings with an event. They also gain 1 point for each promoted event per turn. Co-designed with racsopacso

As the Horned Heights, you have a desire to tower over the woodland and display your masterpiece. You are constantly reinforcing your towers to make them perfect and scoring points for each reinforcement. The more reinforcements, the more points you score. Your only way of fighting is to Ram your opponents, meaning that you have to move your warriors before fighting, never fighting them where you are. This results in a puzzling seesaw where you need to protect your towers but can only move from them to fight. Sometimes the best defence is a preemptive offences. Remember that once items are removed from the towers they are out of the game, take good care of them.

The Starstruck Soothsayers are a white faction that has the potential to be very disruptive, but are also heavily telegraphed. Their normal actions aren't very efficient, and they don't accomplish much in combat normally, but they have powerful abilities in the form of Forecasts, which they can activate after putting them on The Horoscope. Forecasts on the Horoscope are stacked on top of one another, and many Forecasts have more potent effects depending on what position in the Horoscope they are in. Additionally, their ability to move and battle while resolving the Horoscope is greatly enhanced, which is important since they only have 8 warriors to work with!

The ravagers have emerged from the riverbeds, and it turns out, they are experts at siege warfare… The ravagers main scoring comes from them barricading away other factions' tokens or buildings, scoring points off of them every turn, and giving them a combat boost against that faction. Additionally, while a building or token is barricaded it cannot be removed by any player, including yourself, except via the your Salvage action, which lets them place a rubble token on top of a barricade and then destroys that barricaded building or token at the start of their next turn. Their action economy is entirely based off of building up a bag of guides, you will start with one guide of each suit and have to spend cards to add more guides to your bag… you will then use these guides to dictate where and how many of your actions can occur through your Orders at the top of your board. Beware losing your barricades, as your guides may see you as a lost cause…and you'll have to remove one guide from your bag at random.

The Derethi Empire is a slow but steady high-warrior red faction, which uses a timer mechanism instead of dice in combat. As they slowly spread throughout the Woodland, they gain priests and monks with powerful abilities, and their combat potential slowly grows unstoppable. But they have to watch out! They will face the Wrath of Jaddeth if their monasteries are destroyed.