Root, Oath, Arcs — One Designer's Expanding Vision

Grant: Okay, welcome back to the Design Deck. I'm Grant, Miles is here, and oh man, we have a big one today. Miles: Really big, like tectonic shift in the hobby big. Grant: So, plot twist, Cole Wehrle announced his departure from Leder Games back in January, and he took Kyle Ferrin and a chunk of the team with him to found Buried Giant Studios. Miles: And BoardGameWire reported Leder-kept Root but sold Arcs and Oath to Buried Giant. Two IP catalogs, one clean split. Grant: Which is wild, right? Root is on Walmart shelves. Miles: Wow. Grant: That's your commercial engine staying behind. Miles: And Wehrle walks out the door with the two games nobody's mom has heard of: Arcs. Grant: Bold is one word for it. Miles: So we're spending the whole episode inside this story. First up, we dig into what Root actually does at the table, the radical faction asymmetry, where it came from, and whether that new player friction is a feature or just pain. Grant: This is where it gets good, because I have opinions. Miles: You always have opinions. Grant: Guilty? Miles: Then, we trace Cole Wehrle's full design arc, Root to Oath to Arcs, and ask whether that trick taking action system in Arcs is clever constraint or accessibility wall. Grant: And we close on the forward looking question: does creative independence actually sharpen a designer's work, or does losing a commercial safety net like Root make everything harder? Nothing harder. Miles: According to Wargamer, Worlds has Buried Giant already has three to five years of ambitions lined up. So we'll find out. Okay, let's get into it. SEGMENT one, Root on the table. What is this game actually doing? Grant: Okay, so get this: January thirteenth, twenty twenty six, Cole Wehrle posts the letter on Leder Games' blog and basically the entire studio walks out with him! Miles: I mean, walks out is doing a lot there. It was amicable. Grant: Sure, sure, very politely packed their desks; but Boardgamewire counted it up: Wehrle, artist Kyle Ferrin, his brother Drew, former operations director Ted Caya, plus Josh Yearsley. Two graphic designers, the community manager... Miles: That's most of the creative corps gone in one announcement. Speaker 3: Wow. Grant: Right." And then Leder agrees to sell Arcs and Oath to Mighty Giant, the new studio, while keeping Root. Miles: Which is the interesting part, honestly, because Root is the game that, according to Wehrle's own letter, let Leder move offices twice and triple its staff. Grant: So the game that built the house stays in the house, Speaker 3: Mm. Grant: and the designer who... After who built it, leaves. Miles: Chuckling, and takes the two heavier, weirder, harder to sell games with him. Grant: Okay, but here's the thing, Miles. My first reaction was drama, designer versus publisher, creative tension, the whole thing, but Wehrle was pretty clear about what actually happened. Miles: Yeah, Wargamer got him on record; he basically said his projects had become insular within the company, and at a certain point it just didn't make sense to stay under the same roof. especially since Patrick Leder wants to do his own designs. Grant: Not a falling out-two different answers to the same question. Miles: Right, what should a publisher actually be? Wehrle was building these enormous resource intensive projects, each one longer and heavier than the last. Root took a year, Oath took two, Arcs took three. Grant: Wait for it. Miles: Yeah, the trajectory only goes one direction. Grant: And Wehrle told Wargamer that eventually the folks support Supporting those projects were becoming somewhat insular within Leder; the company needed room to grow in a different direction. Miles: A nodding. And the IP split actually maps onto that cleanly: Root is at Walmart and Target now. BoardGameWire noted it broke out of the hobby bubble onto major retailers' shelves. That's Leder's lane. Grant: And Arcs and Oath the games where the Rule Book basically has a philosophy section. Miles: (Deadpan) Those go to the new studio called Buried Giant. Sure, checks out. Grant: But this is why I don't want to just treat it as industry gossip. The split is clean, almost surgical, and it tells you something about what those three games actually are. Miles: Exactly. Root, Oath, Arcs. Same designers, same artist, built in the same building, but they're not the same kind of game. So what does that mean for how we read them as design objects? Grant: And Root specifically, right? The one that stays behind. Wehrle described it as a simulation of political and economic warfare. Like warfare dressed up in woodland creatures. Miles: Mm-hmm. Grant: So what's really going on inside that box? Because if you've only played it once, you probably don't even know yet. So here's the actual design problem Wehrle was solving with Root. Four factions, same board, same card deck, same 30 point finish line, but each one plays a completely different game. Miles: And I mean completely. The Marquise de Cat is running an industrial engine, building sawmills and workshops. The Woodland Alliance is planting sympathizers slowly, then exploding into revolution. The Vagabond is basically ignoring the rules everyone else follows. Grant: And then there's my personal favorite disaster. the Eyrie Dynasties. So here's what turmoil actually does at the table. Every turn the Eyrie add cards to a decree, a growing list of actions they're locked into move here, battle there, build somewhere else. Miles: Right, and a list keeps growing. Grant: It keeps growing until they can't complete one action and the whole thing collapses. They lose points, they lose their leader, their decree gets wiped. It's a political dynasty imploding in real time. Miles: Which is absolutely the point. According to the Wikipedia entry on COIN, he described Root as a "simulation of political and economic warfare," directly borrowed from the COIN Series war games. Grant: The COIN series is basically hyper complex counter insurgency simulations. Like one game has Colombian drug cartels versus guerrillas versus the government, all playing different games simultaneously. Root took that structure and Miles: I put adorable woodland animals on it. Grant: The adorable woodland animals on it. And according to the Justin & Gary design interview with Wehrle, that was a deliberate bet. People actually do want these types of games, they just don't usually like the aesthetics that are associated with them. Miles: Which is honestly kind of genius; Vast proved full asymmetry could work before Root, but Root scaled it to Walmart and Target. Grant: Here's the thing, though, and this is where I want to push back on myself a little. Wehrle has said asymmetry is expensive and every way a game can be expensive. Expensive. The challenge isn't sketching different factions, it's making sure players can witness and understand each other across those differences. Miles: And Root does not always clear that bar on the first play. Grant: No, new players feel genuinely lost. I've watched people sit at that table completely confused about what the Woodland Alliance is even doing for the first thirty minutes. Miles: Okay, but I'd argue that's the cost of doing something genuinely new: the shared card deck, the shared board, those are the translation layer, the vocabulary exists, some players just need a session to learn the language. Grant: I'm on both sides of that honestly. A design that requires the right group to click feels like a risk the designer took, not a problem the player caused. Miles: Fair; and, look, Wehrle clearly agreed on some level, because Oath moved away from baked in faction asymmetry entirely-all players start with the same actions; the divergence emerges through play. Grant: Which is a really different answer to the same question. Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Grant: Ruud said, here are four different games sharing one board. Oath said, what if the asymmetry grew organically instead? Flipping that on its head, Root bakes asymmetry in from turn one. Oath does the opposite: every player starts with the same actions, and the divergence grows from what you do with them. Miles: And that chronicle system is the part that genuinely got me. The winner of each session picks a card to add to the world deck, so a copy played for a year looks nothing like a fresh box. Wikipedia actually traces Wehrle's inspiration on this. He grew up with secondhand games missing pieces, and wanted each box to have, as he put it, a more resonant echo than a legacy game you physically destroy. Grant: That's the move that separates it from Pandemic Legacy or Gloomhaven. Those games build stakes through consequences you cannot undo. Gloomhaven's character retirement is brutal in the best way. Oath says history accumulates, but nothing is torn up. Miles: I think that's a cleaner design idea, honestly. Pandemic Legacy spoiler envelopes are thrilling the first time; then they're over. Oath's version of history compounds. Grant: Okay, so then Arcs pushes even further: you start symmetric, everyone plays the same game, but you draft leader and lore cards to differentiate, and the campaign generates faction level divergence across three linked sessions. Wehrle described the campaign as a three act structure with With analog procedural generation Miles: And the action system is where it gets genuinely strange, because Arcs runs on trick taking: you lead a card, which sets the suit, and the suit determines what actions are available:--mobilization moves ships, aggression starts fights, construction builds. If you follow suit with the higher card, you copy those actions fully; if you can't or won't match suit, you pivot to a different suit, but get But get only one action. Speaker 4: So you're constantly negotiating tempo. Low cards give you more actions, but surrender initiative. Whoever plays the highest in-suit card leads the next trick. Miles: Mm-hmm. Speaker 4: So you're not just asking, what do I need to do? You're asking, what do I need to do right now given what everyone else is holding? Miles: Which is elegant. I'll defend that. Grant: Sure, but here's my push. Is emergent asymmetry actually harder to balance than Root? Root fix actions, or does it just hide the seams better? In Root, the seams are visible, we know the Eyrie and the Marquise are tuned against each other. In Arcs, the imbalance is still there, it's just wearing different clothes each game. Miles: That is a genuinely uncomfortable point. I think the answer is both are hard to balance, but Arcs bets that players won't notice asymmetry that grew organically from their own choices. Speaker 4: Which connects to the through line across all three games. Oath, Arcs, Root rarely keeps asking the same question dressed up differently. How do you make players feel like they built the story, not executed someone's script? Miles: Script: And warily told Tao of Gaming (I'm paraphrasing), the only way to judge a player's performance is to force them to live in the world they just made. Speaker 4: Wow. Miles: That's Oath. That's Arcs. That's the whole thesis. Speaker 4: It is. And now Arcs is his flagship at an independent studio with no mainstream hit to subsidize the risk. That trick-taking system that we just called elegant? A lot of new players bounce off it hard. It's a bit hard before they understand why it's punishing them. Miles: Which is exactly where we're headed because the critical reception was wild and the accessibility question hits very differently when there's no Root money cushioning the landing. Grant: And so here's the thing about Arcs: IGN gave it a ten out of ten, called it a masterpiece, the Smithsonian put it on their best games of twenty twenty four list, and then you try to teach it to three people who've never played a trick taking game before and someone checks out by round two. Every time. So what's actually happening mechanically? You lead a card by suit, opponents can follow suit to take matching actions on your turn which means your move is their move too and the whole game becomes a tempo fight around initiative and action denial. It's genuinely clever; but if you don't already feel Miles: Hmm Grant: card tempo in your bones, it punishes you before you understand why. Miles: Okay, but Grant, I want to push back on that framing, because Cuba Libre, Fire in the Lake, those games cannot be demoed out of convention either. You cannot cold teach a COIN game to strangers in ten minutes. And yet those games have passionate audiences who found them through YouTube, word of mouth, deep forum dives. Convention demo culture is one pipeline. The main pipeline, not the only pipeline. Grant: Fair—and look: Root went to Walmart and Target; Boardgamewire confirmed it broke out of the hobby bubble onto those shelves. Arcs almost certainly will not. I'm genuinely asking: is that a problem? Miles: I think Wehrle himself would say no. Gaming Trend published Buried Giant's actual mission statement, saying, "While these games are not for everyone, we firmly believe that each of these games could be someone's favorite game. Game." That's a different design Speaker 4: Yeah. Miles: philosophy: not everyone's gateway; someone's destination. Grant: Okay, I actually love that as a philosophy, but here's where it gets complicated, because now there's no Root subsidy, no Walmart money. Buried Giant is going independent with three Arcs expansions in the pipeline: Lost Vaults and Fated Leaders, Beyond the Reach, and Halls of Power, plus the Oath New Foundations Kickstarter to fulfill, which Boardgamewire reported raised over nine hundred thousand dollars. Of course, that's a heavy fulfillment load for Miles: Wow. Grant: a brand new studio. Miles: Right, and that's the real tension. Not accessibility in the abstract, accessibility as a business constraint. When your letter Root is the hit that lets the ambitious stuff breathe, when your Buried Giant the ambitious stuff has to breathe on its own. Grant: And we don't actually know if it can yet. Miles: We don't, and I'm not sure Wehrle knows either, which is either terrifying or exciting depending on how you feel about risk. Risk. Grant: For him or for us as players hoping those games keep getting made. Miles: Both. Grant: Definitely both. Miles: Here's where I keep landing, though. The trick-taking system in Arcs is either the thing that makes it transcendent for the right audience, or the thing that caps that audience permanently. I don't think there's a version where you fix the accessibility problem without breaking what makes the game special. Grant: I'm on both sides of that, because independence might actually let Wehrle double down on the hardcore audience. No pressure to sand the edges for a broader market. market, but it could also mean less institutional pressure, less friction to sharpen against. Miles: Yeah. Does a designer get better when there's nobody pushing back operationally? That's actually the question Buried Giant is going to answer for us over the next few years. Grant: And their first few releases will tell us a lot about which way that cuts. Miles: So, Buried Giant's mission statement is right there in plain language, and according to Wargamer's interview with Wehrle, it's player-centered narratives that are open and flexible within expressive systems that reward players for investing in them. Grant: Which is just every Wehrle game ever described at a high level. But here's the thing. Saying it is different from being structurally organized to actually deliver it. Miles: And that's where the Wehrlegig piece gets interesting. Board Game Wire confirmed that Wehrlegig, the historical imprint with Pax Pamir, The Meander and John Company folds into Buried Giant as a semi independent label, so for the first time Wehrle has his full catalogue under one roof, space opera on one shelf, colonial satire on the other. Grant: He told Wargamer that working on Drew's historical projects while still at Leder meant nights and weekends; if Drew had a complicated question, it waited for the evening. Miles: Which is genuinely terrible if you're trying to design a historically layered game about the opium trade. Grant: Yeah, not ideal. So, the efficiency argument makes sense, but I want to push on the bigger question: does creative control actually produce better games? Miles: Okay, so here's where I land on this. Look at the trajectory. Root is brilliant and it's his most played game, full stop. But Root was also made with Leder constraints, their production pipeline, their commercial instincts. Then Arcs comes out and it's more formally daring than anything Root ever attempted. Right; but I'd argue the constraints are exactly why Root worked. Friction is a design tool. You take Root to Walmart and Target (which Boardgamewire noted, by the way), and that commercial pressure forced a kind of accessibility Wehrle might not have chosen on his own. Grant: Okay, but that's a weird win. Constraints accidentally made your game more accessible is not a creative philosophy. Miles: No, it's not a philosophy; it's a result, and it still produced the most played Wehrle game by a country mile. Mile. Grant: Fair point; I just think there's real evidence that when Wehrle has more room, the ambition scales with it; Oath took two years, Arcs took three, each one pushed further. Miles: Wehrle actually told Wargamer that himself: Root took a year, which let them spend two on Oath, which let them spend three on Arcs. Grant: So the question at Leder Giant isn't whether he has ideas, it's whether an independent studio without a Root-sized subsidy can sustain that escalating time. Dating Timeline Miles: And here's the question I keep coming back to, Miles: what does a Leder Giant game look like in five years that Leder games never would have published? Grant: That's the one, a magical school murder mystery that didn't exist on paper between recently. That's what he told Wargamer. Speaker 3: Wow. Grant: That is not a letter game. Miles: Not even close, and honestly, I need that game to exist. Grant: Same. Buried Giant might not have reached safety net. yet, but they might be building something nobody else would dare touch. Miles: Okay, so that's a wrap on Cold World, Buried Giant, and honestly, one of the more fascinating studio splits this hobby's seen in a long time. Grant: Yeah, and the thing that keeps sticking with me is that trajectory Miles laid out. Root took a year, Oath took two, Arcs took three. That's not a schedule, that's a design philosophy compounding on itself. Miles: Right. And World basically described Root as political warfare dressed in woodland creatures. Here's the cute animals are a feature, not a disguise. Grant: Which honestly is kind of the whole thesis today. Great design hides its teeth. Miles: So if you want to keep dissecting how mechanics and aesthetics work together, hit subscribe wherever you're listening. And hey, drop us a review. It genuinely helps. Grant: Got a game you want us to take apart? Find us at thedesigndeck.com or tag us on social. New episodes every Thursday. Miles: Warmly, thanks for being here. We'll see you next week. Grant: Smiling later Grant. Miles: Later, Miles.