The Root Exiles and Partisans Deck: What Changes

The base deck is the one everyone learns. Competitive Root often uses another. The Exiles and Partisans Deck is a 54-card replacement for the shared deck, and the WBC Root event in 2025 and 2026 listed it as the default deck, with the base deck allowed only if the Exiles and Partisans deck was not available.

Under Advanced Setup, the group may replace the whole shared deck with it. You never mix the two.

What stays the same

Leder Games’ card library shows the new deck keeping the cards that hold the game together:

• The ambushes, in the same suits.
• The four dominance cards, with the same goals.
• The item cards, so the race for the 12 items in the supply works the same way.

So everything in the card tracking lesson and the crafting lesson still applies: count ambushes, watch the dominance cards, and race for items.

What goes

The base deck’s persistent powers and special cards are not in it. According to the card library, that includes Armorers, Sappers, Brutal Tactics, Royal Claim, Command Warren, Cobbler, Codebreakers, Tax Collector, Better Burrow Bank, Stand and Deliver!, Scouting Party, and the three Favor cards.

That matters. A Marquise who learned to craft Command Warren and Cobbler for extra actions will not find them here. A defender who counted on Armorers will not have it. The Favor cards’ sudden board wipes are gone too.

What comes in

Leder describes the deck’s new persistent powers as inspired by the many factions of Root. Here are some of them, summarized in our own words. The card’s own text always rules.

Movement and position

• Boat Builders: you treat rivers as paths.
• Corvid Planners: while moving, you ignore rule.
• Tunnels: clearings with your crafting pieces count as adjacent to each other for you.
• False Orders: spend it in Birdsong to force an enemy to move half their warriors, rounded up, out of a clearing, as you choose.

Battle

• Fox, Mouse, and Rabbit Partisans: in battle in a clearing of that suit, deal an extra hit, then discard every card in your hand that is not of that suit.
• Eyrie Emigre: at the end of Birdsong you must move and then battle in the destination clearing, or discard the card.
• Informants: in Evening, instead of drawing, you may take an ambush card from the discard pile.

Economy and control

• Master Engravers: score one extra point each time you craft an item.
• Murine Broker: draw a card whenever another player crafts an item.
• League of Adventurous Mice: once in Daylight, exhaust an item in your Crafted Items box to move or battle.
• Propaganda Bureau: once in Daylight, spend a card to replace an enemy warrior in a matching clearing with one of yours.
• Soup Kitchens: your tokens count toward rule, and each counts twice.
• Coffin Makers: warriors removed from the map to their supply gather on this card, and you score a point at the start of Birdsong for every five there.

The deck also has cards like Charm Offensive and Swap Meet, which pass cards or points between players, and Saboteurs, which discards an enemy’s crafted card.

How play changes

A few shifts stand out:

• Movement gets stranger. Boat Builders, Corvid Planners, and Tunnels let a faction reach clearings the map says it cannot. Read the whole board before you assume a clearing is safe.
• Crafted items do more. With Master Engravers, Murine Broker, and League of Adventurous Mice, crafting an item can pay twice. The item race heats up.
• Factions borrow each other’s tricks. Soup Kitchens makes the Alliance’s sympathy or the Marquise’s wood count for rule. Propaganda Bureau turns enemy warriors into yours. A faction you thought you understood may play differently with the right card.

Learning it before an event

• Read every card once. It takes ten minutes, and nobody at a tournament table wants to explain a card mid-turn.
• Play a few games with it at home, each with a different faction.
• Look cards up as you play. The Leder card library at cards.ledergames.com has every card with its text.
• Recount ambushes. The suits are the same, so the habit carries over.

The Squires and Disciples Deck is a second replacement deck, with cards inspired by the Marauder and Homeland factions.