Play Root Faction
Sect of the Sacred Orb's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Creativity/Uniqueness | #3 | 4.474 | 4.474 |
Clarity of Rules/Mechanics | #4 | 3.947 | 3.947 |
Use of this year's theme | #7 | 3.684 | 3.684 |
Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Includes Law of Root?
No
Includes PnP?
Yes
TTS File URL (If you've uploaded to workshop)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3246214923
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Comments
I love how you've turned ROOT ORB® from a meme into an insanely unique and mechically creative faction! The board layout and lore behind them are fantastic, and I'm a sucker for both! Your faction patterns, meeples, adapted character art, and faction piece design are all fantastically top notch and help with immersion.
Cursed paths is SUPER cool cuz they play with a unique design space of the paths, and we could definitely use more factions that use that sorta mechanic.
Both how the revenant act and how factions can go after the orb are really unique and fantastical, though losing the orb seems like it SUCKS. That's toooootally by design, but I'm a little afraid folks will take the opportunity to super kneecap these guys instead of finding some other creative ways of doing so. Honestly just an observation, playtesting on my part would be needed to see if it's a non-issue, cuz removing that mechanic would lose lotsa flavour.
Overall their mechanics are mega thought out and super creative, but that's to be expected! You've constantly been pushing the envelope when it comes to faction creativity, and I look forward to seeing as you keep developing them. Awesome work! :)
The revenant mechanic and scoring lead to a completely new playstyle. My main concern is the scoring potential of the faction, especially if anyone is policing them. I'm seeing the best strategy as running around the map, trying to sacrifice at least a couple warriors at each altar, and once the revenant reaches a too high aggression, just sacrifice all the remaining warriors at the last activated altar, but even with perfect luck and no one attempting to police you but the revenant, it still is an underwhelming scoring faction. You need 4 or so vp per turn, and it seems like you get 1-3 vp per turn for 2 or 3 turns, followed by a turn with 6-8 vp (when you get the +3 vp for having no activated altars left). Assuming everything goes perfect (and you have enough cards to keep up your recruiting and actions), you could get enough vp to outpace other factions, while your revenant polices them with pursue, and cursed paths slow them down, as your main faction can't afford to spend the actions on policing. The problem is that either you don't have enough cards to keep up with your need for warriors and actions, or someone minorly slows you down, and then the revenant catches up with you and destroys all your hopes and dreams, which, while very thematic, isn't great for scoring. I think making recruiting not based on cards and stronger could overcome this, or you could give them a base 3rd action before needing to spend cards. A small good buff to make it easier to get the perfect run to get enough vp. Another help for them would be that you get 1vp + 1 per warrior sacrificed, and make the vp bonus for no activated altars be +2, which would give more consistent vp, while not punishing as much if the revenant kills you very early.
Also why does the revenant start in the same clearing? I think giving the sect a 1 clearing head start would be a little helpful (revenant on unactivated temple and orb+warriors one clearing adjacent)
What happens if there is a sixth cursed path added to the map?
The theme and mechanics for it seem very well thought out and the revenant is unique and cursed paths are a fun addition. I love the mechanics, they seem fairly elegant. They seem very good at policing through cursed paths and provoking the revenant into killing your enemies, with the trade off that it gets closer. However, they are reliant on cards that don't come that easily and are susceptible to being killed by a very small amount of policing. Even if those go well, they still struggle for vp throughout the game as they currently are. I do love it though.
Hey, thanks for checking out my faction! I appreciate that you took the time to write out such detailed feedback for me. To answer your question about placing cursed paths: They're supply limited, so if all 5 are out on the map and you would need to place another, you simply wouldn't.
Now, as for your questions about the design/balance:
So far this hasn't been an issue in play testing, though this particular iteration of the faction was only play tested once before submission. Earlier iterations of this faction had fairly monstrous scoring potential in play testing, so It's definitely possible that I've over corrected and reined in their scoring a bit too much. In my experience, this current iteration tends to score 2-3 vp a turn depending on how much you're able to maintain higher Aggression and then get a big burst for around 6-7 vp around twice a game whenever they do a full lap around all the altars. However, they're also surprisingly good crafters (even with birdsong crafting) and can usually scoop up a decent amount of points from it (even excluding coffin makers which is absolutely gross on them). Not to mention, the Revenant can also get you a point here or there from lightly defended buildings and tokens. Tempt Fate also used to give you a point instead of a card in earlier iterations, but I found that it accelerated their scoring a bit too much.
I think that this is really dependent on the faction match-up and especially on the map, with the 2-3 cards you draw per turn getting you farther on certain maps than others. If you're playing on autumn, for example, the altar clearings tend to be only a couple of moves away and you can afford to focus on using cards for recruiting instead of actions. That being said, if lizards are in the game, you're playing on winter with cats, or crows decide to ruin your day with snares, I could see it being more of a problem to move around while recruiting enough. My hope is that Distract and Tempt Fate are generally strong enough to deal with some of these issues, though Distract is a fairly inefficient action that I could see draining your hand quickly if you're constantly forced to use it. In terms of policing I think that it's generally hard for enemy factions to get t̵̙̅̕ẖ̸̡͒́ȩ̴͠ ̷̳̃Ö̷̯͍R̶̥͆̔B̶͕̔̒ destroyed by the Revenant unless they really force it, since even if you can't move you can cause it to Flee by attacking it and use your free recruits to stall it. However, that's still not a great situation to be in since you're just barely surviving until its Aggression gets too high and it kills you. Though, you do always have the last resort of nuking the most important clearing of whoever's policing you (or at least threatening to) if you're ever in a situation like that.
The main reason I started them together is because it leaves a little more ambiguity as to where the sect wants to start heading on their first turn. I felt that starting the sect away from the Revenant might make their intentions a bit too telegraphed right off the bat, since opponents would know that you'd likely just move to the closest altar in the opposite direction of it. And since it starts at 1 Aggression, it tends not to be too much of a threat on the first turn anyways. However, I could see some ways in which a change like that could be helpful.
I've thought about a lot of these ideas while designing, and if I plan to develop this faction further then I'll definitely be taking these into consideration!
Again, thanks for checking out the faction and thanks for all the feedback!
I love the gameplay mechanic of the Revenant, like a built-in hireling! Very fun risk vs reward ^^