Root & Rot

The Grove Is Failing

Deep beneath an ancient forest, every tree is joined by root and whisper. Something has taken hold in that network — a Blight, spreading hollow to hollow, corrupting the wood from below. Two woodland Guardians must race it: purifying what they can, containing what they can’t, and Warding the forest against all four corruptions before the wood is lost for good.

Every game grows a different grove. Before you play, you’ll drop a pair of dice across the blank page and let them decide where each part of the forest takes root — so the map, and the shape of the threat inside it, is never the same twice.

What You’ll Need

• 2 printed sheets — a Rules Sheet and a Grove Sheet (included below, Letter and A4 versions provided)
• 1 standard deck of playing cards (remove the Jokers)
• 2d6
• 2 coins or small tokens to serve as your Guardians
• A pencil

That’s the whole box. No cutting, no punchboard, nothing to lose under the couch.

How It Plays

Each turn, you’ll draw, move your Guardian through the grove, and either Purify a corrupted Hollow or spend a card to push back the Blight in a bigger way — clearing a corruption outright, peering ahead at what’s coming, or sealing off a path before it spreads. Then the Blight answers back, and if a Hollow takes on more corruption than it can hold, it Overgrows — spilling into every Hollow connected to it.

Collect the right cards and you can Ward a corruption for good, scrubbing it from the grove entirely. Ward all four before the forest is overwhelmed, and you’ve saved it. Let the Overgrowth spread too far, and it’s lost.

It’s small, it’s sharp, and it plays in well under an hour — built to be understood in one read and replayed with a different grove every time.

Print & Play Notes

Built for The Toner-Saver Showdown — this file is line-forward, high-contrast, and designed to print cleanly on a home printer without draining your toner cartridge. No solid backgrounds, no heavy art, just what the table needs.

• Print both sheets Letter or A4 sized — versions of each are included.

• The Grove Sheet has the Blight Track and Ward Bank already printed for you; you’ll draw the grove itself fresh, in pencil, before each game.

• Keep the Rules Sheet — you’ll want it at the table the first few plays.