by JonJacob
Runewars is awesome. It is one of my favorites and Banners of War adds a great deal of fun.Battles are fast... really fast. They happen quickly and they are easy to deal with. It's not like in, say TI3, where a battle or two can take you out of the game, in Runewars a lost battle can hurt but a smart player can always bounce back. Getting new troops is a breeze and moving them is pretty easy too.
The heroes, in the base game, are like a separate mini game. I like them. I feel like they are integral to the game but add an interesting distraction to the main proceedings. It's kind of like in LOTR where giant epic battles happen but heroes are still moving around the periphery of the battle doing very important work. But if you don't dig that then Banners of War does give you several more options for how to include them in the game and allows them to gain an attack if you like. They can move with a troop. It also gives you a ... tech tree (for lack of a better term) which is really cool and allows you to even further individualize your faction. Plus two more unit types per faction. It's a great expansion to an already fantastic game.
Tom's concerns... they feel like concerns you would be bound to have after only a little experience. I understand them but I don't agree with them.
The thing is the base game is poorly packaged. What I mean by that is out of the box, standard rule base, never worked for us. We switched to epic mode after the first game (seeing potential but not liking the outcome of game one) and the game was much, much better.
After adding Banners of War in it became one of my favorite DoaM games out there. I like it better than TI3, Clash of Cultures and Eclipse for example (and I love all of those).
I think that it's worth trying out and spending some time with it. Miami dice is not the last word in gaming.
Runewars greatest quality, for me, is it's robustness. There are several ways to play, all included in the rules (I have the original coffin box with 3D mountains) and they will appeal to different people. Once you dig in and start seeing what you like and don't like you can tailor the game to your desires.