Excellent production, Great gateway experience, Mainstreams a fringe part of the hobby
Unrewarding mastery, Boom or bust gameplay
Root's base game is a well-assembled meat and cheese tray; people expecting more may be left hungry, but there's plenty of people who want exactly what it's offering, and a whole other set sticking around to order the full meal of expansions afterwards
Root works because it is at once familiar and novel: a wargame with a cutesy theme disguising a highly asymmetric strategy affair. It's a dichotomy that bears some really quite bizarre fruit, with some players claiming it represents various sociological t...