For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Runewars is the latest “coffin” game from Fantasy Flight Games: it comes in a really big box, and this game is a 2-4 player game that takes about 3 hours where you’re trying to be the first to control six areas containing Dragon Runes. You start with two, and from there you can send heroes on quests to find new runes… or you can just conquer the territory of your opponents. There are also other ways to get the runes, so it’s not like the game is all about one approach.

The game also ends after six turns, so there’s a time limit on it as well.

When I say “turn”, it’s a little confusing – in fact, it’s the twenty-fourth turn. Each turn is a season – you reveal a special event card (keyed to the new season), and then everyone chooses an order to execute that season and (surprise, surprise) executes it! Repeat until you win or the game ends.

The orders are interesting – when you play an order, you can’t choose that order again until the next Spring. So you can’t spam the same order again and again.

The orders…

1) Strategize (move your units into adjacent empty/friendly areas, possible draw Tactic cards for resources)

2) Mobilize (move/attack one area, with a possible second move)

3) Conquer (move/attack one area, with a possible siege bonus)

4) Harvest (reset your resources to what you have available, possibly get development bonuses and play a development)

5) Recruit (gain units based on one of your resource dials, possibly do it again)

6) Rally Support (gain influence, tactics, neutral units or quest cards from your cities; possibly recruit a hero)

7) Acquire Power (gain influence based on resource dials; possibly gain a Title)

8) Fortify (build a stronghold, repair a stronghold and/or move rune tokens)

It gets even more interesting when you look at the “possibles” above – you see, they activate only if the ID# of the card is the highest you’ve played this year… so, if in Spring you play Harvest (#4) you reset your resource dials and then get your bonuses and play a development… but if you then Conquered (#3) it’s not they highest number yet played by you in the turn, so you don’t get it’s conquering bonus!

So, moving works best early in the year, but is much less effective in Autumn and Winter. 

Combat is card-based, with each faction (elves, humans, undead and “uthuk”) having their own special units. You can also negotiate with neutral armies and get them on your side. It’s quite clever how negotiating works: you draw cards equal to the amount of influence you spend, and use the best one to show what the effect was. 

The minis each have a different type of base to distinguish their combat abilities: triangles are weak, missing 40% of the time and dealing max. 1 damage. Circles are similar to triangles, but their special abilities trigger twice as often. Rectangle attack more successfully and can deal up to 2 damage, whilst the hexagons are the most dangerous (dragons are in that class!) and deal up to 3 damage.

For those wondering about the scale of the minis: they’re small (which is actually a relief). The giant is about 2-3 cm tall, the sorcerer is about 10-15 mm. 

The hero minis, meanwhile, are taller… 25mm scale, and the ones from Runebound and Descent – so I now have three copies of some of those minis!

So, first game of this on Friday afternoon. Second game Saturday? Quite likely. It looks fun, in any case!