Pango; Overall Chill Dude!

In the Riverfolk expansion to the popular board game Root, a new faction was added to the game: The Riverfolk Company.

These war-time profiteer otters immediately stole my heart, and playing them is an absolute joy.

Unlike the traditional militaristic factions, they gain victory points by establishing trading posts on the board utilizing funds. How do they gain funds? By selling services to other players.

As they get more funds, the amount of actions they can take per turn increases, and they begin to snowball in strength.

So, then, stopping them should be simple. Every player simply doesn't buy from them. This limits their funds and effectively removes them from the game.

However...

If a player buys the services, they get an advantage over the rest of the players.

In a typical 4 player game, by banding up against the otters, you remove 1 player as a threat. But if you are the 1 faction to buy from the otters, you remove the other 2 factions other than the otters as threats.

The other, non otter, players must now buy services to catch up.

This is a prisoners dilemma.

You have to trust every other player not to stab eachother in the back and fund the otters.

And while they're fighting over buying or not buying your services?

you're establishing trading posts and destroying supplies.