“What’s next?”  This was the question on everyone’s minds after we had just wrapped up a 10-month campaign of Betrayal Legacy, and it was time for my monthly legacy gaming group to pick our next campaign.  We had already done Ticket to Ride: Legends of the West, Scythe: Rise of Fenris, and Pandemic Legacy over the last several years, and it was time to pick our next year-long endeavor.

We all enjoyed Root and wanted to play it more, but we played legacy/campaign games… what to do?  The answer was obvious: try to turn Root into a year-long campaign.  We wanted to make sure that everyone got to play each faction, so now that there are 13 factions that means 13 games – perfect!  So we developed the following schedule of 13 games to play over the next year or so.

After looking at the schedule, we decided not to actually start with game #1 because we were not really familiar with the new Twilight Council and Lilypad Diaspora factions, so instead we started with game #6 a few weeks ago so we could use slightly more familiar factions.

The Lizard Cult emerged victorious after a raucous and rowdy affair, with the Corvid Conspiracy hot on their heels after flooding the board with plots, once everyone got around to smashing all of my favorite items as the Vagabond.

In order to give the campaign some game-to-game rewards, we decided to allow the winner to pick which game # would go next and to pick the map on which the next game would be played (although the winner will go last in turn order for the next game).  Our Lizard Cult winner chose game #11 to go next so they could be the classic Marquise de Cat.

The last place player in a game gets to go first in the next game (with the rest of the seating order determined randomly), and the last place player is allowed to pick the deck and either a hireling or landmark for the next game.  In our second game (i.e., game #11 on the chart), I got out to an early lead with the Riverfolk Company after effectively hawking my wares, but I was stopped in my tracks when the other players managed to organize a boycott.  The Knaves of the Deepwood almost snatched victory with their plethora of captured warriors and acclaim, but the Lord of the Hundreds (and their huge army of rats) emerged victorious one turn before the Knaves could seal the deal.

We’re using the following (entirely unscientific) chart to track the faction standings across the 13-game campaign:

I can’t wait to see which faction emerges with the highest faction score at the end of the campaign.  And we’re using the following charts to track individual results across the campaign:

As a longtime fan of Root, who fell in love with it back when I was introduced to the game at the Netrunner World Championships event in 2018 at the Fantasy Flight Games HQ, I’m so excited to see how the campaign unfolds.  I’ve had the great pleasure of playing face-to-face Root 65 times over the past seven years, and I feel like I’m just scratching the surface, which is a lovely feeling.  The game is up there in my mind with Through the Ages, War of the Ring, and Twilight Struggle as games that get better and better (and better) with 50+ plays.

While this homebrew Root campaign is a pale imitation of a true legacy experience (since I don’t get to rip up any cards or put any stickers on the board), it’s a solid excuse to play Root regularly with the same group of people and to get to try all of the factions… although I think it might be even better to try all of the factions twice so you can try to apply your learnings.  I guess we’ll have to see where the experiment stands in a year.

Has anyone else tried to build a campaign out of Root?  Does anyone have any legacy or campaign recommendations for our group?