Iron_Chef
First Post
RUNEBOUND
In Runebound, 2-6 players each control one of twelve different fantasy heroes (orcs, undead, tieflings, and elves are represented in addition to humans). You travel around the wilderness and cities of a kingdom seeking adventure, allies and treasure in your quest to defeat High Lord Margath from assembling three Dragon Runes to control the world's dragons and seizing ultimate power for himself. Margath has assembled a cult of loyal necromancers, undead and other beastly servants to stymie the heroes from their goal.
Each hero has different strengths and weaknesses to attack, damage, ability scores (mind, body, spirit) and a special ability such as a bonus on skill tests, auto-escaping combat, making an extra attack once per combat by taking on fatigue, or converting wounds to fatigue.
Allies are just like heroes, except they can permanently die and cannot use any weapons, armor or items. Some don't even have a special ability and are useful only as cannon fodder. Others are insanely powerful, unique and cost a lot to hire. You are only limited to whatever allies you can afford, but only three members of your party can attack each combat turn, once in each phase: ranged, melee and magic).
Towns allow to heal wounds, hire allies, and purchase items (including weapons, armor, runes, artifacts, potions, etc.). Some items are one-shot use only, and some are permanent for as long as you own them. Other players can steal an item or an ally by defeating your hero in combat. Certain monsters or event cards can destroy them or cause them to be lost. As you defeat each challenge (color coded to signify difficulty/reward level), you gain XP and can cash 5 such XP in to gain a +1 bonus to either your ranged, melee or magic attack.
Movement is governed by 5 terrain dice covered with symbols, which must be spent only on moving through the correct terrain (swamp, river, hills, forest, plains, road, mountain).
When you visit a challenge site, you draw a card from the deck of te appropriately matched color (green, yellow, blue or red in order of difficulty). There are three types of challenge cards:
Encounters which require the player to pass a certain test or perform specific movements to gain a not inconsiderable reward;
Events which affect all players usually in a very negative way such as by doubling the price of all items or forcing Diplomacy tests to hire allies let alone keep them; and
Monsters which require a fight which the player may attempt to escape from each combat turn.
You must keep drawing from the challenge deck until you draw a monster.
The game is won by finding and defeating High Lord Margath or by collecting three Dragon Runes (which defeat Margath by default). The only way to do this is to gain XP, alies and treasure in sufficient strength to defeat red challenges.
Thoughts:
Having just bought and played FFG's Runebound Fantasy Adventure Boardgame twice last night, I am of mixed opinion of the product. It seems overly complex for what it does and I'm not sure the payoff is worth a 3-4 hour investment of my time. While most of our group had a good time, there are reservations that prevent me from giving it the whole-hearted "must have" recommendation that others seem to have about it.
Rules: D
The inadequate rules are printed on a flimsy, bizarre double-sided fold-out (instead of a proper rulebook) that does nothing to make understanding of the game's rather steep initial learning curve easier. Several important questions are not answered, either in the rules or the online FAQ (these are recounted below in the appropriate sections). The rules seem a bit too complex for what the game is: an expensive updating and upgrade of TSR's old Dungeon boardgame. The rules are not easily or quickly learned and, in my experience, the game is not playable in anywhere near the 2 hours promised on the box. Instead, the game drags on for a minimum of 3-4 hours, and that was after the first 6 hour game where we slowly and painfully learned how to play as best we could from the unhelpful rules provided. We are all smart, experienced gamers (RPG and board) between the ages of 28-33, so I'd like to think that why we had such a hard time figuring this game out speaks more of the problems with the rules provided than with our mental faculties...
Gameplay: B- Some of the heroes (Silhouette, Sir Validar, Varikath the Undead immediately spring to mind) seem overly powerful compared to their more balanced counterparts. Combined with high-powered allies like Cardinal Koth (who seems broken to me in terms of his special ability and his 6/2 magic attack vs. his 9 gold hiring cost). Combined with the right allies, these heroes are more or less invincible and subject to defeat only to bad dice rolling blunders.
There is just not enough player interaction for what is supposed to be an RPG boardgame. Player "interaction" consists solely of stealing other player's hard-earned stuff by the bully players who were clearly already superior. Cooperative or team play (even as options) would have been truer to the game's RPG inspirations. Losing a game that takes 3-4 hours to play does not make one feel particularly good. In both games we played, one player would quickly (through bad luck and bad dice rolls) end up being a TOTAL LOSER who could never hope to catch up to the other players and if you were this player, you HATED playing this game, because you were stuck sitting around for 2-3 more hours feeling powerless as everyone else got better and better and had fun. I was this "total loser" in the first game we played, but came in a clear (and far more gratifying) second place in the second game. This did nothing to correct the problem for the other player who gave up and went home. This needs to be fixed somehow, fairly and fast, so everyone has a chance to win.
The "High Lord Margath" scenario was cliche (a Forgotten Realms Cult of the Dragon rip-off I didn't like the first time around and don't like any better in another game). It did nothing to suck me into the game. What I found interesting instead were the frequent apearances of certain evil families, like Farrow and Vorakesh. I would have greatly preferred a scenario involving feuding noble houses rather than something "earth-shattering" that required you to "save the world." The sidequest "encounter" cards did a fair job of diverting you from the main goal and were more fun to me than the endgame.
Runebound's endgame is not only boring but frustrating, much like the endgame of Twilight Creations' otherwise entertaining Zombies. Suddenly, it's "capture the flag" and there will be one player uniquely qualified to do this (whoever is most powerful, at least in the games I played). That player wins, almost automatically, because no one else can stand up to the red challenges as well or as often. So if you're second or third best, you must hope to draw High Lord Margath and get lucky defeating him or else you will lose (unless you have the teleporter movement card; maybe you can win then because the reds are spaced so far apart). With only 7 hit points, Margath seems like a pushover by the time anyone draws him, however. I think I must dislike games that change focus at the end... I'm having fun building up my stuff and then suddenly I'm not and everything turns upside down (like in Zombies).
It is important to note that I quickly become bored with the whole Margath scenario and with the challenges and market items provided. Having doubles (a cost-cutting measure, to be sure) of so many cards is a mistake, IMO. It seems to me that having more cards than could be used in any one game would have greatly reduced this boredom factor. That way, you won't keep seeing the same exact things in every game... especially since the game forces you to see practically everything it has to offer in just the first sitting alone! Perhaps the expansion packs will address this concern. As it is, the game begins to grow stale after just two sessions, because you've seen absolutely everything the game has to offer and there are no more real surprises.
Components: B
The sturdy thickness and bright colors of the punch-out bits was extremely impressive. They felt good between my fingers and were easily differentiated from each other. Some extra adventure/experience point bits for each color would have been a good idea in case you lose any pieces (and they were flying all over the room as we furiously rushed to get them punched out as quickly as possible so we could hurry up and play).
The cards could have had a glossier coat and been a bit thicker, but were still very nice. Most of the art was uniformly decent, though some appeared clearly rushed, and it was obvious the cards were not proofread carefully before going to press. There were far too many typos for my taste. Some blank cards for each deck should have been included for custom use or if you lose a card.
I would have preferred 28-30mm plastic miniatures to represent the heroes on the board, even at an increase in price, but the thickness and nice artwork of the hero pieces included swayed me. One complaint is in FFG not providing twelve bases for the heroes so that we don't have to switch bases, adding wear and tear every time we want to play someone new. The quotes for the heroes were extremely cliche, poorly written and open to ridicule (for example, Bogran's claim he is a "deadly wind" elicited nothing but fart jokes all evening --- unfortunately, his player provided his own deadly wind to back it up --- not the kind of LARP I want to be involved in, LOL).
The terrain dice, while of high quality, bog down gameplay as each player has to (hopefully) memorize the symbols. We found ourselves constantly mixing up swamp for forest and forest for mountains. These symbols are too similar at a glance and create havoc on gameplay if misread and then caught after the player has started moving. The d20 should have been a different color (yet still easily seen if it falls on the floor or into a corner) to differentiate it from the terrain dice. Many times people would roll terrain dice and the d20 just because they couldn't tell which was which. The rule about only rolling four terrain dice outside the cities was constantly forgotten. The other rules about eliminating fatigue by rolling less movement dice were remembered and used frequently. One major problem in the game was getting "stuck" and being unable to move when in the rare terrain types. This cost me the second game I played, and virtually eliminated any chance of the third player from ever catching up to the rest of us in a million years. It's no fun to wait for your turn and then have to pass because you can't even move where you want (yes, I kow you can give up rolling to move one hex, but nobody does this because nobody wants to move only one hex). And when you get stuck, you tend to stay stuck, with the challenge you need right next to you, but just out of reach, or town just a few squares away, or even winning the game denied by whim of the terrain dice.
The mapboard feels slightly constrained; it is not expandable because it is bordered on all sides by the market stacks, decks, and undefeated challenges. The map itself is very hard to read and open to ambiguities. Dozens of times the question came up, "Is that a hill or a forest?" Hills should have been brown (not green) to easily tell them apart. The map art was boring (I prefer the oldschool style of the AD&D 1st Edition World of Greyhawk map to the fake "real world" style that's become prevalent with D&D3e). Different terrain types should never have appeared in the same hex; that's just asking for trouble. The hex directly outside of Tamarlin with a river and road makes everyone think other hexes are "mixed" terrains as well. River and plains, swamp and river, etc. The rulebook says nothing! I had to get the online FAQ the next day to clear that mess up, but that was after two games were played incorrectly. The cities, identified only by tiny heraldry, are frequently confused with each other, causing market stacks to mysteriously "switch places" if you don't keep an eye on what the other players are doing during the market phase(not intentionally cheating, just mixing up where to properly return the cards).
While I greatly appreciated the inclusion of a storage tray, this tray is insufficiently deep to hold all the cards correctly. More compartments would have been better so gold, XP, fatigue and wounds could have been kept separate for ease of use. The box lid fits too snugly, making it a pain to open and close, and a surefire candidate to become damaged faster than any game box I've ever owned. The actual texture of the box lid, however, is pleasing to the touch and unlike any game I've ever owned.
Final Analysis of Runebound: C+
I can't give this game a glowing review as is. With a better rulebook and map, and more cards (and tips on how to easily create your own custom scenarios), I would bump this up to a B.
Winning (or even succeeding) is entirely too dependent on the luck of the draw and the roll of the dice. There is not enough strategy or interaction involved for my taste (each player seems to be playing alone against themselves). The Advanced Rules, which I've skimmed through, seem to offer some excellent ways to improve the game, but should have been included with the game itself (along with a FAQ --- or better yet, rules that addressed the questions posed above). Runebound needs to let players power up faster and end the game quicker... If I want to sit around for 3-4 hours, I'll play games that rely more on strategy than luck, so I feel like I've accomplished something. Entirely luck-dependent games are best served up in 1-2 hour doses, so you can play them more than once and give everybody a chance to win.
I may end up buying the expansion packs if the game improves enough after trying some of the Advanced Rules. I am grateful that FFG is releasing them; this has been my primary complaint with Avalon Hill, who has squandered every opportunity to support/expand their games like Axis & Allies and the Risk variants. Instead of supporting the games already in release, they just come out with a variant $50 version of the game every few years, which I find a bit maddening!
UPDATE, 11/23/04: After several more games, I figured out we were playing certain aspects of the Runebound incorrectly, due to the horrible and confusing way the rules are presented.
All those "activate to use" item cards it turns out are "activated" and placed face-down/out of play only for the rest of your turn. On your next turn, you just "refresh" them by flipping them back face-up and they are ready to go again. This makes a HUGE difference in their usefulness for the gold piece cost.
We also introduced random Hero selection, something recommended in the rules (whoever rolls highest goes first and draws their Hero card first).
We also noted that you can only have two weapons and one armor on you at a time, LOL.
The new official erratta says you can only have two allies at a time. Discarded allies may not be sold at Market. This makes a big difference!
NEW RATING: This changes my rating of Runebound from a C+ to a B-. With the Shadows of Margath expansion pack, the free online AMPED rules and several house rules (such as the previously unbalanced super cheap uber-weapons now costing between 9 and 10 gold each), I would revise my rating up to a straight B.
Another house rule we came up with was that if an extra game is played the same day, previously played Heroes are not reshuffled back into the Hero deck. This way, everyone gets to try new Heroes. Also, due to their EXTREME suckiness, we throw out Carthos the Mad (wizard) and Ronan of the Wild (ranger). These guys both are total losers nobody would be happy playing.
You should visit http://boardgamegeek.com for more reviews
In Runebound, 2-6 players each control one of twelve different fantasy heroes (orcs, undead, tieflings, and elves are represented in addition to humans). You travel around the wilderness and cities of a kingdom seeking adventure, allies and treasure in your quest to defeat High Lord Margath from assembling three Dragon Runes to control the world's dragons and seizing ultimate power for himself. Margath has assembled a cult of loyal necromancers, undead and other beastly servants to stymie the heroes from their goal.
Each hero has different strengths and weaknesses to attack, damage, ability scores (mind, body, spirit) and a special ability such as a bonus on skill tests, auto-escaping combat, making an extra attack once per combat by taking on fatigue, or converting wounds to fatigue.
Allies are just like heroes, except they can permanently die and cannot use any weapons, armor or items. Some don't even have a special ability and are useful only as cannon fodder. Others are insanely powerful, unique and cost a lot to hire. You are only limited to whatever allies you can afford, but only three members of your party can attack each combat turn, once in each phase: ranged, melee and magic).
Towns allow to heal wounds, hire allies, and purchase items (including weapons, armor, runes, artifacts, potions, etc.). Some items are one-shot use only, and some are permanent for as long as you own them. Other players can steal an item or an ally by defeating your hero in combat. Certain monsters or event cards can destroy them or cause them to be lost. As you defeat each challenge (color coded to signify difficulty/reward level), you gain XP and can cash 5 such XP in to gain a +1 bonus to either your ranged, melee or magic attack.
Movement is governed by 5 terrain dice covered with symbols, which must be spent only on moving through the correct terrain (swamp, river, hills, forest, plains, road, mountain).
When you visit a challenge site, you draw a card from the deck of te appropriately matched color (green, yellow, blue or red in order of difficulty). There are three types of challenge cards:
Encounters which require the player to pass a certain test or perform specific movements to gain a not inconsiderable reward;
Events which affect all players usually in a very negative way such as by doubling the price of all items or forcing Diplomacy tests to hire allies let alone keep them; and
Monsters which require a fight which the player may attempt to escape from each combat turn.
You must keep drawing from the challenge deck until you draw a monster.
The game is won by finding and defeating High Lord Margath or by collecting three Dragon Runes (which defeat Margath by default). The only way to do this is to gain XP, alies and treasure in sufficient strength to defeat red challenges.
Thoughts:
Having just bought and played FFG's Runebound Fantasy Adventure Boardgame twice last night, I am of mixed opinion of the product. It seems overly complex for what it does and I'm not sure the payoff is worth a 3-4 hour investment of my time. While most of our group had a good time, there are reservations that prevent me from giving it the whole-hearted "must have" recommendation that others seem to have about it.
Rules: D
The inadequate rules are printed on a flimsy, bizarre double-sided fold-out (instead of a proper rulebook) that does nothing to make understanding of the game's rather steep initial learning curve easier. Several important questions are not answered, either in the rules or the online FAQ (these are recounted below in the appropriate sections). The rules seem a bit too complex for what the game is: an expensive updating and upgrade of TSR's old Dungeon boardgame. The rules are not easily or quickly learned and, in my experience, the game is not playable in anywhere near the 2 hours promised on the box. Instead, the game drags on for a minimum of 3-4 hours, and that was after the first 6 hour game where we slowly and painfully learned how to play as best we could from the unhelpful rules provided. We are all smart, experienced gamers (RPG and board) between the ages of 28-33, so I'd like to think that why we had such a hard time figuring this game out speaks more of the problems with the rules provided than with our mental faculties...
Gameplay: B- Some of the heroes (Silhouette, Sir Validar, Varikath the Undead immediately spring to mind) seem overly powerful compared to their more balanced counterparts. Combined with high-powered allies like Cardinal Koth (who seems broken to me in terms of his special ability and his 6/2 magic attack vs. his 9 gold hiring cost). Combined with the right allies, these heroes are more or less invincible and subject to defeat only to bad dice rolling blunders.
There is just not enough player interaction for what is supposed to be an RPG boardgame. Player "interaction" consists solely of stealing other player's hard-earned stuff by the bully players who were clearly already superior. Cooperative or team play (even as options) would have been truer to the game's RPG inspirations. Losing a game that takes 3-4 hours to play does not make one feel particularly good. In both games we played, one player would quickly (through bad luck and bad dice rolls) end up being a TOTAL LOSER who could never hope to catch up to the other players and if you were this player, you HATED playing this game, because you were stuck sitting around for 2-3 more hours feeling powerless as everyone else got better and better and had fun. I was this "total loser" in the first game we played, but came in a clear (and far more gratifying) second place in the second game. This did nothing to correct the problem for the other player who gave up and went home. This needs to be fixed somehow, fairly and fast, so everyone has a chance to win.
The "High Lord Margath" scenario was cliche (a Forgotten Realms Cult of the Dragon rip-off I didn't like the first time around and don't like any better in another game). It did nothing to suck me into the game. What I found interesting instead were the frequent apearances of certain evil families, like Farrow and Vorakesh. I would have greatly preferred a scenario involving feuding noble houses rather than something "earth-shattering" that required you to "save the world." The sidequest "encounter" cards did a fair job of diverting you from the main goal and were more fun to me than the endgame.
Runebound's endgame is not only boring but frustrating, much like the endgame of Twilight Creations' otherwise entertaining Zombies. Suddenly, it's "capture the flag" and there will be one player uniquely qualified to do this (whoever is most powerful, at least in the games I played). That player wins, almost automatically, because no one else can stand up to the red challenges as well or as often. So if you're second or third best, you must hope to draw High Lord Margath and get lucky defeating him or else you will lose (unless you have the teleporter movement card; maybe you can win then because the reds are spaced so far apart). With only 7 hit points, Margath seems like a pushover by the time anyone draws him, however. I think I must dislike games that change focus at the end... I'm having fun building up my stuff and then suddenly I'm not and everything turns upside down (like in Zombies).
It is important to note that I quickly become bored with the whole Margath scenario and with the challenges and market items provided. Having doubles (a cost-cutting measure, to be sure) of so many cards is a mistake, IMO. It seems to me that having more cards than could be used in any one game would have greatly reduced this boredom factor. That way, you won't keep seeing the same exact things in every game... especially since the game forces you to see practically everything it has to offer in just the first sitting alone! Perhaps the expansion packs will address this concern. As it is, the game begins to grow stale after just two sessions, because you've seen absolutely everything the game has to offer and there are no more real surprises.
Components: B
The sturdy thickness and bright colors of the punch-out bits was extremely impressive. They felt good between my fingers and were easily differentiated from each other. Some extra adventure/experience point bits for each color would have been a good idea in case you lose any pieces (and they were flying all over the room as we furiously rushed to get them punched out as quickly as possible so we could hurry up and play).
The cards could have had a glossier coat and been a bit thicker, but were still very nice. Most of the art was uniformly decent, though some appeared clearly rushed, and it was obvious the cards were not proofread carefully before going to press. There were far too many typos for my taste. Some blank cards for each deck should have been included for custom use or if you lose a card.
I would have preferred 28-30mm plastic miniatures to represent the heroes on the board, even at an increase in price, but the thickness and nice artwork of the hero pieces included swayed me. One complaint is in FFG not providing twelve bases for the heroes so that we don't have to switch bases, adding wear and tear every time we want to play someone new. The quotes for the heroes were extremely cliche, poorly written and open to ridicule (for example, Bogran's claim he is a "deadly wind" elicited nothing but fart jokes all evening --- unfortunately, his player provided his own deadly wind to back it up --- not the kind of LARP I want to be involved in, LOL).
The terrain dice, while of high quality, bog down gameplay as each player has to (hopefully) memorize the symbols. We found ourselves constantly mixing up swamp for forest and forest for mountains. These symbols are too similar at a glance and create havoc on gameplay if misread and then caught after the player has started moving. The d20 should have been a different color (yet still easily seen if it falls on the floor or into a corner) to differentiate it from the terrain dice. Many times people would roll terrain dice and the d20 just because they couldn't tell which was which. The rule about only rolling four terrain dice outside the cities was constantly forgotten. The other rules about eliminating fatigue by rolling less movement dice were remembered and used frequently. One major problem in the game was getting "stuck" and being unable to move when in the rare terrain types. This cost me the second game I played, and virtually eliminated any chance of the third player from ever catching up to the rest of us in a million years. It's no fun to wait for your turn and then have to pass because you can't even move where you want (yes, I kow you can give up rolling to move one hex, but nobody does this because nobody wants to move only one hex). And when you get stuck, you tend to stay stuck, with the challenge you need right next to you, but just out of reach, or town just a few squares away, or even winning the game denied by whim of the terrain dice.
The mapboard feels slightly constrained; it is not expandable because it is bordered on all sides by the market stacks, decks, and undefeated challenges. The map itself is very hard to read and open to ambiguities. Dozens of times the question came up, "Is that a hill or a forest?" Hills should have been brown (not green) to easily tell them apart. The map art was boring (I prefer the oldschool style of the AD&D 1st Edition World of Greyhawk map to the fake "real world" style that's become prevalent with D&D3e). Different terrain types should never have appeared in the same hex; that's just asking for trouble. The hex directly outside of Tamarlin with a river and road makes everyone think other hexes are "mixed" terrains as well. River and plains, swamp and river, etc. The rulebook says nothing! I had to get the online FAQ the next day to clear that mess up, but that was after two games were played incorrectly. The cities, identified only by tiny heraldry, are frequently confused with each other, causing market stacks to mysteriously "switch places" if you don't keep an eye on what the other players are doing during the market phase(not intentionally cheating, just mixing up where to properly return the cards).
While I greatly appreciated the inclusion of a storage tray, this tray is insufficiently deep to hold all the cards correctly. More compartments would have been better so gold, XP, fatigue and wounds could have been kept separate for ease of use. The box lid fits too snugly, making it a pain to open and close, and a surefire candidate to become damaged faster than any game box I've ever owned. The actual texture of the box lid, however, is pleasing to the touch and unlike any game I've ever owned.
Final Analysis of Runebound: C+
I can't give this game a glowing review as is. With a better rulebook and map, and more cards (and tips on how to easily create your own custom scenarios), I would bump this up to a B.
Winning (or even succeeding) is entirely too dependent on the luck of the draw and the roll of the dice. There is not enough strategy or interaction involved for my taste (each player seems to be playing alone against themselves). The Advanced Rules, which I've skimmed through, seem to offer some excellent ways to improve the game, but should have been included with the game itself (along with a FAQ --- or better yet, rules that addressed the questions posed above). Runebound needs to let players power up faster and end the game quicker... If I want to sit around for 3-4 hours, I'll play games that rely more on strategy than luck, so I feel like I've accomplished something. Entirely luck-dependent games are best served up in 1-2 hour doses, so you can play them more than once and give everybody a chance to win.
I may end up buying the expansion packs if the game improves enough after trying some of the Advanced Rules. I am grateful that FFG is releasing them; this has been my primary complaint with Avalon Hill, who has squandered every opportunity to support/expand their games like Axis & Allies and the Risk variants. Instead of supporting the games already in release, they just come out with a variant $50 version of the game every few years, which I find a bit maddening!
UPDATE, 11/23/04: After several more games, I figured out we were playing certain aspects of the Runebound incorrectly, due to the horrible and confusing way the rules are presented.
All those "activate to use" item cards it turns out are "activated" and placed face-down/out of play only for the rest of your turn. On your next turn, you just "refresh" them by flipping them back face-up and they are ready to go again. This makes a HUGE difference in their usefulness for the gold piece cost.
We also introduced random Hero selection, something recommended in the rules (whoever rolls highest goes first and draws their Hero card first).
We also noted that you can only have two weapons and one armor on you at a time, LOL.
The new official erratta says you can only have two allies at a time. Discarded allies may not be sold at Market. This makes a big difference!
NEW RATING: This changes my rating of Runebound from a C+ to a B-. With the Shadows of Margath expansion pack, the free online AMPED rules and several house rules (such as the previously unbalanced super cheap uber-weapons now costing between 9 and 10 gold each), I would revise my rating up to a straight B.
Another house rule we came up with was that if an extra game is played the same day, previously played Heroes are not reshuffled back into the Hero deck. This way, everyone gets to try new Heroes. Also, due to their EXTREME suckiness, we throw out Carthos the Mad (wizard) and Ronan of the Wild (ranger). These guys both are total losers nobody would be happy playing.
You should visit http://boardgamegeek.com for more reviews
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