Wroth - How To Play

[Music] Hi and welcome to Watch It Played. My name is Rodney Smith and in this video we're going to learn the one to four player game Roth designed by Manny Trembley and published by Chip Theory Games who helped sponsor this video. The battles between the factions of Roth have been going on for centuries.

Why the fighting started and why it still continues is hard to say. Some fight for revenge, some over old betrayals, some have a thirst for conquest. I think some of them forgot why they were fighting but kept on fighting anyway. And here the fight continues as you attempt to lead your faction to victory.

Now, Roth can be played in two different modes. The first, known as the standard mode, has players competing against each other, but there's also an included solo or cooperative mode where one to four players work together against an AI controlled faction. In this video, we're going to fully learn the standard mode and then provide a brief summary of the solo cooperative mode at the end.

So, join me at the table and let's learn how to play. To set up, put this map in the center of the play area. It has various regions separated by white borders. So, this is a region. Here's another and another. Most also have a number. So, this is region one. This is region five. This is three and so on.

The art also shows us that all of the numbered regions are elevated, but the rest of the map makes up a single unnumbered lower region known as the shores, which I'm highlighting on screen. Understanding these areas of the map will help as we continue. Find these victory point tokens and flip them face down so their backs, which show this icon, are face up, and give them a good mix.

Then randomly put one into each numbered region of the map so it looks like this when you're done. Once every numbered space has a token, return any unused tokens back to the box. Then flip each token on the map face up so it looks something like this when you're done. Nearby, set this round dye with the one side face up and create a pool of what are known as the Kora gemstones.

Next, find the action dice, which are black and show this collection of sides. Based on the number of players, you'll only need a certain amount of these, as shown on the table found in the rule book and here on screen. In this video, we'll assume we have three players, meaning we use seven action dice, returning the extras back to the box.

Each player now collects a player reference and picks one of the game's five factions to control, taking its player mat. There are two extra factions that can be picked up separately, but we won't be including those here. The player mats are double-sided. The side showing an AI symbol here is for the solo or cooperative mode.

So, ensure that side is face down when setting up the standard mode, as we are here. The border of your mat will show your faction's color. And you now collect the markers and dice that match your faction's color. These markers are known as your basic troops, and you'll put them in this area at the top right of your mat, where you will see their specific name for your faction.

So, the basic troops of this faction are known as the horde, where this faction calls them the covert, but in either case, they are all considered basic troops. Your dice are known as your elite troops, and some sides will show a symbol and value, while others will be blank. Place these elite troops into the spaces for them within the sections that show their matching symbols.

As the Uglan faction, I have Karna and Nameless elite troops that go into these areas. Now, it's not necessary, but you might find it useful later to put these dice with the sides face up that show their highest values like this. Now, put this victory point mat in the center of the play area and have each player put one of their basic troops beside it.

These gray and black marble dice are known as the allseeing dice. Each player collects one to set onto this space of their mat. So, in our three-player game, these two will be used and any leftovers are returned to the box. The side that you set your allseeing die to doesn't matter and we'll see why a little later.

Each person now picks any one side of the map as their own, putting three of their basic troops onto the white illustration there. The illustration will either show ship peers or tents and represents your faction's deployment zone. Remember earlier we said this entire unnumbered area is the shores region.

Within it are four different deployment zones. Each deployment zone is a part of the shores region, but it isn't a region itself. It's just a special area of the shores that your faction will use throughout the game, as we'll see. If you have fewer than four players, as we do here, some of the deployment zones will not be used.

Moving on, these square cards are known as the faction feats. Each player collects the three matching their faction's illustration on their mat and secretly picks any one of them to use during the game, putting it face down in front of themsel. Once everyone has made their decision, they'll place their chosen card face up, which will show a white background here at the bottom.

Then the leftover cards are returned to the box. Finally, pick someone randomly to be the first player and give them this first player token. And that's the setup. Other components you might find in the box relate to the solo and cooperative mode, which we'll discuss briefly at the end of this video.

In Roth, players will be spreading their troops across the map to control various regions that will provide them with spoils and victory points. As soon as a player has earned 30 victory points, the end of the game is triggered and the person who has the most points at the end of the game will win. The game is played over a series of rounds, and each round is broken into six phases.

You'll find the phases detailed here on your player reference. So, let's go through each one starting with the first known as the maintenance phase. You actually skip this phase during the very first round, but let's go through its steps together now so you'll know how to perform this phase during future rounds.

First, you'll advance the round die to the next highest value representing the round you're now playing. And then you pass the first player token clockwise. Now, I should mention you don't actually need the round die in this standard mode that we're learning, and you can just return it to the box. But it is used when playing the solo or cooperative mode.

So, you might want to use it during the standard game just to get used to using it. But either way, during the very first round of the game, you skip this phase. Now it's time for phase two where players collect spoils. However, you only gain spoils from numbered regions you control containing certain victory point tokens.

At the start of the game, no player controls any numbered region. So, I'd like to wait and explain this phase once we know more of the rules, as I think this phase will make more sense at that time. With that in mind, let's learn how to resolve the third phase of the round known as groundwork. Starting with the first player and going in clockwise order around the table, each person moves two of their basic troops from their playmat to their deployment zone.

Keep in mind, your basic troops are a limited resource. This means if you only had one on your mat, you'd only add one to your deployment zone during this phase. Or if you had none left, you wouldn't add any to the board during this phase. Either way, each person now rolls their allseeing die and sets it onto the space for it here.

They do this even if they didn't use that dye during the last round. And we'll see how this is used a little later. The important thing to remember is that you always roll it during this phase. Then finally, each player collects one Kora gem from the supply and adds it to this area of their playmat.

Kora gems are a limited resource. So if several players need to collect it and there isn't enough for everyone, take turns collecting it in player order, starting with the first player and going clockwise around the table until what's left in the pool runs out. In a similar way, if during the game a single player is ever owed more than what is available, they take what is there and ignore the remaining that they were owed.

All right, with that understood, we can move on to the next phase known as the draft. You'll start by having any one player at the table collect these action dice and roll them into what is known as the draft pool. Then, starting with the first player and going clockwise around and around the table, each person takes a turn collecting a dye from the pool and placing it into this area of their mat without changing its face.

You'll continue doing this until each player has collected a total of two action dice on their mat. And this will leave a single die left over in the pool, which the player with the fewest victory points now collects. If there's a tie for fewest victory points, then no one collects the leftover dye.

Your victory points are tracked on this mat using one of your basic troops. And we'll see examples of how victory points are gained a little later, but at the start of the game, players are tied with zero points each, so no one would collect the leftover dye during the first round. There is a slight adjustment to this draft phase if you have a game with just two players.

The action dice will be rolled as usual, but then players will take turns collecting dice until they each have three of them. Once again, a single die will be left for the person with the fewest victory points, unless the players are tied, in which case neither of them will collect it. But no matter your player count, we'll see why you might want to pick certain dice over others as we learn more of the rules.

That said, with the draft complete, you now move on to the actions phase of the round. Here, you once again begin with the first player and then take turns going clockwise around and around the table. And on your turn, you must spend exactly one of the action dice you collected during the draft phase.

Each of these will show an icon with a specific effect you can resolve. And we'll go through how each of them works. But after the die is resolved, you put it back in the central pool. Although you must spend a single action die on your turn, you can choose not to resolve its effect. You would just put it back in the die pool.

And this would also count as spending an action die. Okay, with that understood, let's go through each of the actions you can perform using the dice. And be aware, I'm going to place and move pieces around on the map like you might see later in the game to help create the examples I want to show you.

Resolving this dice effect is easy. It's called a mining effect, and it allows you to take one Corora gem from the pool instead. This is the maneuver action. When resolving this die, you can either deploy two basic troops, not elite, but basics, moving them from your faction mat to your deployment zone, or instead you can use this action to move up to two of your basic and/or elite troops from one region to a single adjacent region.

We'll see how elite troops get added to the board a little later, but I've placed these here for this example. So if I use this maneuver die to move two troops, I pick up any two from one region and move them to an adjacent region. Regions are adjacent if they share any part of their white border with each other.

Or if their regions are connected by a bridge like this, which will have a double-ended arrow. So when resolving the maneuver action, I could, for example, pick two troops from this space and move them from here to here. But don't forget, you can move up to two troops. So I could move fewer if I wanted to.

Now remember, the shores are also a region, just a very big one. And the shores region shares a border with region 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and six. So that means when using the maneuver action, you can move from the shores to any one of those regions. And keep in mind your troops in your deployment zone are not in a separate space.

The deployment zone is a part of the shores. So I can move these two troops from here over to here since this region is adjacent to the shores which stretch into the various deployment zones. Just keep one thing in mind. You can never move troops back to the shores. Or put another way, once a troop moves away from the shores, it cannot move back to the shores later.

So, as we just learned, when resolving this action, you either deploy up to two of your basic troops, or you instead move up to two of your troops from one region to a single adjacent region. It's important to be aware that some effects in the game are resolved when something is moved, and others occur when something is deployed.

So, make sure you are only resolving those effects when the indicated type of action, moving or deploying, is specifically occurring. Now, with that understood, let's get back to learning about the dice actions. This symbol represents the extend action, which lets you deploy up to two of your basic troops from your playmat to any one region where you already have at least one of your basic or elite troops.

So, if the mat looked like this, I could deploy up to two basic troops using the extend action, placing them here, here, here, or here. Okay, that brings us to the last type of symbol you might find on an action die, which represents a battle effect. To resolve this, you must pick a target region. The region you target must satisfy three conditions.

First, it must be a numbered region. In other words, you can't target the shores. The second condition is that the target region must contain enemy troops, either basic and or elite. And the final condition is that the target space must either contain your troops or be adjacent to a numbered region with your troops.

So, let's go through some examples. As the white Ulan faction, I could target this region with an attack because it's a numbered region. It has enemy troops and I also have troops here. Or I could target this region instead because it's numbered, has enemy troops, and is adjacent to a numbered region containing my troops.

I could not target this space because although it's numbered and has enemy pieces, I don't have any of my troops in or adjacent to it. My pieces here in the shores do not count because you never include pieces in the shores when checking for a valid target to attack. In other words, you cannot attack the shores or attack from the shores.

The shores region is a safe area. Any pieces there are considered in play but cannot be part of battle actions. Once you have a valid target region, resolving this battle effect causes you to attack that region for one point of damage, and the attacker decides which enemy troop in the space takes that point of damage.

Each troop has a certain amount of damage that it can take before it's removed from the map. And this amount is known as its vitality. Basic troops have a vitality of one. So, as soon as they are assigned a point of damage, they are removed from the map. This means if I resolved this battle action and targeted this space, I could assign a point of damage to this basic troop which defeats it.

When a basic troop is defeated, it is put in its controlling players discard area. They do not return it to their map. In this way, basic troops are a limited resource. When deploying troops, you have to take them from the ones that remain on your map. In this way, at some point, you may run out of troops to add to the map.

That said, there are some special effects that might allow you to return discarded troops back to the map. And we'll see an example of that later. But for now, just know unless you're told otherwise, discarded troops stay discarded. Going back to assigning damage, let's instead say we wanted to target an elite troop.

These have a vitality equal to the value showing on their die. So when they take damage, you reduce their vitality by turning to the related side. A point of damage against this elite troop would reduce it from a vitality of three down to two. If it took another point of damage later, it would then go down to one vitality.

And if an elite troop ever takes enough damage to have its vitality reduced to zero, you remove it from the map and place it back in its related section of its controlling players map. Unlike defeated basic troops, elite troops come back here where they can be brought back to the map again later. I know we still haven't seen how elite troops get placed on the map, but we will soon.

I promise. Now, I should mention you may never attack or assign damage to your own troops, and you may not freely discard them from the board either. With that, we've gone over all of the actions on the action die, and you'll find a reminder of these and how they work on this side of your player reference.

In case you're curious, each of these dice has one mining side, one extend side, two maneuver sides, and two battle sides. As I mentioned, on your turn during this action phase, you must spend exactly one action die and resolve the side it is showing or just discard it and ignore its effect. But that's not the only thing you may do on your turn.

On your mat, you'll find this allseeing die. As long as it's in its space here, then at any point during your turn, even before spending an action die, you may resolve it. This effect we've seen already. Resolving it gains you one core gem from the pool. After resolving your allseeing die, you then remove it from your mat.

This means you won't be able to use it again until the action phase of the next round when it will have been rerolled and returned to your mat, which we saw earlier, occurs during phase three. If your all-seeing die shows this strike symbol, resolving it allows you to target any numbered region with an enemy troop and deal one damage there.

Unlike a typical battle action, you do not need any of your own troops in or adjacent to the targeted region. But remember, you cannot target the shores. Troops in the shores can't take damage. This allseeing die side represents an assault. It is resolved just like a battle on an action die, except you do two points of damage in a single targeted numbered region with enemy troops that also contains your troops or that are adjacent to a region with your troops.

Just be aware when resolving more than one point of damage at a time like this, you must target a single faction and divide the damage among that faction's troops only. So, if I targeted this region, I could pick either of these two factions with the assault effect. But the faction I pick must take all of the damage.

So, I might remove two of this faction's basic troops, or instead assign both points of damage to its elite troop, or remove one basic troop and assign one point of damage to this elite troop. But if I targeted this faction instead, one point of damage would remove its basic troop and the remaining point of damage from the assault is ignored since that faction had no more troops there.

This brings us to the final type of allseeing die effect known as the double. Unlike other sides on this die, if you choose to resolve this effect, it must occur immediately after you've resolved your action die for the turn. Then this resolves that action dies effect. a second time. For example, if I had just resolved a mine action, I could spend this to mine again and gain a second Kora gem.

Or if instead I had just resolved this maneuver die action, we know that allows me to deploy up to two basic troops or move up to two troops. Then I could spend this to make that choice again. So, I might deploy two troops with my first maneuver action and then use this to deploy up to two more troops or instead choose to move up to two basic and/or elite troops.

And those are all the symbols on the allseeing die, which you'll find reminders of here along with their effects. These have one side that's a mine, one that's a strike, two that are assaults, and two that are doubles. Okay, so on your turn during the action phase, you must resolve or just discard a single action die.

And before or after that, you may use your allseeing die if you haven't already this round. But that's not all. Instead of spending or discarding a single action die, you may replace that mandatory step on your turn by spending any twoaction dice, which could even include your allseeing die if it's on your mat, in order to perform what is known as an exodus action.

When you do this, ignore the symbols on the dice that you choose and instead pick any region containing your troops. Then move as many of your troops from that region to any one or more adjacent regions. So, I could, for example, pick this region and move these two troops here. Maybe move this troop here and these two here.

I'll also point out if you perform an Exodus action and have your allseeing die on your mat showing its double effect, you can spend it immediately after to perform a second Exodus action, choosing a different region to move troops from. But guess what? The Exodus action isn't the only other thing you can do on your turn.

I've been saying I'd show you how to add your elite troops to the map, and it's time to see how that works. At any point during your turn in the action phase, you may pick a section of your player map that contains an elite troop die and pay the cost in Kora shown within its top left to deploy one of those elite troops onto the map.

For example, if I wanted to deploy one of these nameless elite troops, I could pay two kora gems, returning them to the pool, and then I would move any one of these dice from my mat to the map. Elite troops have special rules in the area below them here. And this might give you instructions about where those units can be deployed.

If it doesn't, as is the case with these nameless, then it means they must be deployed to your deployment zone. If we were deploying a current unit, it says here that it may be deployed to an opposing controlled region. So, we could either put it in one of those or in our deployment zone. We'll learn what controlling a zone means a little later, but just know on your turn, you may pay for and deploy as many elite units as you can or wish to, as long as you can pay their costs and have a valid place to put them.

In addition to elite troops, you may also have faction abilities which will be shown within a bordered section of your mat as well. But these won't contain any dice, just an effect. For example, if I controlled this faction, I could spend one kora to defeat an opposing basic troop in any region that also contains one or more of my Ulan troops.

I would then add one horde from my discard to that region. And remember again, horde is the unique name for this faction's basic troops. So, this is a special effect that helps me get my discarded troops back into play. Like buying elite troops, you can resolve as many faction abilities as you can or wish to during your turn.

And you can do this before and or after resolving your action die for the turn. Okay, with that, we've covered almost everything you can do on your turn during the action phase. But remember, during setup, each player chose a feat card. At its bottom, you'll find a printed effect. Now, unless otherwise stated, you may only use your faction's feet effect on your own turn.

In this case, we see that you may also not use this effect during the first round. So, let's assume for a moment we're controlling this Ulan faction, and it's the second round of the game. This effect would allow us to gather up to 10 horde, which are the ooland's basic troops, and deploy them to any single region.

If an effect tells you to gather troops, they may be taken from any combination of your player mat regions on the map, and even from ones you have in your discarded troop area. So, if I was resolving this effect, which lets me gather up to 10 basic troops, I might take three from my mat, three from these regions of the board, and maybe these four from my discard area.

The effect then says, I deploy them to any one region. So, maybe I would put all of these over here. Either way, after resolving a feat with a once per game effect, you then flip it over as a reminder that you will not be able to resolve it again later. On the other hand, if a feat has a persistent effect, as we see here, it does not flip over when it is used and instead resolves each time it's listed effect would apply.

With that, we've covered everything you can do on your turn. And you can perform these options in any order. So, you might start by resolving a one-time feat, then buy an elite troop, then resolve an action die, then buy another elite troop, and then maybe resolve your all-seeing die. The only thing you must do on your turn is ensure you resolve one of your action dice or discard any two dice and resolve the exodus action.

Once you've finished your turn, you let the players know, and then the next player in clockwise order takes a turn. and turns will continue like this around and around the table with players taking a turn as long as they have an action die remaining on their mat to use. If it comes to your turn and you don't have an action die on your mat, then your turn is skipped for the rest of the round.

You cannot choose to spend Kora or resolve a feat or even use your allseeing die. So, if you wish to do any of those things during the round, make sure you do them during a turn when you still have an action die left to spend or discard. The action phase itself ends immediately at the end of a player's turn when no person at the table has any action dice left on their mat.

Then, it's time for the victory points phase. Here, you'll score each numbered region in order from lowest to highest. Again, for the sake of this example, I'll set up the board in a way that will help me best explain how this works. Since we've resolved this phase in region order, we'd start at region one.

And as we go through each, we check to see if any troops are located there. If not, you move on to the next region. Here we have troops with more than one player. So, we check to see who, if anyone, has control there. To control a region, you must have more of your troops in the region compared to each other player.

So here, as the white ooland faction, I have five troops, while the green faction only has four, and I also have more troops compared to the pink faction, who has three. So, white controls this region. And notice, each elite troop only counts as a single troop when checking control, no matter what their vitality value might be.

So again, pink has three troops in this region. The player who controls a region gains the victory points showing on the victory point token there. So two in this case. Anytime a player gains victory points, they advance their marker that number of spaces on this track. When checking for control, if two players are tied for most troops in a region, no one earns the victory points showing there.

If a player controls a region and they're the only faction there, they dominate that region. And in addition to the victory points showing on the token in that region, they receive one additional point. So, green in this case earns the one point showing here plus one more for a total of two victory points.

Some of these tokens show other symbols, but those extra symbols are ignored during this phase. We'll see what they're for a little later. Either way, you'll go through each region in order, awarding points to players who control or dominate them. And be aware, no player can ever control or gain points from the shores.

But that's not all. If you look at your player mat, you may see that some of your elite troops have a star symbol with a value here. If you control or dominate a region that contains one or more of those troops, you gain that value as extra victory points for that region. Just note, you don't gain this for each of those elite troops in that region.

So, in this region, I only earn two extra points, not four. But if you have more of those elite troops in a different region you control, they provide their bonus again. Once you've finished scoring every numbered region in order, you start a new round beginning with phase one. Now remember, we previously skipped over phase two.

So now with the rules we've learned, let's go back and see how it works. During this phase, you go through each numbered region in order, stopping only if you come to one with a victory point token that also shows an action symbol on it, like we see here. If a player controls that region, they resolve the action right away, but they do not gain the victory points showing on the token, and they don't gain any bonus for dominating that region.

So, in this case, the Uglan player would get to perform the mine action and collect a Kora gem. If no player controlled the region, then the action there would not be resolved. These are the possible actions you might find on these tokens, and they are all ones we've learned about already. One thing I should take a moment and mention is that players are never eliminated during the game.

It is possible for all of your basic troops to be in your discarded area, but that doesn't stop you from being able to draft dice, take turns, and spend core gems to deploy and use elite troops. And with that understood, rounds of the game will be taken one after the other until the end of a victory phase where one or more players have reached or exceeded 30 victory points.

At that point, the game ends and the person with the most victory points wins. If there's a tie for most points, the tide player who controls the most regions, not including the shores, wins. If there's still a tie, the tied players can either agree to share the victory or if they can't agree, they play a game of rock paper scissors to determine the winner.

As I had mentioned, the game also comes with rules for solo and cooperative play where one to four players will work together against a single AI faction, represented by choosing any one mat to flip over to its AI side and picking one of its three scenario cards to go up against. These will have various rules and challenges for you to overcome as you play.

But all of those rules I'll leave for you to discover on your own. Otherwise, that's everything you need to know to play Roth. If you have any questions at all about anything you saw here, feel free to put them in the comments below and I'll gladly answer them as soon as I get a chance. You'll also find forums for discussion, pictures, other videos, and lots more over on the games page at Boardamege Geek.

And I'll put a link to that in the description below. And if you found this video helpful, please consider giving it a like, subscribing, and clicking that little bell icon so you get a notification anytime we post a new video. And if you'd like to support us directly, you can join our Patreon team, which I'll have linked below.

But until next time, thanks for watching.