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Clawbill Compact - Root Jam 2026's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Use of This Year's Theme | #28 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
| Clarity of Rules/Mechanics | #29 | 2.778 | 2.778 |
| Creativity/Uniqueness | #32 | 3.222 | 3.222 |
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?
Yes
Includes PnP?
Yes
Includes TTS files?
No
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Comments
Wow, this is absolute genius! I love the concept and the theme, and the art supports it in such a wonderful way. I've wanted to build a dual faction myself for a long time, and this is definitely the most promising example I've seen so far.
Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to dig too deeply into the mechanics yet, but I feel like they might still need to be ironed out a bit to be truly functional. I don't think you've made a dedicated thread on the Discord for your faction yet, have you? I'd be glad to help support its development after the jam if you plan on taking it further!
Please please this is so amazing. The artwork is absolutely incredible, and I really hope the two of you can share more fantastic ideas and artwork in the root community. I genuine Lt mean that so much. Even the story of these guys is supported so well by your mechanics and abilities. High alert being for the mongooses makes so much sense and is actually a cool interaction! You get movement even if you can tempt someone to rule your clearing. That's kind of awesome. Fantastic stuff
Good idea to have to species team up to achieve their goals ! Is it possible to use the haul action to move a hornbill and a scrap action to battle with mongooses ? The little action makes me wonder
Yes! The bullet points are purely aesthetic. We specify which warriors you can use when there are restrictions but for most actions it is a collective. I also clarified this in the law for the faction but I get not reading all of that :)
Great job here! The choice of symbiotic animals is cute and well executed. I like how the action system scales up nicely for a big endgame. I feel like it would make sense if some capability was lost when the Mound was destroyed (similar to the Duchy), but I'll defer the balance to the one who's play tested them ;-)
Like others have already said, the only thing I could see being an issue is matchups with limited buildings. If you were still concerned, you could look at using the Ruins as an optional target? I've always thought of the Ruins as something like a destroyed building, so it could work thematically (although it would be much less work to take it over). Of course, that pesky Vagabond (or Warlord) might make it a moot point, but more options could be better?
Hi ! To start, well done to both of you
I have a few thoughts about the faction, maybe it can help you if you want to keep working on it after the jam !
1) My biggest concern is what can you do if you play against factions with no or few buildings ? From my understanding there are no other ways than destroyed buildings to produce loot. Perhaps there could be another way to get loot so that the faction is less dependant on other factions having buildings ?
2) Summon action : maybe rephrase with the keyword "place"
3) The way to slow them down is to hit their warriors right ? Maybe loosing some capabilities if you loose the mound ?
4) maybe i would call the loot token "markers" rather than "token" as your opposent can't really do anything with them.
Thanks for the feedback, these are definitely things we thought about. I’ll give you my current thoughts and I’d be interested to hear what you think.
1. This definitely can be an issue, and the reason we have the compact as an insurgent faction is because it plays best when there is at least 1 militant faction looking to put buildings down. I could see the fly action be changed to some way of spending cards to drop loot, but it would have to be pretty pricy, not sure exactly what it would be.
2. The summon word was initially to indicate that they were coming to the mound regardless of where they were, not just from your supply. Not sure if it should be changed since it is different from other recruit-like actions.
3. This is definitely something worth considering, but I’m also hesitant to add extra rules baggage and mission creep (something a lot of custom root factions suffer from imo). The faction already incentivizes some level of policing from the politically vulnerable ability and so I’m not sure it needs more. It’s something I’ll have on my radar during future plays, especially because moving The Mound more central to the board definitely helps speed up Loot collection. Currently the downside to losing The Mound is that you miss out on your Birdsong summon and recruit, you can’t recruit and you can’t score with Loot until The Mound is recreated. Currently that seems like a fine level of downside but I’ll keep an eye on it.
4. I agree that they should be called markers, I had that thought late in development and it wasn’t worth changing before the submission window. This was made in canva and we didn’t have the Root font so every text box was typed out in a different program and then copied over as an image instead of a text box so it was hard to go back and edit lol. It’s something I’d change if we did another big pass but it’s functional so it wasn’t worth the change on the time limit.
Hi. First of all nice job. Before voting the faction I need some explanations. 1) the main goal is to collect the loot to the mound. Loot can’t be removed so you need to rule clearings connected to the mound to move warriors with loot toward it. Right? “Politically vulnerable” replaces the fact that loot can’t be removed to score the point I suppose 2) what do you mean with Craft using warriors in UNIQUE clearings? 3) you can use the 4 base capabilities. Then they return available every turn or they have to be restored? Or token capabilities from the supply are restored?
Thanks for the comments! To answer your questions 1) you need to rule the clearing you move in to or out of, and it needs to be specifically a haul action so moving with High Alert does not allow you to bring loot with you. Yes, politically vulnerable offsets the fact that the tokens can’t be destroyed and that the faction has strong defensive capabilities, imo every faction should have an incentive to hit them beyond crushing them under your boot for the love of the game. 2) Unique clearings is clarified a bit more in the law, but the intent there was to make it so 3 hornbills in the same clearing did not equate to 3 crafting power of that clearing suit, they need to be spread out. 3) All capabilities refresh each turn, at the first step of Daylight. At the start of the game that amounts to the 4 base capabilities and as you restore capabilities you gain more actions. In playtesting, the faction started like an insurgent faction scavenging the Loot already on the map and as you restored capabilities it shifted to be militant, needing to force buildings off the board to score points.
Thanks for the in depth comment! Happy to answer more questions if you have them.