First Runewars preview up

Mr Skeletor wrote:

You spend 6 influence just to recruit neutrals? What a waste of cash!

Not necessarily. Dragons and giants are def worth it. Also there are objective cards that require you to ally with neutrals.

caadamec wrote:

Don't forget you can use your objective card multiple times. I missed this at first, but you are not forced to discard it after using it.

You need to discard the Objective card to get the Dragon Rune.

pg30:
If a player is fulfillng his Objective card at any point during his
turn (e.g. when resolving his Order card), he may discard it to
receive one dragon rune.

Octavian wrote:

caadamec wrote:

Don't forget you can use your objective card multiple times. I missed this at first, but you are not forced to discard it after using it.

You need to discard the Objective card to get the Dragon Rune.

pg30:
If a player is fulfillng his Objective card at any point during his
turn (e.g. when resolving his Order card), he may discard it to
receive one dragon rune.

Damn. We must have read that wrong. I remember thinking that it was just optional to discard it.

I just got my copy. Looks awesome. I don't think the amount of stuff is skimpy at all...?

I had a run through solo to get the rules. I dunno, early impressions are that the disconnected hero stuff isn't true. Specifically, all the interaction and stuff by the heros is on the cards themselves, not the rules. There are a billion critical tactics and objective cards that require hero involvement and I could definitely see beating shit out of the other guy's heros being serious importance if he is clearly holding a lot of those cards.

Reading the rules I thought they were disconnected, but all the hero interaction is on the cards.

In my first game I found that tactics cards are pretty fucking badass. Did anyone elese find this? I also think heroes and especially influence bidding and aquisition is going to become more and more important since they basically get you a fuck ton if dragon tunes. There are some fucking awesome season card bidding and whatnot that you need influence to get.

Gary Sax wrote:

In my first game I found that tactics cards are pretty fucking badass. Did anyone elese find this? I also think heroes and especially influence bidding and aquisition is going to become more and more important since they basically get you a fuck ton if dragon tunes. There are some fucking awesome season card bidding and whatnot that you need influence to get.

Yes.
Tactics cards are badass.
Heroes are badass.
Influence is badass.
Dragon runes are badass.
Season cards are badass.
Runwars is badass!

Seriously, there seems to be nothing superfluous in this game or it's design. FFG really hit a home run with this game.

Reading some of the Horus Heresey previews, it sounds like it may use some of the same ideas as this game. I have a feeling that that one will be a winner as well.

caadamec wrote:
20% of the hero rewards deck are dragonrunes.
You can trade 3 of the other rewards for a dragonrune with the right title.
Heroes don't cost you any actions to use.


Anyone who doesn't think Heroes are important is a muttonhead.

God damn, that board looks like someone had too much spinach and threw up on it.

The early reviews at TOS were so without excitement, so lackluster, I was worried this wouldn't be good... Wrong! The game is effing fantastic. Like Caadamec said: this is a big hit, a home run right out of the park. I have to say I am now really looking forward to Skeletor's review, Gameshark, and any other review players here post up... hopefully soon! Downtime Town 2.0 also kicks off next week but RF is keeping mum on his website about what he reviewed in the first episode. My guess it won't be this... considering the taping schedule... but at some point he should sink his teeth into this: it's a blast.

Offically off the fence and on the bandwagon!

One more thing. I got a chance to really look through the actual cards since I finally knew the game itself. The implications of the cards wouldn't have as much meaning until I had seen the game in action.

Does it seem like the "good" objective cards are a bit harder than the evil? I'm looking through them and there are some really hard ones. Many allying x number of x type cards and also some other really difficult ones, like get 6 of every resource.

Gameshark review will probably be in two weeks.

One thing I'm not happy about with the game, and it's something that's easily fixed, is that it's one of those "ends before it gets really good" things. I think FFG "writes" their games too short so they can put 3-4 hours on the box and not scare away people who top out at 3-4 hours. It's almost like they write a "short game" as standard and have the actual game as a variant.

Thinking it over, I think that's one thing that's a HUGE weakness in the FFG design idiom...I don't know that I like how any of their games end, barring BSG. I think it's because a lot of their titles _want_ to be longer than FFG (and many gamers) want to be.

Agreed. We played last night and when it ended, we had had only 5 player on player fights. I need to look at the epic rules in the book, but 8 runes might work really well. I know I was kinda upset we did not have another turn of actions as we had just started to fight over the middle of the board.

I haven't played yet, but two easy solutions I saw are play with maps smaller than recommended or play to more runes/turns.

Michael Barnes wrote:

Gameshark review will probably be in two weeks.

One thing I'm not happy about with the game, and it's something that's easily fixed, is that it's one of those "ends before it gets really good" things. I think FFG "writes" their games too short so they can put 3-4 hours on the box and not scare away people who top out at 3-4 hours. It's almost like they write a "short game" as standard and have the actual game as a variant.

Thinking it over, I think that's one thing that's a HUGE weakness in the FFG design idiom...I don't know that I like how any of their games end, barring BSG. I think it's because a lot of their titles _want_ to be longer than FFG (and many gamers) want to be.

Bah, sounds the same as Warrior Knights. And that game was an easy fix as you could set the "Game Timer" to whatever you want.

Any equivalent for that in Runebound?

# of runes to play to are basically a game timer of sorts. They come out a relatively regular rate.