Let's talk about Runewars (both kinds)

With the recent revelation that Runewars Miniatures is on the chopping block/holiday sale (I also went and looked at the game's BGG page. No posts for the past two months and no reaction to yesterday's sale, either, if that gives you any indication of where the game sits at the moment), I thought I'd bring up the topic of both versions: the strategic board game and the tactical minis game. One I've played many times; the other I haven't even seen played.

As for the board game: I enjoy it, but there are several things that always felt off to me about it. I like the concept of the heroes adventuring around in the midst of a war, but the implementation often swung wildly between utterly irrelevant to stealing a victory that no one expected. Similarly, I like the concept of the card combat as something different from the fistfuls of dice that wargames often use, but it never felt as satisfying as other combat systems. Also, the victory condition occasionally felt extremely abrupt and not reflective of what was happening, strategically.

I really like the resource system and the multiple seasonal effects and the order card timing and the influence bidding. There's a lot to recommend about the game, but it never really stuck with my group as one of those "premier event of the game day" kind of things.

As for the minis game: I'm waiting for someone else to chime in. My distant appraisal is that it looks interesting but it's simply way too involved for where I am at this point. I loved 40K and Fantasy for the detail of most of the codices/army books. I wasn't put off at all by the time needed to outfit my Chaos Marine champions or the magic item kits of my Plague Priests. But I just went and looked at the upgrades for one command expansion for a standard infantry unit: There are 14! 14 different upgrades for the usual champion/standard bearer/musician group. 14! And half of them are in picto-language tied to the game's command wheels and/or dice. Is this what bogs the game down? Or it totally a lore thing (i.e. just not as attractive as High Elves or Space Marines)?

Side note: My favorite Terrinoth game of all time is Battlelore, 2nd Ed. and I was really disappointed to not get the fourth faction (Latari Elves) when they decided to cancel the game to move on to Runewars minis. While I enjoy all the Rune-whatever stuff and own all of it except the minis game, Battlelore 2nd Ed. was the only one that just had no flaws to me. Rune Age comes in second.

I can only speak about the board game, which to me is the embodiment of FFG at their absolute worst. You read that correctly. I don’t mean that Runewars is a bad game, they’ve certainly put out much worst, but Runewars is them at their most convoluted for the misguided notion of having to be different. There are some cool ideas but they are let down by some really dumb design choices. I’ve played it a dozen times and I still couldn’t tell you how to win the fucking thing. I don’t want to take mins (which sucked) off the board to resolve combat. Just put some fucking dice in the box PLEASE.

Like I said, it’s not a terrible one, but the stupid things about it drag all the good things down. It’s this kind of game that I’m most glad they don’t make any more. Good riddance.

I wonder sometimes if Konieczka was trying to be hyper-conscious of trends that were emerging at that time. Like the victory mechanic: it seems to me that it's clearly intended to provide a way to declare victory at the end of the seventh year that was halfway between victory points and area control. He had put a hard cap on the length of the game with seven years, to keep it from running as long as TI3 (and much longer than more Euro players would tolerate) but hadn't really sorted out just what "victory" would be within those seven years. You can't do straight area control, because that too easily runs the risk of being a tie, especially with the malleable map that could create easy bottlenecks and turtling. You also don't have much of a role for the heroes if it's just a straight area control wargame. So he kind of found that fusion that wasn't really satisfying to anyone.

Yeah, the end game condition. I know it might have resulted in a more “fair,” momentous ending to a fairly long game, but I preferred the original rules with the auto-win condition. I think that’s where I really fell out of love with the game. Someone would announce they had enough runes to win at the end of the next round and I never once found myself thinking, “Yeah, let’s do this for at least another round.” It instead resulted in me asking, “Am I really enjoying this?” Years later when we started to see more streamlined thematic games that still have interesting mechanics, the wheels completely fell off of Runewars.

I know Corey occasionally lurks around here and love more of his games than I don’t, but Runewars isn’t one of them. I do consistently like his ideas though. As you mentioned, the season stuff is cool. That action system in Runewars is stellar, I want to see it in other games or straight up steal it myself.

I can't think of any 4x I've played that had gotten an action card/selection mechanic more right than Runewars.

No interest in the miniatures game.

The board game is pretty good, but given that time slot, I'd rather play Starcraft, TI4, or Forbidden Stars.

Jackwraith wrote:
Side note: My favorite Terrinoth game of all time is Battlelore, 2nd Ed. and I was really disappointed to not get the fourth faction (Latari Elves) when they decided to cancel the game to move on to Runewars minis. While I enjoy all the Rune-whatever stuff and own all of it except the minis game, Battlelore 2nd Ed. was the only one that just had no flaws to me. Rune Age comes in second.

It sounds like we're in the same boat. My wife and I love Battlelore 2nd, and I resented the fact that it was cancelled for the sake of some convoluted business double-think about "taking the fight" to GW in the miniatures market arena.

It feels like there's a strong desire in the community for a minis wargame that can be played on a normal table in a normal amount of time, using rules that fit in a single, 16-32 page rulebook. But I guess at that point you're just producing a really expensive board game, when other minis-centric companies are charging exorbitant prices for individual sculpts.

I can see their logic. But their logic ultimately means that a market simply isn't being met, and that, alternately, they've got a big 700-pond loser on their hands. I've been collecting Legion, but that seems like a community non-starter, too. It's just not going to happen for FFG in this arena.

I wonder if a version of Battlelore with woodblocks or standees would ever work? I'd try it.

The resource system and the way in which you can build units so very easily while still making choices about what kind of army you want is brillant. More 4x style games should do this instead of the tedious counting of resources and buying of individual units so many games have. And the order/seasons system is also very good.

Personally I like the card combat which is fast, but still allows different units to behave in different ways. And getting to recruit neutral units is a cool aspect of the game.

But I agree on the victory and the adventure game part. None of those things ever worked for us, and recently we even talked about eliminating the adventure part and simply place enough runes on the board for it to work somewhat like castles/cities in A Game of Thrones with insta-win at x runes.

mads b. wrote: Personally I like the card combat which is fast, but still allows different units to behave in different ways.

Yep. I really enjoy this part of the card combat, too. For some reason, the system overall just never felt as good to me as most dice-driven systems that also often use cards (TI3/4, for example, or any of dozens of others.) There's a visceral impact to dice-driven systems that's just lacking in the cards and is another reason that I've never been a real fan of CRTs.

@GG: I'd be totally into a block game of Runewars/Terrinoth/Battlelore. But I'm a huge block wargame fan to begin with, so that's an easy sale.

A lot of things to like here. The card system make sense. Love the resource dials. Neutral about the combat cards but it works. Like the modularity also, and the factions. I've played it several times, no complaint about the heroes.

Especially the cards system. It encourages a certain cycle, but does allow for some clever play.

It also has build up, with more and more runes introduced as the game goes on.

Runewars was so close to being great that the flaws were really disappointing. I loved the order system and the seasons. The runes, the factions, the combat system, all okay. Heroes and setting were lame.