A shorter Root: play to 25
Lower the victory threshold from 30 points to 25. The last five points are usually the slowest and the most lopsided, since by then everyone has worked out who to stop.
Does your table play this?
More Root houserules
- No dominance in a first game
Remove the four dominance cards from the shared deck before a teaching game. Winning by dominance turns on reading the whole map at once, which is the last thing a new player learns, and losing to one nobody saw coming teaches them nothing about Root.
- Dominance requires a warning
A player intending to play a dominance card must announce it at the start of their turn. Keeps a sudden win from feeling like a gotcha at a teaching table.