These adorable Root meeples are moulded from actual clay
Marquise de clay.
A fan has made their own version of Root’s meeples and components moulded entirely from clay.
The components were revealed via a gallery posted on Reddit by user u/roidweiser - who is also the creator behind the arts and crafts project – depicting Root’s various meeples and tokens in clay form. Called a “print-and-clay" by roidweiser, the game features a printed copy of the original game board for Root – which is considered to be one of the best board games available – but with cute little clay versions of its pieces.
From the blue Eyrie bird pieces to the orange Marquise de Cat meeples, roidweiser recreated almost all the components for Root in polymer clay, admitted that it did take “a long, long time.” On top of the tokens and meeples for the four factions found in the core game – the Eyrie, Marquise de Cat, Vagabond and Woodland Alliance – the Reddit user has also made clay versions of all the factions found in the multiple expansions for Root, including the ravens of the Covid Conspiracy and the otters of the Riverfolk Company.
On top of all that, roidweiser has moulded little markers to indicate the symbols assigned to each of the clearings on the game board, which determine certain gameplay elements for each faction, as well as created paper boxes for all the pieces to be placed in. Everything else for the game has been printed and placed onto cardboard, such as all the tokens for every faction and the various faction boards.
Root is a board game for up to four players that sees each person taking control of their own unique faction. An asymmetric game – meaning that each faction has different gameplay rules and objectives – Root takes place within a wood whose clearings are currently being fought over by the various different groups that call it home. Whilst the Eyrie want to maintain their rule, the Marquise de Cat wish to expand their territory and the Woodland Alliance aim to take both out of the picture entirely, with the Vagabond switching allegiances wherever it suits them.
As each faction, players take turns to perform various actions such as spawning and moving units or initiating battles. Whenever a battle is initiated, each player rolls dice to determine how successful their attack or defense is. Throughout the game, players want to collect victory points by fulfilling the various requirements of their chosen faction, with the first to 30 being named the winner.
Cole Wehrle is the creator of Root, alongside various other tabletop titles such as Pax Pamir: Second Edition, John Company: Second Edition and the upcoming Arcs. Root was published by Leder Games, the studio responsible for releasing the aforementioned Arcs and other titles like the deckbuilding game Fort.
Roidweiser still has a few things left to make for their print-and-clay version of Root including elements for the game’s Clockwork Expansion and the Exiles and Partisans pack.