Sure, I’d be happy to, although it’s something I’ll be writing up at length in the near future.
The hook for Root is, of course, the EXTREME ASYMMETRY!!!1! (enthusiasm mine). Like Vast, another game from the same publisher but not the same designer, each faction is like it’s own game. When you sit down to teach Root or Vast, you essentially have to teach a separate game for each faction. This is especially true of Vast, where there are very few points of gameplay commonality among the factions. Root has the advantage of a core gameplay you can teach before folding in the faction specifics. But it’s still a lot to take in, compounded by each faction that’s going to play.
When you have four players, and four factions that have to be learned, I think it’s information overload. Anyone can listen to you explain the base gameplay and one faction. Most people have the patience and especially curiosity for a second faction. The third can get iffy and you’ll invariably have people starting to get antsy wanting to play already, and starting to lose track of what the first faction did. A fourth is, I feel, a faction too far.
Furthermore, the fourth faction in Root is a weird one. Root supports up to six players when you add the expansion, but I don’t think it’s because it was designed that way so much as because there are that many factions that were designed. If that makes sense. When you buy the base set, you get four factions, so, sure, naturally you might think four players. But the rules encourage you to mix and match among all the factions, and not necessarily to think of it as each faction needing to be present in each game (like, for instance, the COIN series, which Root resembles).
But anyway, yes, you get four factions in the base set. The regular factions for a starting three-player game are 1) cats, 2) birds, and 3) an alliance of mice, foxes, and rabbits. They’re each basically playing a territory control game against each other, and each is more complex than the last. But if you start with a four-player game, you’re adding in the fourth faction, which is a lone raccoon running around doing his own thing, with no interest or ability to play the territory control game. And there’s no incentive to attack the little guy because a) a player can’t get territory from him, and b) a player doesn’t earn VPs from him like when he attacks other factions, which is one of the ways Root encourages conflict among players. The raccoon opts out of this part of the design. So in a four player game, he’s going to be off doing his own thing, underfoot but most likely unchecked, and he’ll probably win because players won’t know the meta-game for how to deal with the raccoon. Instead, there will be a point when suddenly everyone realizes, oh, the raccoon is going to win and there’s nothing we can do to stop him. They didn’t realize that they had to stop him earlier.
Of course, if you have the expansion and you really want to throw a new player into a four-player game, you can leave out the raccoon and add the lizards or otters instead (tip: add the otters!). But you still have the problem of information overload.
Now I’m not saying Root won’t be a perfectly fine time for four new players, and it’s dynamic and fascinating enough that anyone who appreciates boardgame design won’t mind being unable to track everything going on because there are four factions. But I think the best way to get a new player to appreciate it – and more importantly understand it, which is a prerequisite for fully appreciating it – is to make sure he or she plays two games, one right after the other, controlling a different faction each time. With three players, the games will be shorter and therefore it will be easier to get two games played. And a new player will get to see two-thirds of what you’ve taught, getting a sense for two of the factions from both inside and outside.
Of course, this will vary by group. But for most of the folks I play with, I strongly feel the best way to show them the game is with exactly three players. In fact, I feel strongly enough about it that I’ve opted to sit out when I’m a fourth player. But once you’ve gotten someone past a two-game learning session with three players, by all means, add in a fourth player!
-Tom
