First Runewars preview up

I don't know about HUGE but fixing length in RuneWars isn't a big deal. AS you say, it's the variant.

On the other hand, maybe FFG is producing too much, too fast: so many TOssers getting aggravated about house-ruling this and that - from heroes to I dunno what in the game to already anticpating expansions. The game's been available what, a week? Talk about going nuts: people criticising the title based on hearsay (bubslug) I dunno... maybe people (not talking critics) should actually play the fucker five times to get the rules down straight before thinking about everything that's missing, needs fixing, and needs dissing. Really getting sick of this culture, with all these damn know-it-alls spouting wisdom about a title they haven't even seen yet, let alone tried. I didn't expect to like this, but I was surprised by how well it played and we had a great time with it. I'm betting FATties who bought it and are still waiting to get it on the table won't be dissapointed.

I do agree scissors. If there's one criticism from the original AT movement that really has stuck with me vs. euro culture it's wanting games that need a lot of plays to really get good at. I want to play my games a lot. More than I already do. I want games that aren't completely transparent to me on the first play.

Sax - I haven't had too much trouble fulfilling the objectives. Getting six in each isn't too hard nor is the allying other units. When doing diplomacy, just make sure you spend max influence, it'll give you a pretty good shot at getting the alliance (around 60% or so).

So far, I don't think it ends too early. The game encourages very fast play, and the player races are asymmetric enough that they really play differently. The elves can exploit the shit out of their influence tie breakers and are good at a more defensive style. We've played 4 games now, and the first one seemed like it wound up a little too soon, but the other three had us getting our shit together and getting out in the mix. One could play to 6 -- two of the four ended in year 5, one in year 4, and one went the full number of seasons. Or you could increase it to 8 and go through the whole season deck. Not a hard fix, and I don't think it is something our group has felt as necessary yet.

Michael Barnes wrote:

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.

Blame yourselves. Most of you (including you Mr complained about the lengths early FFG games went for, bitching they were too long. Warrior Knights was the first game that was hobbled in length, and they have been doing that ever since.

Me, I love my long shit. I'll probably end up extending the length of this to 8 turns and maybe 7 or 8 runes. I'm not sure why the 'epic' rules ditch the fake runes though - I like those things.
In fact I might try playing to 8 turns then after the 8th turn count up the runes you hold to see who wins. But for now I'll play the game as written.

The good objectives do seem harder than the bad ones, but I get a sense you need to play the good guys different to the bad guys. The bad guys seem more geared for combat, the good more geared to the other stuff like voting.

scissors wrote:

On the other hand, maybe FFG is producing too much, too fast: so many TOssers getting aggravated about house-ruling this and that - from heroes to I dunno what in the game to already anticpating expansions. The game's been available what, a week? Talk about going nuts: people criticising the title based on hearsay (bubslug) I dunno... maybe people (not talking critics) should actually play the fucker five times to get the rules down straight before thinking about everything that's missing, needs fixing, and needs dissing. Really getting sick of this culture, with all these damn know-it-alls spouting wisdom about a title they haven't even seen yet, let alone tried. I didn't expect to like this, but I was surprised by how well it played and we had a great time with it. I'm betting FATties who bought it and are still waiting to get it on the table won't be dissapointed.

QFT

Finally got a chance to play today and it totally delivered. This is the game I wish TI3 had been. It's also incredibly close in concept, components, and mechanics to my own post-apocalyptic 4x game, only much more tighter and streamlined. Having wrestled with a lot of the same ideas, and seeing how Corey tackled them, gives me an even greater appreciation for his design chops. Runewars gets so much right that it's hard to imagine taking my own game to the next stage without stealing ideas.

Most of the good stuff has already been covered, but I'll mention a couple of things that stood out to me. I love the subtle ways in which the sides are differentiated, from how the objective cards encourage you to do different things depending on your alignment, to how a side's starting influence is the final tie-breaker in turn order and influence bids. I like how quick and dirty battles are, while maintaining a sense of theme by way of special abilities and tactics cards. I like how "circle" units are the magic-using units, and how that interacts with the frequency of the special ability activation icons in the circle area of the fate cards. I love the Necromancer special ability.

I have two minor complaints, which I only mention here because they bug me in the context of an otherwise brilliant game:

1) The acquisition of dragon runes as a victory condition, while totally functional and tension-producing, is too McGuffiny for my taste. I would have preferred side-specific and more thematic victory conditions.

2) The game, when spread out on the table with all the cardbacks showing, is a bit of a visual mess. The art looks great, but the art direction loses sight of its task: to make the game easier -- not harder -- to play. With this many decks of cards on the table at once, would it kill them to label them each clearly on the back so we can get rolling out of the gate? Or at least use clear, distinct icons, instead of fully-painted, multi-colored illustrations? UniversalHead could take one pass on this thing and improve its useability fivefold. I have the same issue with MEQ and Starcraft -- both great games obscured by too many baroque details and Photoshop textures. When it comes to art direction on a game like this, there's a happy medium between clear information and rich atmosphere, and FFG consistently indulges in the latter at the expense of the former.

Those gripes aside, here it is January, and I can't really imagine another game coming out in the next 12 months that will impress and engage me more than this one has after a single play. If I have my way at Unity Games this Saturday, I may just play Runewars all day long.

I agree with #1 -- I wish there were different victory conditions too.

As far as #2, sometimes I wish for the old school AH games where a card would have just said "FATE" or "TREASURE" on the back.

Jason Lutes wrote:

2) The game, when spread out on the table with all the cardbacks showing, is a bit of a visual mess. The art looks great, but the art direction loses sight of its task: to make the game easier -- not harder -- to play.

On the visual mess: yeah, it's true like Jason says. I'd have to agree that the rich colours and details on the tiles + tiny icons + units and heroes on top and then all the cards aesthetically do amount to a bit of a mess... There could have been some cleaner design: everything is so rich, it kind of melts together on the detailed tiles. Even the 3-D mountains can ironically be difficult to distinguish if you're in poor light. But that complaint is minor: it's so gorgeously done overall, including the tiny sculpts (those flesh-rippers, cool stuff) well I can't complain. We found it easily immersive, like War of the Ring, it's difficult to harp on the game's faults.

Regarding the cards, while some of the symbols are very nicely done on the cardbacks (namely the seasons which have instantly recognisable images, or Fate cards) the others are a tiny bit more obscure. It's not a big deal -- it all becomes second nature after one play.

In a way, the baroque-ness of it all makes it more enticing and it's important to point out that Runewars is probaly the most accesible of all the coffin games (rules-wise, presentation-wise)to get quickly onto the table. Still, not everything is clear from the first second, and you have to work through things a bit before you can even start thinking about strategy.

But it all comes together quickly enough.

On a different note, at the risk of going off topic, lately I've been reading a lot about the jumbled but brilliant mess that was AD&D 1st edition (the core books) by Gary Gygax which hugely caught my imagination when I was younger: I haven't seen them since, and much of it was probably laughable/unusable/a straight out mess - but there was a soul to those books, suggesting undisovered countries and adventures, that made the game rise above the rest. Yesterday in the bookstore I looked at 4e for the first time and wondered who killed it. Everything was so overly slick, so overly concise, so sanitised that I couldn't believe this was the same game.At first glance, unoriginal and uninspiring.

I'm not using this as a direct comparison, of course, but regarding board games I think I prefer FFG to "err" or make minor mistakes in the presentation while going for something baroque, to create a rich, immersive environment, than to go in the other direction and airbursh everything out and leave something without depth.

Of course, great design can and should be both: both rich AND easily readable, but the perfect balance, as we all know, can be hard to find.

Like Jason, though, I feel all this is minor. Now I want to put the game through the paces: everything else for a good while can stay on the shelf.

Correction: didn't want to make a blanket statement about design above: great design IN AN EPIC GAME OF THIS KIND can be both: both rich AND easily readable.

Just bought it, and I'm very much looking forward to actually playing it. Seems like the rules are easy to explain, and though there's no doubt lots of strategies and tactical nuances, I think the basics of the game are easy to grasp.

Personally I love the idea of it being a "short" game. I like a game such as StarCraft precisely because it's fast and brutal and ends at a high point. And if you feel it's too short; well, there's a perfectly good variant for that in the rules.

And, Skeletor, I imagine you remove the blank runes from the long game to make sure that there's actually room for everything.

mads

You guys are making it really hard for me to not want this game!

It's a great game. I played a two player learning game with the girlfriend last night and by the end (after a very hard slog early of her looking bewildered and frustrated) things were going really fast. This game plays fucking *fast.* Our next game will be more fun. Good sides/objectives are totally, totally different to play with.

I do agree with Jason on visual incoherence, however. They should label the fucking decks, at least.

Also, Jason, when does your game come out? I figure I'll bug you about it every time I see you post.

scissors wrote:

On the visual mess: yeah, it's true like Jason says. I'd have to agree that the rich colours and details on the tiles + tiny icons + units and heroes on top and then all the cards aesthetically do amount to a bit of a mess... There could have been some cleaner design: everything is so rich, it kind of melts together on the detailed tiles. Even the 3-D mountains can ironically be difficult to distinguish if you're in poor light.

I noticed that too, kind of funny.

But that complaint is minor: it's so gorgeously done overall, including the tiny sculpts (those flesh-rippers, cool stuff) well I can't complain. We found it easily immersive, like War of the Ring, it's difficult to harp on the game's faults.

Regarding the cards, while some of the symbols are very nicely done on the cardbacks (namely the seasons which have instantly recognisable images, or Fate cards) the others are a tiny bit more obscure. It's not a big deal -- it all becomes second nature after one play.

In a way, the baroque-ness of it all makes it more enticing and it's important to point out that Runewars is probaly the most accesible of all the coffin games (rules-wise, presentation-wise)to get quickly onto the table. Still, not everything is clear from the first second, and you have to work through things a bit before you can even start thinking about strategy.

But it all comes together quickly enough.

Yeah, it does. A couple of plays and it'll become second nature. I just want to see all of the aspects of the game working in concert, and the art direction is Runewars' weak spot, imo.

On a different note, at the risk of going off topic, lately I've been reading a lot about the jumbled but brilliant mess that was AD&D 1st edition (the core books) by Gary Gygax which hugely caught my imagination when I was younger: I haven't seen them since, and much of it was probably laughable/unusable/a straight out mess - but there was a soul to those books, suggesting undisovered countries and adventures, that made the game rise above the rest. Yesterday in the bookstore I looked at 4e for the first time and wondered who killed it. Everything was so overly slick, so overly concise, so sanitised that I couldn't believe this was the same game.At first glance, unoriginal and uninspiring.

Yeah, I love that about those early D&D books, the way things felt both carved out of stone and scribbled on a Peechee folder. It's hard to imagine a game feeling that way ever again, now that we have the internet and desktop publishing.

Perhaps we should hold an FFG redesign contest? See who can do the best box design in a Swiss/minimalist style.

Personally I love the baroque over-the-top detail in the art design of this game.

I do tend to confuse the character deck back with the fate deck back at least once a play session, though.