Parasitic symbiosis.

Now let's talk about parasitic symbiosis. Root is a perfect pairing because this is a game about interdependence. It is a game about woodland creatures fighting over control of the forest. So it's about interdependence. It's also a game about exploitation and manipulation and survival. In biology, and I've been using this word the last month since I started playing this game, parasitic symbiosis is a relationship where one organism benefits at the expense of another. You know, ticks on deer, cordyceps and ants. Maybe you have a roommate who didn't believe in doing the dishes when you were in college. It's a relationship where one party is getting what they want and the other is just sort of living in the wake of it.

Root is a board game by Leader Games, and it is about just rival factions. It's about strategic parasitism. You've got these different factions. One of them are the birds, the Eyrie, and they have a big family tradition, so you have to live up to your expectations of your council and your people every turn. So you can get a lot of power on the board when you do it, but whenever something goes wrong, the political system collapses, and you have to spend time getting a new leader.

You've got the cats, and they're like the reigning empire at the start of this game. They build sawmills and workshops and recruiters. And as the game goes on, you see that all of this infrastructure that you get points for building becomes useful for other parties, so it's harder for you to travel and do the business of the empire because once you developed it, the other factions start getting in the way.

There's a vagabond. If you guys have played like a game like Zelda, he's just like a nubby little adventurer, and he goes through the trees and he's like playing his own RPG quest in the middle of the game, which sort of means you get more resources the more that the board fights. And there's a Woodland Alliance. They're like little communist woodland critters, and really, you know, the more that you fight, the more that they grow. You know, the more that there's a war effort, the more that they are able to grow in outrage and sympathy and uprising and stuff like that.

So what's important is Root is about not just asymmetry but the illusion of power. Every faction needs the other ones, and every faction feeds off the other ones having growth or movement or success or failure. So you have these scoreboards and betrayal, and you kind of depend on your enemies behaving predictably. Root teaches you that cooperation is strategic, but it's temporary.

Yeah. So I want to invite you to play it with us at Juno, Tuesday, July 8th at 4:30. Be there, be there, be there. Okay, bye.