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RootJam 2025 Starling Murmuration's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Use of This Year's Theme | #3 | 4.058 | 4.278 |
| Creativity/Uniqueness | #5 | 4.216 | 4.444 |
| Clarity of Rules/Mechanics | #16 | 3.268 | 3.444 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Includes Law of Root?
No
Includes PnP?
Yes
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Comments
You've chosen two fantastic objectives to go into this faction with. Swapping daylight actions and having a worker placement aspect are both novel and interesting mechanics to bring to the world of root.
Supporting those mechanics with a new recruiting mechanism is also so fun, it leads to such an interesting turn ahead of you with great decisions making. Though I will say, if you DONT have a bird card to recruit with starting your turn, I fear you're really missing out on what makes your faction so fun. Especially since there's not another way to gain warriors. Maybe even just allowing them to ALWAYS have that recruit might not be too gamebreaking. Or even just discard ANY card to recruit. Birds already feel like they get stuck in hands and in the decree :P
I know you could most likely flip a matching favour token to get around needed the card to spend for this, but I can see some scenarios where that may not be possible / would hurt. I may need to just bite the bullet and playtest them instead of theorizing tho :)
I was worried these guys wouldn't want to battle, but having the warriors you LOSE in battle as attacked become what's placed in the musters is a really cool way to MAKE them want to. Really sweet stuff.
Your board and pieces design is also top notch as well as the mechanics supported storytelling.
Really gonna be awesome to following along with how these guys are developed. I feel there's so much deeper mechanics here that I haven't even scratched the surface on yet.
First things first - the textured gradient on your board is divine!
Really love the look of this faction. It feels like there's loads going on but it's not messy to look at and comprehend. And unlike my faction, where we've discussed the lack of decision-making, there is SO much choice and flexibility here. I imagine it could be a hard faction to get to grips with at first, but very rewarding in the long term as it feels like you could develop many different strategies as a result of all the flexibility.
thanks, I am waiting for the Forsaken Cabal 2.0
You'll be waiting a while - I'm burning myself out on fan factions looking at everyone's creations 😂
I think this is one of my favorite jam factions! Starlings are an inspired choice and they fit the theme so well, especially when combined with the "recruit 10" action! The musters are evocative of acolytes and look elegant, but work completely differently and need to be filled to function. Taking lower die on attacks is the sort of feature that at first glance makes you think "what?" and then you realize how well it works with the rest of the faction's design by filling musters, and that they have a workaround for dealing hits when they really need to (spending cards).
I do have a few questions -
First - can musters be used in any order?
Second - it seems as though there's an optimal order in the daylight actions that's reachable after the first turn, so it makes the mechanic of changing the order of actions seem unnecessary, especially with the freedom of muster actions happening in any order (assuming my question 1 answer is "yes"). Is there any reason not to switch "Act with Musters" and "Fly" on turn 1, and then keep it that way for the rest of the game? You have fly directly after recruit, and directly before retreat so you can ensure consistency filling the musters you need, and then you have battle directly afterwards either to fill less high priority musters or as a way to fill your essential musters if you've been policed to much to have a favor on the board.
Third - Favors seems like to almost work? I'm not clear what a favor is when it's on the board, and as the esteemed MrMirz has mentioned, the bird one seems very valuable. I guess I'm wondering what they represent when they're on the board. The fact that they are basically the only way the starlings score, and yet they are one of the main ways they can deal hits consistently is a tension that is good, but I worry about the speed of their scoring. I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to say here, only that it seems difficult for the starlings to score, given that both need to have their muster filled, and their favors on the board in order to make it happen, and that makes them less able to fight should they need to.
Again, fabulous work!
thank you, I am glad that the ideas I put into the faction are indeed received as intended
1. yes, any order
2. you can swap 2 daylight actions once per turn, and you're torn between optimizing for different priorities (that was kinda the idea), you may go for different swaps, but I admit, that fly <> act is probably the best one, I was experimenting with giving a small "secondary" action under basic actions (for example "craft, then recruit 1 at each favor), but it was becoming too complex, maybe worth revisiting. Definitely needs some testing if swapping orders isn't too one dimensional
3. Yeah, that was the last change slapped before the deadline, I am not fully convinced about the favors. Initially Starlings had "nest" buildings used only for scoring (and recruits but that was scrapped), but during testing it turned out that without some help at the beginning of the game they are very feast-or-famine. I came with an idea of a "fallback" in case you're unlucky and didn't draw any bird cards for several turns, but it didn't make sense from the thematic standpoint (why nests are flipped and why they give favors). I changed nests to favors last minute to make sense of the mechanic, but as you said, it almost works. Tried to solve it by making the Starlings work with the Woodland by using Favors or, when placed on the board - "Safe Houses", "Scatter" when removing them, "Promoting" to our cause when scoring. There may be a neater way of implementing the catch-up mechanism, maybe with extra musters.
When it comes to scoring, as I explained somewhere below - you may score 4VP with the most basic muster setup, but with more warriors in musters (and a bit of luck) you may score even 12VP in one turn (+ crafting), the scoring is a bit explosive which I am fine with. During testing (but that may be a skill issue) scores were quite close.
This faction feels so fun! I love how your public actions (what do I do on the map) flow into your private actions (Musters), which influence what you can do on the map, etc. The Musters give the player so much flexibility in how they handle their "losses" (which might not really feel like losses), and I want to push all of the buttons :-)
Also, for a faction that has potential to get very busy with their actions, your graphic design is clear and organized. I get happy just looking at the board :-)
I do wonder about their ability to score points? It looked like their most efficient path is to Promote, but that would max out at 4 points a turn (and only if you filled in the Muster). Maybe that's pretty easy based on everything else you're doing on your turn, but I was just curious on your experience.
Yes, you can score max 4 VP per turn if you are impatient :d
BUT
you can also wait a turn or two, collect more warriors in musters (in particular: "score", "copy action of another muster" and "Battle")
then during your turn you may score even 12 VPs (score, copy, battle => roll 3 hits => put removed warriors into score again => score)
this way you can also place multiple tokens on the map in one turn, or do other shenanigans
Ah, that makes more sense! This is what I get for trying out the faction in my head and not on the board ;-) Can't wait to discover the other tricks to playing this faction :-)
Really cool faction! I get the feeling that they would have a lot of warriors that they want to attach with to add to the Musters to get more actions and that they don't do that much damage. I think that's a really cool mechanic that your warriors are constantly moving around to be used in different ways.
For the favors can you only flip the favors that are on your faction board in the Favors box? The bird favor seems quite valuable in that you would want to keep it off the map so that you can flip it instead of spending a bird card.
Really nice work, the board looks great!
That's right, I am not fully convinced about the favors mechanic though, I was struggling here