Root rules refresher

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Everyone is racing to thirty victory points, and the first player there wins immediately. You get there through your faction's own scoring engine, backed up by the two things any faction can score from: crafting items and destroying enemy buildings and tokens.

For setup, pick a mix of factions whose reach values add up to at least the recommended total for your player count. Score markers start on zero. In a two-player game, take all four dominance cards out of the deck first. Shuffle, then deal three cards to each player. Put a ruin in each of the four slots marked with an R, and lay out the item supply near the top of the map. Then, in setup order, A, then B, then C, and so on, each player follows their faction's setup instructions, which are listed in their rules section and on the back of their faction board.

Play goes clockwise, and every turn has the same three phases: Birdsong, Daylight, and Evening. What happens in each phase is entirely on your faction board, so your board is your turn summary. Anything that says at the start of a phase happens before everything else in it, and anything that says at the end happens after. You cannot interrupt an action, an ability, or a persistent effect with another effect unless that effect explicitly says it can. Once you begin the last step of your turn, you cannot take further actions except ones that specify end of Evening or end of turn. Most factions finish by drawing and then discarding down to five cards. Play continues until someone wins.

Underneath all the faction boards sit four shared systems. The first is rule. You rule a clearing if you have more warriors and buildings there than each other player, counted together. Tokens and pawns do not count toward rule, and if two players are tied, nobody rules it.

Moving means taking any number of your warriors and pawns from one clearing along a linking path into one adjacent clearing. You must rule the origin, the destination, or both. There is no limit on how often a given piece moves in a turn.

Battle: choose a clearing where you have warriors or a pawn, and choose one enemy there as defender. First, the defender may play one ambush card matching the clearing; the attacker may then foil it by playing a matching ambush card of their own, in which case the defender discards their ambush card and it deals nothing. If the ambush is not foiled, the defender deals two hits immediately and then discards the ambush card. Next, before-roll effects. Then roll both dice. The attacker deals hits equal to the higher roll, the defender equal to the lower. Crucially, the hits you deal from rolling are capped at the number of your warriors in that clearing. Then after-roll effects. Then count hits: if the defender has no warriors there, the attacker deals an extra hit; extra hits from effects are not capped by warriors; ignored hits subtract. Finally, deal hits. Each hit removes one piece, and the side taking hits chooses the order, but all of their warriors there must go before any of their buildings or tokens. Score one victory point for every enemy building or token you remove.

Crafting means playing a card and activating crafting pieces whose clearings match the suits in the card's bottom-left corner. Each crafting piece can only be activated once per turn. Immediate effects resolve and the card is discarded; if the card gives an item that is no longer in the supply on the map, you cannot craft it at all. Persistent effects stay in your play area, and you cannot craft one you already have.

A few card rules. Bird cards are wild for other suits, but you can never substitute another suit when a bird is specifically demanded. If you are prompted to discard or give cards of a suit other than bird, you must treat your bird cards as that suit. When the deck runs out, shuffle the discard pile into a new one immediately.

Dominance cards are the other way to win. During your Daylight, with at least ten victory points, you may activate one from your hand by placing it in your play area. Remove your score marker; you can never score points again. With a mouse, rabbit, or fox dominance card you win the moment you rule three clearings of that suit at the start of your Birdsong. With bird dominance, you win by ruling two clearings in opposite corners at the start of your Birdsong. An activated dominance card cannot be removed or swapped. Dominance cards that would be discarded go beside the map instead, where anyone can take one into hand during their Daylight by spending a matching card. You cannot treat an available bird dominance card as another suit.

The game ends the instant a player hits thirty points or fulfils an activated dominance condition. There is no final scoring round. If more than one player would reach thirty at the same moment, the winner is the tied player closest in clockwise order to the player currently taking their turn, and that includes the current player.

A turn, played out

It is your Daylight. You rule a rabbit clearing with 4 orange warriors. Next door, linked by a path, is a fox clearing where you have 1 warrior, and blue has 1 warrior, 1 building and 1 token. You move 1 warrior across, which is legal because you rule the rabbit clearing you left. You then battle blue in the fox clearing. Blue plays a fox ambush card, but you hold a fox ambush too and play it to foil theirs, so blue discards and deals nothing. You roll a 3 and a 1. The 3 is yours, but you have only 2 warriors there, so you deal just 2 hits. Blue deals 1 with the lower roll, and you lose a warrior. Blue must lose their warrior before anything else, then chooses whether the building or the token goes. They keep the building and give up the token. That token earns you 1 victory point. You are left with 1 warrior against blue's building: a tie, so nobody rules there.