Rune Age is not awesome...

...but it's not half bad either. I almost had a feeling when I picked it up from Barnes that I was buying it specifically so I could rip on it, since I had absolutely no real interest in the game when I decided to get it, but so far, I've actually ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I would.

Now, just about every criticism that's been pointed its way is valid. First, It's quite obvious from the get-go that somebody at FFG went up to Corey K. one day and basically said "We need one of those deckbuilding things that every other publisher out there has. Make sure we can put 'Runebound' on the box. 'Kay? Thanks." Second, the alternate scenarios really are stupid. If you want your game to appeal to passive-aggresive bean counters, don't put a goddamn dragon on the box, and don't expect people who buy games with dragons on the box to want to play something where you don't kick other people's asses using fucking dragons. Don't waste space, effort, and my time with this nonsesnse. It's true that the card selection is extremely limited, and that it takes all of half a game before you figure out how to effectively combo the faction-specific cards which are going to be the bulk of your deck. The game suffers a little from FFG's love of CCG-ish jargon and excessive wordiness which tends to make very simple concepts sound complicated. Also, it's kind of a crappy deckbuilding game.

That said, the game is a pretty good Runewars card game, and since Mr. Konieczka seemingly already did everything in his power to make Runewars a card game in the first place, RA feels like it hits the main points more efficiently. Basically, it's Dominion but simpler, and with some Wiz-War-ish combat shoehorned in. However, unlike Dominion you actually want to pay attention to what the other people at the table are doing, because you're going to have to attack them sooner or later, and you're going to want to know what they've been drafting and discarding or things are going to end badly for you. The game even allows for some bargaining and negotiation. Granted, the most of the metagame is of the "Attack him, not me!" variety, but there's some wiggle room to offer other things as well, like offering not to destroy your opponents costlier units if he agrees not to deal out as much damage as he could. Since you don't have the rigid limits on how many cards you can draft or purchase that you do in Dominion, the game tends to move faster, even if it takes about as long.

If it's true that the man half-assed this one, he needs to start doing that more often. The game isn't overthought, overdesigned, or stiflingly balanced like so many of FFG's games are. I found it quite refreshing to see blatant leader-bashing and fairly wild swings of fate in a new FFG title. This is a pretty free-wheeling, rowdy, almost "take that" card game with some actual balls for a change, and I'm having a good time with it.

So fuck it, my hat's off to you, Mr. K. It ain't perfect by a long shot, but coming from you lot, it's a breath of fresh air.

Good work mj. I'd say that's a fair comment. I think that as a deck builder it's not much but as a DoaM it's wonderful. I was going to mention this in the "shortish DoaM" thread because it's great at that but then he upped the no. of players to 6.

Whew, I was afraid I'd get an angry email demanding your money back for selling you garbage.

I get what you're saying about how "rowdy" the game is compared to most of FFG's other recent issue, but it still feels way too studious and emulative. It's _totally_ a reactionary, absorbent design. But I do agree, it's strangely underdeveloped, at least in parts. I think if you cut out the bullshit scenario cards, modes, useless cards, and one of the three resources you'd have an interesting and maybe great game. In fact, go ahead and throw out the deckbuilding conceit altogether and give each faction an expanded array of unique cards with some interchangeable ones to increase variety.

It's really a missed opportunity that this game wasn't just a Runewars card game.

I'd hesitate to even call it a deckbuilding game in the first place, really. You cycle cards out of your deck and back into the pool, and then back into your deck so often that it stays relatively small and in flux throughout the entire game. You only have three different card types, and only one of them (tactics) is likely to be totally useless on any given turn, you don't have to worry about building your deck in such a way that you're going to have to spend a bunch of turns dumping bad hands like in Dominion. If your influence cards went into your deck instead of staying on the table so they can always be used, it would be a lot trickier to develop a well-rounded deck. As it is, your only real concern is going to be the chance that you end up with a fistful of gold cards when you need to defend yourself, which you're going to have to open yourself up to no matter what.

I couldn't care less that that's the case, though, since the Rain Man-level mental extrapolation and card counting that you have to do in a VP engine deckbuilder doesn't appeal to me that much. Actually playing your hand is where the challenge in Rune Age is, because when somebody does start an attack, the stakes are pretty high. You're going to come upon situations where you know you're outmatched because you're holding too many gold cards, but do you play what you have and try to mitigate the damage to yourself, or do you lay down completely and try to bluff the other guy into thinking you're saving a good hand for retaliation against him for attacking you to begin with, hopefully getting him to hold back some of the stuff he was planning on hitting you with? And if you do have a good hand, should you blow through it on defense and risk drawing a bunch of gold for your next turn? If you're going first, you might want to, because if you spend a bunch of influence to keep your cards, people are going to know you're in a defensive posture, and they're going to gang up on you.

That's where it is somewhat like a DoaM; sometimes you have to cut your losses and run if the first round of combat looks like you're going to take too many losses. Being a card game, though, that's not determined by straight-up random elements but by what the other guy has and how much of it he plays. Everyone needs to convince everyone else that any attack on them is either futile or too costly, and everyone needs to consider that that might be true. The only way you can be somewhat confident of your chances is to try and read the other players and pay attention to both what they're playing and how they're playing.

To me, that's a lot more fun than trying to calculate the appropriate ratio of card type X to card type Y, and when is the right time to passive-aggresively start stealing cards out of the pool before other players can get their hands on them.

I get what you're saying about how "rowdy" the game is compared to most of FFG's other recent issue, but it still feels way too studious and emulative. It's _totally_ a reactionary, absorbent design.

Like I said, you're absolutely right about this. The game is the least original, most unimaginative FFG game I've played to date, which is saying something. No getting around that.

But on the other hand, even though it does have some of their LCG line's DNA, this is the first FFG game I've played in a long time where every second rule has not been lifted straight from whatever popular game they had last year. It's a copycat design, but they're copying somebody other than themselves for a change, and that's good.

I'd rather they were doing more inventive stuff than this, but even if they try to make a game that pleases everyone and fails, at least they're not just making a game for The FFG Fan.

I think if you cut out the bullshit scenario cards, modes, useless cards, and one of the three resources you'd have an interesting and maybe great game. In fact, go ahead and throw out the deckbuilding conceit altogether and give each faction an expanded array of unique cards with some interchangeable ones to increase variety.

It's really a missed opportunity that this game wasn't just a Runewars card game.

Well, I don't think the drafting is totally inappropriate in this context, because if you're going to do Runewars as a card game, you have to have some way to represent purchasing units.

I do agree, though, that the "bells & whistles" they tried to throw in here were a waste. This is not a good single-player game, and therefore, I'm confident it's a pretty lousy co-op one as well. Hell, even the Dragon Rune power cards are mostly pointless. You could take them right out of the game and not miss them.

I also have no interest in playing the "kill the boss" scenario, and I think its inclusion is telling of the way these guys design games. The fun of the game is in playing the other players, not mathing out your deck, and it looks like even when they have a game with player elimination and relatively few reacharound mechanics, they're still not willing to fully commit to keeping the gamepley above the table, so to speak.

I like it as a solo game. It plays in twenty minutes, it's tense, it's very different depending on what cards you get when, and it's also quite difficult. And I've played it lots of time coop with my wife as well and while it's not Ghost Stories or Arkham by any length there's just enough game and theme to make it fun.

I agree about the boss scenario - it's boring. Especially because the event cards mostly just sit there doing nothing which is strange since they're supposed to be these bad ass dragonlords.

So far I've only played the Runewars scenario once, but I seem to recall that the rune cards made a huge impact. But I'm curious to find out if I too will find it a bit too small when playing the competetive game some more.