Root Faction Score Calculator

Suddenly you’re at the end of the turn, and forest is silent. You’ve realized that you counted warrior attrition towards your score. This result in losing three victory points.

It happens to everyone, even those who have played dozens of games. It happens to everyone. The disconnect between military dominance and actualy scoring is brutal, it’s a mental leap that Root demands from its players. You can wipe the map clean of opponents, but unless you removed their tokens or building, you’ll still have no points whatsoever.

Why Counting Points Is Hard in Root

That’s the most difficult aspect of Root to remember in the middle of combat. Typically people just eyeball the board to see what got destroyed then quickly add up all the pieces in their mind. This is where warrior removal create a trap: it appears productive, but rewards you with nothing. Therefore, any solution must separate the “ones” from the “zeros”. Above, it separates them so you don’t accidentally add empty victories to your running tally.

Warrior removal is simply logged, like it should of be. With this clarity, you avoid falling into the trap of thinking that a destroyed army = a destroyed base.

Not to mention, there’s faction scoring, it’s completely unique based off who you’re playing as. Wanting relics pulled out of ground? You’re a Keeper. Wanting to spread Sympathy Tokens around the board? That’s the Alliance. Wanting to build buildings on the Track? Hey, that’s the Marquise. Every action carry a different value weight and can’t be measured using the same rules during a Lizard Cult turn as they would for a Marquise turn.

With the calculator, you pick your faction focus, which lets you guess at how many points-per-action you should expect with your own strategy. It makes math of winning (or even being in) your own race easier than the mass mayhem of the overall game.

The best, and riskiest. Method of getting points is by demolishing enemy building. For each structure or token you destroy, you’ll add a single victory point to your score. Simple. But here’s where things gets tricky: When you’re going all-in on razing every last Eyrie roost in two turns, you may rack up a nice half-dozen points, but now you’ve got no one guarding your own borders. Use the projection feature. By entering the number of remaining rounds, you’ll be able to calculate whether you’re destroying enough stuff at a fast-enough clip to hit that thirty-point finish line.

It’s a harsh reality check for those overly eager players convinced they’re ahead when in fact they’re bleeding time.

That last bit is the dominance factor. To declare dominance, you must reach ten victory points, and hold on to them. The game tell you plainly whether you’ve done this, or you’re still playing for position. Again, it’s a little thing, but it makes a huge difference when making end-game plans. If you know you’re only five points off of being eligible, how do you spend your actions during the last round? Maybe you switch from consolidation to expansion, or vice versa.

In a fast-paced game, however, it’s nice to have some presets on hand so you can quickly check them out without spending time doing the math in your head as your opponent shuffles their card. Load one of your scenarios… Perhaps a Vagabond crafting run or a Marquise building push… And then get an idea for how those actions stack up against each other.

Root is a game of hidden progress. What’s on the board isn’t necessarily how much score you’re building up. And most of the time it’s less than how much territory you own. The difference between a comfortablely victory and a close defeat is maintaining a disciplined log of what really earns points versus what feels like it should earn points. The calculator adds for you; all you have to do is stay disciplined. It is a little thing, but it makes a difference.

At the end of the game, nothing matter more than the number. It is not the number of warriors you broke.