Talk about board games!
A friend has been trying to get me into Root lately, bought me the steam version, has a physical copy. Has anyone played? Will you teach me your secrets? I know nothing about the game but she seems really excited about it.
I’ve only played Root a few times so I don’t have much strategy advice, but it’s an asymmetric war game where you play as different woodland factions that have their own unique powers and win conditions. I think the game is pretty interesting in how it balances asymmetric strategies, but at least in my case I feel like you’d have to play it a few times so that you can get a better understanding of how other factions tend to operate.
Unfortunately, I didn’t like playing it that much myself. However, the designer of Root, Cole Wehrle, also made Pax Pamir: Second Edition which I enjoyed. He also designed John Company: Second Edition which I am absolutely itching to play.
I was much more into board games when I was a child, but since then I have largely been a video game player. I played a few different ones last year with Exo, those were the first proper “adult” board games I ever played 8D I did terribly each time, but it was always a lot of fun. Honestly, I am the titular beginner when it comes to these games.
The more complex a game is the worse I tend to do, but I’m above basics, I guess? Where could I start for a level like that if I wanted to explore a little more? 8]
There’s a game I played a few times that’s about building stained glass windows that seemed like it hit that sweet spot real nicely. Wish I could remember the name!
It’s called Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra!
there is also sagrada. that and azul 2 are the only ones i know that you build stained glass windows
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ive played root like 10 times or so. id probably describe it as a “dudes on a map” sorta game, which is about moving ur little guys around a map to control little bits of it. sorta like risk but less of a slog. it really shined the first few plays for me cause the novelty is high. there are 4 factions you can play in the base, 10 i think if you get all the expansions. they all are very different and they win in different ways.
if you want some tips, you gotta be a bit reactive to other players in that game. it helps to know what the other factions can do. in the first game id recommend just focusing on getting points. once you get the hang of that, try to figure out how the other factions get points to know if someone is gonna pull ahead.
ive never really thought to play the digital version cause that game has like the best pieces in any board game. 10/10 i use them to replace other game`s pieces. wonderful little creatures.
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Sagrada’s the one I played 
. The little dice are fun.
I think it would depend on how much you know! One thing I would do is look up the complexity rating and the mechanics listing of a few games that you’re familiar with on BoardGameGeek (BGG) and then use that as a way to get a general idea of what might be a little bit more difficult to play.
For example, lets say you already know how to play Red Cathedral. As of this writing, on BGG it has a complexity rating of 2.81.
The expansion, Red Cathedral: Contractors also has a complexity rating of 2.81 but it adds a Worker Placement mechanic. If you already know Red Cathedral, I wouldn’t expect this to be too hard to learn.
Similarly, The Castles of Burgundy has a complexity rating of 2.98 and has quite a few different mechanics from Red Cathedral. Even though The Castles of Burgundy is quite a different game, it has a similar complexity rating so I would expect this to be a good choice for learning a bunch of new mechanics.
Generally, board games share a ton of mechanics in common. After you become familiar with a few of them, you can sometimes use them as shortcuts when learning other games. For example, I often take note that the deck shuffling mechanic in many games often match the deck shuffling rule from Dominion or that the worker placement mechanic in board games have a few variations but they all follow generally the same rules.
In my (probably controversial) opinion, once you become familiar with many different mechanics, your board game literacy improves and it becomes much easier to play games with higher complexity ratings on BGG. This is because games with higher complexity ratings on BGG tend to combine many mechanics rather than just using a few of them like in lower complexity games. Notably, complexity on BGG isn’t equivalent to how high the skill ceiling is for the game.
For example, Go only has a complexity rating of 3.93 but I would say that it’s a game that has a significantly higher skill ceiling and steeper learning curve. Despite its simple rules, I think you have to practice quite a bit before you feel like you know how to play the game. Lacerda games on the other hand have a lot of mechanics and rules but don’t feel as difficult skill-wise, despite having higher complexity ratings in the 4.0~4.5 range.
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Fantastically useful info, thank you 8D 8D 8D
I’m gonna start making a list and just poking through some things that interest me, in addition to the titles I saw mentioned.
And we should definitely play Red Cathedral again, that was a really fun one! 
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