And it'd be a war game that was easy to digest if all four of the factions worked the same way, as the rules for each one are relatively light. But as they don't, it isn't.
The game takes place in a forest (or woodland, to use the game's parlance) where clearings are divided by clumps of trees and paths. One faction, the Marquise (cats), have taken over from another, the Eyrie (birds) and are kind of running the place. If you're the Marquise you begin with a big presence on the board: cats in every clearing bar one and three buildings pre-built: sawmill, workshop and recruitment station. Your goal (like all factions) is to score 30 points, and to do that you need to keep building buildings or crafting items. Both score you points, and the sawmills provide you with wood (for building with), workshops let you craft, and recruitment stations recruit more cats to keep the status quo.
The Eyrie, of course, want to win the woodlands back under their control. They begin with six warriors in the only clearing the Marquise don't occupy, and swiftly set out to build more roosts on the board. This faction scores points at the end of every turn, but how many depends on how many roosts you've built. They can also craft items too.
The catch with the Eyrie is that they are very militarily minded and slaves to their own decree, which dictates where you can recruit, move, battle and build (in that order) in each round. You can manipulate the decree with cards, but you must always carry the whole thing out, otherwise your current leader is deposed and a new one steps in. This is called Turmoil, and it's bad because you lose points. But it's also almost inevitable, so your strong start will at some point hit a substantial hiccup.
The third populous faction is the Woodland Alliance, all the smallfolk trampled underfoot and pissed off about it. They operate in a different way again, sowing seeds of discontent by adding sympathy to the board. You can turn a sympathy token into a base (you start with no bases!) this is a revolt: and a well-timed one can have an obliterating effect on opponents, as all warriors present get hooked off the board and your own get added instead. The Alliance can also craft, using sympathy.
All this crafting has two purposes: to score points, and to entice the Vagabond to give you cards...
The final faction is actually just the Vagabond himself; a raccoon who flies solo, and the only character who can slip into the woods and leave the paths and clearings behind. He operates very differently from the others - he can fight, but his m.o. is trade - because he can complete quests by using equipment items, he'll visit other players and give them helpful cards in exchange for items they've crafted. Then he can cash them in. He can score points in other ways too; by having a good relationship with other factions, or conversely, by killing them off as well if that faction is hostile to him. The Vagabond can even ally himself with whatever faction is lowest on the score track, teaming up for the rest of the game to - hopefully - share the victory.
There's a fair bit more, with each faction having certain individual strengths and/or needs, but that's the gist. Each turn is actually very quick, or seemed so to me. Your actions go through three phases: Birdsong, Daylight, and Evening, and must be taken in that order (although outside of the Eyrie, there's some flexibility in the order you take actions within a phase).
The cards are a kind of economy for everyone - each clearing on the board is populated by foxes, rabbits or mice, and each card has a matching icon. When you have things to do, you usually have to play a card with a matching icon to the icon of the clearing you're active in. But they can also be used to craft things, in which case they're discarded.
Despite starting a play-through feeling fairly tired, I found it quite addictive and played several rounds. The Marquise and Eyrie are relatively straightforward, although the Eyrie's decree can swing from brutally effective to brutally implosive! The Woodland Alliance seemed a bit trickier, but timing a revolt is clearly key to their success, and removing a warrior allows you to place more sympathy, which can be quicker and cheaper than trying to snag the right cards, as it gets harder to drum up sympathy the further you go up the 'sympathy track'. I guess this reflects the fact you can't be too downtrodden if your faction is in a clear lead...
The Vagabond I found trickiest of all, but this was partly due to playing all the factions myself, as he is so much about interaction. Often the other factions are in need of cards, and as he tends to have more than anyone else, he can come to their aid and take items in return - which is why it's worth the other factions crafting them in the first place. Like all factions, he can potentially win without reaching 30 points if he changes his winning objective - there are four cards in the deck that do this, but they are tricky to complete, and I didn't actually encounter them.
I can see a first play being rather long, but not as long as our Cuba Libre experience. I can also see why Root is getting rave reviews everywhere: it's reasonably accessible (maybe not quite as much as intended) has a lot of nuance in the play, and it really does look beautiful.
Pics courtesy of publisher and illustrator from BGG
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