Board Games in Nashville

So, as previously mentioned, this last weekend, Dani and I visited Beth in Nashville this weekend, and got to meet her roommate, Goming. All of us pictured at the Loveless Cafe below: 

As always, Danielle and I take board games on our trips, and this time took Machi Koro and Root. Playing Machi Koro while drinking has a long tradition in our friend group, and one of these days I will do a complete write-up of our drinking game rules, all the strategies Dani and I have devised (including my infamous sub-prime loan strat), and the many different ways Danielle and I have tried to deal with the market over the years. 

For this game though, I'll keep it to a short summary. I gave Beth a cursed loan office which put her behind the entire game. Goming had the at this point expected amount of new player luck (almost winning), but coming up a little short to Danielle's 1-6 strat for her to take the win. 

Now, onto the game I want desperately to play but can't find time to schedule, Root!

We played a three player variant this time with Danielle playing the Marquise De Cat again, Beth playing the Eeyrie, and myself playing the Woodland Alliance. Dani had a pretty good grasp on how to manage the cats at this point, and Beth pretty quickly figured out how to pull off the decree. I do think increasingly that the board setup does lend this game to being a lot more new player friendly than I first thought, as Beth was able to figure out what was going on pretty quickly and was competitive to the end. 

It was truly amazing to me though, how much more complete the presence of the WA made the game feel. The Eeyrie vs. the Marquise feels so hard for the birds, while the presence of the Woodland Alliance forces the Marquise to make some really hard choices about where to fight and build. For her part, Danielle played the hare dominance card as early as she could (which turned out to be a mistake in hindsight), swapped it out for the mouse one, then beat her head against the Eeyrie for the rest of the game trying to acquire a third mouse clearing. Unfortunately for her (and fortunately for me), Beth held firm and they fought each other to a standstill in the Western clearings. 

Meanwhile, I was able to run wild as the Woodland Alliance, getting all three of my bases out and maxing out my units. The WA is definitely just a little harder to play than the other two, with some mechanics that are not immediately clear and a turn sequence that is more involved. For my part, I didn't get that sympathy had to come from my supporters and not my hand until turn 2, and missed that I had a hand limit until late in the game - allowing me to unfairly retain a large hand for far longer than I should have. 

More than the other two factions, the WA feels like it wants to craft and consequently work closely with the Vagabond. You just can't earn points at the same rate as the other factions with nothing but deploying sympathy. The key seemed to be getting units out of a clearing with a base in it and trading them for sympathy using "Organize" instead of having to ditch two supporters each time for the second tier of sympathy. I also got the feeling that more than other factions the WA wants to stock-pile ambush cards and rely on them plus their combat advantage to prevail against the other factions on the field of battle despite their smaller numbers. 

I really want to play the WA again, as I loved the dynamic of their play (plus RPing as the woodland creatures of Mossflower), but more than anything at this point I want to see a full game with all four factions played. Dani and I also caved today and ordered the expansion. Lizard Cult, here we come!

That being said, there are still some rules that are unclear to me and I need to sit down and sort out. For instance, the cards that add new abilities to your board, are they technically crafted? If not, when are they played? 

At any rate, my positive impressions of Root continue.