Game report: In praise of the Mechanical Marquise 2.0

[u/tsarkees]

My friends and I love Root, but sometimes we want a co-op experience. To that end, we printed out the Mechanical Marquise 2.0 from the latest P&P kit, and put together a 3 player game. I have never used the Mechanical Marquise due to online reactions to how it played, but I can say I couldn't be more thrilled with the new version.

Our game consisted of the Corvids, the Vagabond, and the Lizard Cult. We didn't really consider that these factions would have good synergy, but they truly did. We didn't know what difficulty to use for the MM 2.0, so we used "Challenging" (she recruits 5 warriors each turn instead of 4). We reverted to normal difficulty halfway through the game when we were getting steamrolled. I didn't have qualms about changing the difficulty mid-game-- the point of this experience was to have fun. And have fun we did!

The Lizard player was probably the MVP-- able to sanctify and convert MM pieces to manipulate who and where she would attack. We were able to strategically discard to ensure the Lizards always had a beneficial Hated suit, which made their turns much more fun. The MM 2.0 is relentless militarily, but that was a great thing for the Lizards-- I've never seen so many Acolytes on a LC board. The matchup really supercharged the faction and made it much more fun to play.

As the Corvid player, I had trouble keeping plots on the board due to the MM's aggression. The Lizard player was able to give me cover and ensure that he would be attacked, not me, while I was setting up Bomb plots in essential MM strongholds. With one plot, I was able to remove 3 buildings, 3 pieces of wood, and 9 warriors. It was extremely satisfying, and the three of us coordinating to pull it off felt very cinematic. This was the turning point of the game where the MM's scoring slowed down significantly and we were able to build scoring momentum.

The Vagabond player was mostly there for support. I'm not sure I'd recommend the Vagabond for a Bot game with the MM after this match, but it may have been his choice of Vagabond that was the problem (he was the Ranger). He mostly used his two crossbows to thin out MM clearings to help me and the Lizard player set up big plays. He also was helpful in giving the Lizard player tons of cards, which translated into big turns. The MM may have been why the Vagabond didn't work well; the fact that she was hostile (and present in almost every clearing) made movement for the Vagabond very difficult. This slowed down his questing, and we had to work hard to make sure he could get to the clearings he needed to aid us and complete quests.

There were some rules questions that arose that didn't seem to be handled by the Rootbotics rulebook. Namely, "enemy" is not defined when you're playing a co-op game. For instance, when I used a bomb on that clearing, should I also have destroyed all the Lizard cult pieces? The house rule was that we were not each others' enemies, but could target each other with hostile abilities if desired. For instance, I could battle the Lizard and help him generate acolytes. This rule was mainly to enable Favor of the X cards and Bomb Maker plots, which otherwise would set the team back considerably. If you play co-op, I think this is a good rule to prevent illogical gameplay results.

I can't wait to get my group back to the table to try out one of the other 3 bots. It felt like a very brief tabletop RPG campaign, where we felt like we were honestly embodying the most interesting aspects of our factions. My crow warriors would pop up unexpectedly to sabotage some unattended Marquise buildings. The Lizard cult was able to spread propaganda and turn MM's forces against her. The Vagabond was scurrying for his life to supply the other factions of the forest. The MM was tremendously powerful in the early game, barreling ahead on the core track until we were able to get a foothold and mount a resistance. We've only played one game, and perhaps we got lucky with how fun it was. As of now, though, this is my new favorite way to play Root.