Root Advanced Setup: The Faction Draft

Welcome to Level 4. Everything below this level assumed someone picked the factions. Competitive Root does not work that way. Tournaments, including the World Boardgaming Championships Root event, use the Advanced Setup in Appendix A of the Law, where players draft factions and set them up one at a time. It changes the game before the first turn.

The draft uses the faction setup cards included in the Marauder and Homeland expansions.

The steps, in order

The Law’s Advanced Setup has ten steps. In short:

1. Choose a map. On a variant map, shuffle the 12 suit markers face down and place one on each clearing, so suits are random. The maps lesson covers each one.
2. Choose a deck: the base deck, or a replacement such as the Exiles and Partisans deck.
3. Bots, if your group uses them.
4. Seat players and choose the first player at random.
5. Landmarks, if used.
6. Hirelings, if used: exactly three, some flipped to their weaker Demoted side depending on player count.
7. Draw five cards. With two players, take out the dominance cards first.
8. Set up factions, by the standard method or by the draft below.
9. Place score markers on 0.
10. Choose starting hands. Keep three of your five cards, put the other two face down on the deck, then shuffle it.

Step 10 is easy to undervalue. You keep three cards after you know your faction, your homeland, and your neighbors. Keep cards that fit your opening, and an ambush if one matches where you will be attacked.

How the draft works

Faction setup cards come in two kinds: militant factions, marked with a red name and a sword, and insurgent factions, with a grey name and no sword.

• Build the pool. Agree on any factions to leave out. You cannot include both the Vagabond and the Knaves of the Deepwood. Shuffle the militant cards and deal one to the pool. Then shuffle the rest of the militant cards with all the insurgent cards and deal one per player. The pool ends with one more card than there are players.
• Two players. Remove all insurgent cards before dealing.
• The locked card. If the last card dealt is an insurgent, turn it sideways. It cannot be chosen until at least one militant faction has been taken.
• Vagabonds and Knaves. A Vagabond setup card comes with a random character card, which that player must use. The Knaves come with four random Captain cards, from which they will choose three.
• Choose. Starting with the last player in turn order and going counterclockwise, each player takes one setup card and sets that faction up at once, before the next player chooses.

Together, the guaranteed militant card and the locked insurgent make sure every game has at least one militant faction at the table.

Homelands

When you set up, you choose your homeland clearings as the setup card describes. You cannot take a homeland an enemy has chosen. Many factions must set up away from enemy homelands, and the Law spells out the fallbacks: if you cannot meet the distance, set up as far away as you can.

Because players set up in pick order, early pickers claim the best homelands. Late pickers get the faction they want, maybe, but must fit it around everyone else.

Drafting well

The first player picks last. Playing first can matter in a race to 30, and in effect the draft makes that player take whatever faction is left.

Read the pool, not just your pick. Before choosing, ask what the next player will take if you leave each card. Leaving a strong militant faction for the player right after you means they will be the one to beat.

Read the map. With random suits, a faction that crafts or scores by suit may love or hate this layout. Look at where clusters of one suit sit, and which corners are open.

Watch reach. The draft does not check reach for you. If the pool leaves a low-reach table, the militant faction is the only one who can police it, and whoever takes it should expect to.

Remember who sets up first. The first chooser places pieces on an empty map. The last chooser sees every homeland before placing.

Hirelings in brief

Hirelings are extra factions nobody plays at the start. Three hireling markers sit on the 4, 8, and 12 spaces of the score track. When your score marker enters one of those spaces, you take a hireling card at the end of your turn and roll for control, then pass it on when your control runs out. A faction cannot be played if its matching hireling is in the game. Many events, including the 2025 and 2026 WBC Root events, played without them.

Practicing the draft

You can practice the draft without playing: deal a pool, pick in order, set up, and stop. Then ask each player why they picked what they did. Five of those drafts teach more about faction strength than five full games.