Originally posted on menwithdice.com
A session of Runewars is like eating at a buffett. There’s a lot to choose from, you’ll walk away stuffed, and you’ll have to come back several times in order to try everything. Runewars ambitiously encompasses a broad variety of gaming experiences into one package. It is an empire building adventure on a grand scale that’s playable in a worknight evening. The main course of the game is the order selection system, but there’s ample side dishes in the game to nibble on to fill your appetite.
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Courtesy of boardgamegeek user serapis
A session is organized into years, and each year is split into 4 seasons. Each one is kicked off by drawing a season card. This card will trigger both random and predetermined events. This means each season something will happen that you can always count on occurring, combined with something that is unpredictable.
The season card isn’t just an event for the sake of having random occurrences to shake things up. The predictable things that happen each season add layers to the decisions when making your plans. The unpredictable part of the event often provides some important decision points. Sometimes it forces players to make a decision right away, other times it will make you reconsider your plans. Knowledge of the routine parts of the season cards and familiarity with what to expect with the random parts adds depth to the game, and usually won’t be appreciated until after multiple plays.
After the season card, each player secretly and simultaneously selects an order card. Here’s where we get to the heart of the game. Each player has an identical hand of 8 order cards. These cards encapsulate the vast majority of what a player can do. They let you move dudes, attack, gain resources, deploy more troops, build strongholds, and other fun stuff. Once an order card is played, it remains in front of you and is not normally available again until the following Spring (as part of the predictable part of a Spring season card).
The scarcity of actions makes order selecton a difficult decision. You can only execute a given order once per year. If you play an order that lets you deploy dudes in Spring, you won’t be able to play it again for another 4 actions. If you try to perform all of the orders, it’ll take you 2 years to do each action just once. This pulls you into a dilemma of wanting to meticulously build your empire by doing everything available, versus the need to develop your stake in the world swiftly.
Since your opponent’s orders won’t be known until after everyone has made their choice, there is guessing and second guessing what your opponents may choose. I may want to defend by deploying more guys, but the attack cards happen before the deployment order. We may both be playing the same attack card, and the sequence of who plays first could have a significant impact. Keeping track of that kind of business and careful planning is depth that players will appreciate after acquiring some experience.
All of the order cards are sequentially numbered one through eight. Each order card has a primary ability that a player will always be able to perform. Each order also has a supremacy bonus. If an order card is the highest numbered card you’ve played this year, not only do you get the primary ability, but you can perform the bonus activities as well. So if in a given year you played orders 2, 5, 4, and 6, you wouldn’t get the supremacy bonus when you played order 4. This takes an already highly scarce ability to perform actions and doubles the tension by making the sequence you play your orders very critical.
There are many elements in the game that incent a player to break the numbering sequence – creating a tension between optimal timing versus optimal activity. For example, only in winter, the last season of the year, the water freezes over and impassable terrain now becomes passable, creating a unique opportunity to play the low numbered attack cards later in the year. In addition, you usually want to obtain fresh dudes, then attack with them. The numbering of the order cards is in the opposite sequence of that normal preference. Also, before deploying the dudes, you usually want an advantageously placed stronghold to deposit them in. However, getting strongholds is the highest numbered order card.
This game highly rewards those who plan ahead. Sometimes as much as a full year’s worth of actions is to be mapped out. The long term planning is very satisfying decision because you have to consider not just what orders you want to play, but also what you can expect to happen during the change of seasons.
![]()
Courtesy of boardgamegeek user jose-san
Aside the order selection main course, there are many other things to fill you up on. There are several subsystems stewing within the game. Many of them may not even see a significant appearance in a given session. Some of them may not even be recognized as a subsystem to a new player. Since there’s so much going on, it is easy to overlook some of the nuance available.
Among the most prominent of the subsystems in Runewars is the wars. There are different types of units that have different probabilities of inflicting pain on your opponent. Each faction has a completely unique set of those units. It’s not just different sculpts. All of those units have an initiative level, a certain amount of health, a shape on the figure’s base that indicates it’s level of awesome, and on top of that, a completely unique special ability. During battle, all kinds of cards are being drawn by all of the units resulting in damage, routs, retreats, and those different special abilities. Then you factor in strongholds, developments, titles, and special cards. Battling is sufficiently involved so that the resolution actually draws you in. The good news is that battling has the right amount of complexity to make it more interesting than seeing who rolled the most sixes.
Throughout this involved resolution, there is however a disproportionately small number of interesting decisions during the battle. The decisions that may surface during a battle is primarily regarding which of your own units to kill/damage/rout. Sometimes the decision is interesting and you have to choose to either kill a more powerful unit but is used up for this fight, or kill a weaker unit that still will get a chance to score hits in a later initiative step. However, often there is a “safe” unit to kill who is both weak and has already had his chance at glory on the battlefield.
So battle resolution doesn’t offer much cranial challenge, but choosing when and where to battle is deliciously intriguing. Given the limited order selections available, normally a player will only be able to battle no more than twice a year. The complexity of the unit powers, unit types, and initiative levels can make the decision of when and where to battle very interesting.
Often simply having more dudes isn’t sufficient to ensure the outcome (although it’s often a good start). Because of that uncertainty, you’re tempted to swarm in as many dudes as you can. The trick, however, is that units sent off to battle will be locked down in that territory for the rest of the year. They won’t be able to conquer elsewhere, take more territories with resources, or reposition to defend and counter attack. The battle cards are low numbered, and so they’re often played early in the year. When you decide to send a huge army to go attack, you have to factor in your planning that those guys won’t be available to attack or defend elsewhere.
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Courtesy of boardgamegeek user Cardshark1029
Another obvious sub-system is the heroes and quests. Each player has heroes running around collecting bling. These heroes are completely separate from all the dudes battling. It’s as though the game pauses, you switch to the hero game, and then unpauses and goes back to Runewars. Much like battling, the questing is sufficiently involved that it feels like there is something significant going on. Also, similar to attack resolution, the quests don’t offer many interesting decisions.
That’s not to say there are no decisions in questing. You are deciding which quest to attempt, where to move your heroes, if you should duel, and if you should invest time to level up before questing. While you’ll face many of these decision points, often they aren’t interesting. It’s usually an easy choice where to send the heroes and which quest to send them on.
A sub-subsytem within heroes is dueling. This is when you get some hero vs hero action. Dueling is one of the more interesting decisions with you’re heroes, but it isn’t explored often with new players. If you kill a hero, you collect his loot and prevent your opponent from obtaining more loot which can convert to dragon runes. Picking on a loot-rich hero can be risky, because the more loot you have, the more equipment you have that’ll help win duels. Many of the rewards you can collect have situational benefits. As you collect those, your movement decisions become more challenging, as you now have to choose between getting the reward into a useful position or ctompleting a new quest.
The most important decision regarding heroes is whether or not you’ll focus on questing to begin with. The available actions are a precious few, and it’ll take usually a minimum of 3 orders plus some influence to max out heroes running around, quest cards in your hand, and the title you’ll need. These actions are best done early if you wish to get the most out of questing, and that can be hard to do when your opponent’s early orders start to send menacing armies your way.
Another steam tray in the Runewars buffet is influence bids. These are triggered by season cards prior to players selecting their action. There’s usually some good benefit at stake, even as high as a one of the six dragon runes necessary for victory. Players first announce how much influence they have, and then they may declare or lie about how much influence they intend to spend. The influence you bid is spent regardless if you win. This results in a lot of bluffing and second guessing. Given how many game elements demand influence, it can be a very scarce resource. And given the high stakes on the outcome of the bid, it makes for a very interesting decision.
A different sub-system is the titles. There are 3 titles available. One assists in battles, one converts your questing bling into the Dragon Runes you need in order to win, and the other helps with influence. Titles are obtained by spending more influence on that title than any other player. You have to play an order and be eligible for the supremacy bonus in order to get a title. The titles subsystem is interesting in that it intersects the challenge of the limited action availability with the limited influence resource. You want the titles, you want to steal the titles from others, but it is always so difficult to choose between a title and the other orders competing for your attention.
Another element of the game is diplomacy. The board starts pre-populated with neutral units. It might take a little while for player’s empires to bump into each other. So in the meantime, you have neutral units to conquer. But you may not necessarily want to conquer. You can attempt diplomacy with the neutrals. You select how much influence you want to spend, and that will be how many chances you’ll have to get the desired diplomatic result. At best, the neutrals will join your team. At the very least you’re hoping the neutral units will get out of your way. At worst, diplomacy will break down and you’ll be faced with the prospects of battle. The diplomacy system is another way it makes influence a highly sought after resource and very tricky to decide how to spend it wisely. Converting neutrals to your team also offers an alternative method of expanding your forces.
While Runewars has no formal alliances, there are many cards that make interesting interactions among players. Many cards force you to select an opponent, and then both of you gain a benefit. Some cards let you choose a benefit for your opponent, and then after they receive it, your opponent has a choice on whether or not they want to return the favor as generously as you did. As expected, some cards force you to pick an opponent to sting with nasty stuff. The choice of players that you choose to help or hurt, and the lines of alliances or enmity that form as a result is appealing.
Harvest is the order that lets you rake in the resources from the territories that you’ve conquered. The standard harvest ability tends to have decreasing utility as the geographic range of your empire naturally plateaus. However, this is the only order that can become increasingly beneficial, if you choose so. When you harvest, you can build a development as part of the supremacy bonus. Developments can give you cards, influence, resources, or a defensive military bonus. As you build more developments, the more the harvest order can benefit you.
The game also has tactics cards that players can draw that do a variety of powerful and unpredictable abilities. Tactic cards don’t just fall in a player’s lap; you have to choose to pursue them. The game offers players a divergent choice between influence and tactics cards. Each Fall, all players are given the choice between either 2 influence or 1 tactics card. If you play the order to rake in swag from cities, you have to choose just one of the swag types in the city. Among those options are influence and tactics cards. And of course another way the game makes you choose between influence and tactics is the order cards themselves. One can get you influence, and another can get you tactics cards. So while tactics and influence isn’t mutually exclusive, the game does tend to force players to choose between them.
There’s so much packed into the Runewars buffet it can be hard to swallow it all in one session. I didn’t talk too much about cities, strongholds, false runes, the entire resource system, and other nuggets within this game. You’ll be attracted to the game for its grand scope, epic battles, and outstanding production values, but you’ll stick around for the depth you’ll unpeel with each session. There’s a lot more than what can be ingested in one play, so settle in for plenty of return trips to the buffet line.
A session of Runewars is like eating at a buffett. There’s a lot to choose from, you’ll walk away stuffed, and you’ll have to come back several times in order to try everything. Runewars ambitiously encompasses a broad variety of gaming experiences into one package. It is an empire building adventure on a grand scale that’s playable in a worknight evening. The main course of the game is the order selection system, but there’s ample side dishes in the game to nibble on to fill your appetite.
Courtesy of boardgamegeek user serapis
A session is organized into years, and each year is split into 4 seasons. Each one is kicked off by drawing a season card. This card will trigger both random and predetermined events. This means each season something will happen that you can always count on occurring, combined with something that is unpredictable.
The season card isn’t just an event for the sake of having random occurrences to shake things up. The predictable things that happen each season add layers to the decisions when making your plans. The unpredictable part of the event often provides some important decision points. Sometimes it forces players to make a decision right away, other times it will make you reconsider your plans. Knowledge of the routine parts of the season cards and familiarity with what to expect with the random parts adds depth to the game, and usually won’t be appreciated until after multiple plays.
After the season card, each player secretly and simultaneously selects an order card. Here’s where we get to the heart of the game. Each player has an identical hand of 8 order cards. These cards encapsulate the vast majority of what a player can do. They let you move dudes, attack, gain resources, deploy more troops, build strongholds, and other fun stuff. Once an order card is played, it remains in front of you and is not normally available again until the following Spring (as part of the predictable part of a Spring season card).
The scarcity of actions makes order selecton a difficult decision. You can only execute a given order once per year. If you play an order that lets you deploy dudes in Spring, you won’t be able to play it again for another 4 actions. If you try to perform all of the orders, it’ll take you 2 years to do each action just once. This pulls you into a dilemma of wanting to meticulously build your empire by doing everything available, versus the need to develop your stake in the world swiftly.
Since your opponent’s orders won’t be known until after everyone has made their choice, there is guessing and second guessing what your opponents may choose. I may want to defend by deploying more guys, but the attack cards happen before the deployment order. We may both be playing the same attack card, and the sequence of who plays first could have a significant impact. Keeping track of that kind of business and careful planning is depth that players will appreciate after acquiring some experience.
All of the order cards are sequentially numbered one through eight. Each order card has a primary ability that a player will always be able to perform. Each order also has a supremacy bonus. If an order card is the highest numbered card you’ve played this year, not only do you get the primary ability, but you can perform the bonus activities as well. So if in a given year you played orders 2, 5, 4, and 6, you wouldn’t get the supremacy bonus when you played order 4. This takes an already highly scarce ability to perform actions and doubles the tension by making the sequence you play your orders very critical.
There are many elements in the game that incent a player to break the numbering sequence – creating a tension between optimal timing versus optimal activity. For example, only in winter, the last season of the year, the water freezes over and impassable terrain now becomes passable, creating a unique opportunity to play the low numbered attack cards later in the year. In addition, you usually want to obtain fresh dudes, then attack with them. The numbering of the order cards is in the opposite sequence of that normal preference. Also, before deploying the dudes, you usually want an advantageously placed stronghold to deposit them in. However, getting strongholds is the highest numbered order card.
This game highly rewards those who plan ahead. Sometimes as much as a full year’s worth of actions is to be mapped out. The long term planning is very satisfying decision because you have to consider not just what orders you want to play, but also what you can expect to happen during the change of seasons.
Courtesy of boardgamegeek user jose-san
Aside the order selection main course, there are many other things to fill you up on. There are several subsystems stewing within the game. Many of them may not even see a significant appearance in a given session. Some of them may not even be recognized as a subsystem to a new player. Since there’s so much going on, it is easy to overlook some of the nuance available.
Among the most prominent of the subsystems in Runewars is the wars. There are different types of units that have different probabilities of inflicting pain on your opponent. Each faction has a completely unique set of those units. It’s not just different sculpts. All of those units have an initiative level, a certain amount of health, a shape on the figure’s base that indicates it’s level of awesome, and on top of that, a completely unique special ability. During battle, all kinds of cards are being drawn by all of the units resulting in damage, routs, retreats, and those different special abilities. Then you factor in strongholds, developments, titles, and special cards. Battling is sufficiently involved so that the resolution actually draws you in. The good news is that battling has the right amount of complexity to make it more interesting than seeing who rolled the most sixes.
Throughout this involved resolution, there is however a disproportionately small number of interesting decisions during the battle. The decisions that may surface during a battle is primarily regarding which of your own units to kill/damage/rout. Sometimes the decision is interesting and you have to choose to either kill a more powerful unit but is used up for this fight, or kill a weaker unit that still will get a chance to score hits in a later initiative step. However, often there is a “safe” unit to kill who is both weak and has already had his chance at glory on the battlefield.
So battle resolution doesn’t offer much cranial challenge, but choosing when and where to battle is deliciously intriguing. Given the limited order selections available, normally a player will only be able to battle no more than twice a year. The complexity of the unit powers, unit types, and initiative levels can make the decision of when and where to battle very interesting.
Often simply having more dudes isn’t sufficient to ensure the outcome (although it’s often a good start). Because of that uncertainty, you’re tempted to swarm in as many dudes as you can. The trick, however, is that units sent off to battle will be locked down in that territory for the rest of the year. They won’t be able to conquer elsewhere, take more territories with resources, or reposition to defend and counter attack. The battle cards are low numbered, and so they’re often played early in the year. When you decide to send a huge army to go attack, you have to factor in your planning that those guys won’t be available to attack or defend elsewhere.
Courtesy of boardgamegeek user Cardshark1029
Another obvious sub-system is the heroes and quests. Each player has heroes running around collecting bling. These heroes are completely separate from all the dudes battling. It’s as though the game pauses, you switch to the hero game, and then unpauses and goes back to Runewars. Much like battling, the questing is sufficiently involved that it feels like there is something significant going on. Also, similar to attack resolution, the quests don’t offer many interesting decisions.
That’s not to say there are no decisions in questing. You are deciding which quest to attempt, where to move your heroes, if you should duel, and if you should invest time to level up before questing. While you’ll face many of these decision points, often they aren’t interesting. It’s usually an easy choice where to send the heroes and which quest to send them on.
A sub-subsytem within heroes is dueling. This is when you get some hero vs hero action. Dueling is one of the more interesting decisions with you’re heroes, but it isn’t explored often with new players. If you kill a hero, you collect his loot and prevent your opponent from obtaining more loot which can convert to dragon runes. Picking on a loot-rich hero can be risky, because the more loot you have, the more equipment you have that’ll help win duels. Many of the rewards you can collect have situational benefits. As you collect those, your movement decisions become more challenging, as you now have to choose between getting the reward into a useful position or ctompleting a new quest.
The most important decision regarding heroes is whether or not you’ll focus on questing to begin with. The available actions are a precious few, and it’ll take usually a minimum of 3 orders plus some influence to max out heroes running around, quest cards in your hand, and the title you’ll need. These actions are best done early if you wish to get the most out of questing, and that can be hard to do when your opponent’s early orders start to send menacing armies your way.
Another steam tray in the Runewars buffet is influence bids. These are triggered by season cards prior to players selecting their action. There’s usually some good benefit at stake, even as high as a one of the six dragon runes necessary for victory. Players first announce how much influence they have, and then they may declare or lie about how much influence they intend to spend. The influence you bid is spent regardless if you win. This results in a lot of bluffing and second guessing. Given how many game elements demand influence, it can be a very scarce resource. And given the high stakes on the outcome of the bid, it makes for a very interesting decision.
A different sub-system is the titles. There are 3 titles available. One assists in battles, one converts your questing bling into the Dragon Runes you need in order to win, and the other helps with influence. Titles are obtained by spending more influence on that title than any other player. You have to play an order and be eligible for the supremacy bonus in order to get a title. The titles subsystem is interesting in that it intersects the challenge of the limited action availability with the limited influence resource. You want the titles, you want to steal the titles from others, but it is always so difficult to choose between a title and the other orders competing for your attention.
Another element of the game is diplomacy. The board starts pre-populated with neutral units. It might take a little while for player’s empires to bump into each other. So in the meantime, you have neutral units to conquer. But you may not necessarily want to conquer. You can attempt diplomacy with the neutrals. You select how much influence you want to spend, and that will be how many chances you’ll have to get the desired diplomatic result. At best, the neutrals will join your team. At the very least you’re hoping the neutral units will get out of your way. At worst, diplomacy will break down and you’ll be faced with the prospects of battle. The diplomacy system is another way it makes influence a highly sought after resource and very tricky to decide how to spend it wisely. Converting neutrals to your team also offers an alternative method of expanding your forces.
While Runewars has no formal alliances, there are many cards that make interesting interactions among players. Many cards force you to select an opponent, and then both of you gain a benefit. Some cards let you choose a benefit for your opponent, and then after they receive it, your opponent has a choice on whether or not they want to return the favor as generously as you did. As expected, some cards force you to pick an opponent to sting with nasty stuff. The choice of players that you choose to help or hurt, and the lines of alliances or enmity that form as a result is appealing.
Harvest is the order that lets you rake in the resources from the territories that you’ve conquered. The standard harvest ability tends to have decreasing utility as the geographic range of your empire naturally plateaus. However, this is the only order that can become increasingly beneficial, if you choose so. When you harvest, you can build a development as part of the supremacy bonus. Developments can give you cards, influence, resources, or a defensive military bonus. As you build more developments, the more the harvest order can benefit you.
The game also has tactics cards that players can draw that do a variety of powerful and unpredictable abilities. Tactic cards don’t just fall in a player’s lap; you have to choose to pursue them. The game offers players a divergent choice between influence and tactics cards. Each Fall, all players are given the choice between either 2 influence or 1 tactics card. If you play the order to rake in swag from cities, you have to choose just one of the swag types in the city. Among those options are influence and tactics cards. And of course another way the game makes you choose between influence and tactics is the order cards themselves. One can get you influence, and another can get you tactics cards. So while tactics and influence isn’t mutually exclusive, the game does tend to force players to choose between them.
There’s so much packed into the Runewars buffet it can be hard to swallow it all in one session. I didn’t talk too much about cities, strongholds, false runes, the entire resource system, and other nuggets within this game. You’ll be attracted to the game for its grand scope, epic battles, and outstanding production values, but you’ll stick around for the depth you’ll unpeel with each session. There’s a lot more than what can be ingested in one play, so settle in for plenty of return trips to the buffet line.