Chuck and I managed to get in a game Saturday night. As it was just the two of us we decided to make the best of the opportunity play testing Runewars.
This was the second test game for me, and since the last at Gamez and More, I’d reviewed the rules a bit more, specially paying attention to the things that seemed unclear. This time added in the “rune” tokens so without going to the full 200pts and 6×3, about as far as one can go with the starter box short of adding in the upgrade cards or terrain.
As it stands the out of the box armies are 93 and 99pts respectively. Chuck took the undead horde and I once again with the mostly human force. We used my 4×6 FAT mat which pretty much works with an extra 6″ band that isn’t used. Sure hoping that FFG or someone gets after some 6×3 mats soon.
I tried something a little different this time in my deployment. I used my spearman as my center anchor with the Gollum to protect the flank and my Cav on my right flank with Keri (the Hero) bringing up the rear. Given she’s the only ranged attack that I had, I thought I’d drop here towards the back and look for opportunities to fire arrows. I wanted to try to burn down the undead unit in the middle. (er re-animates .. can’t we just stick to long standing well used terms from D&D of yore? re-animates… it just … it … it doesn’t work for me)
On the approach, the Gollum has an order where he can advance based on the magic available “rolled” from tokens. So in theory if the “right” magic type comes up, he could move up to length 4. On the tokens there are 3 different types of magic and these, like the Gollum depending on what comes up can amp up your abilities, or give your opponent something to really bonk you on the head with.
On my right flank I charged my Cav in, with the hopes of contacting the undead archers. After all, if they get there, they should be able to just cut then down.
Instead, given the activation order, Chuck’s hero went before the my Cav and as a result contacted them and having the free change attack. Chuck’s hero quickly ripped right through the Cav. Two shield is something, but one wound, doesn’t take much to result in losses. Chuck’s hero knocked out 1/2 the force immediately with 4 damage.
Worse since the Cav were caught, this means that their change order is cancelled so basically they were stuck and again, according to the rules would have not attack back.
In the center, my spearman started to land hits, in my case I struck first and cut into that back row. With no complete back row, this robs Chuck of the ability to re-roll all his attack dice, but he could still at least re-roll one die since has a partial 2nd row.
So this is an important dynamic in the game. You’ve a base number of dice for your attack. Normal units that have some talent at Melee are generally two dice. Get someone in the flank, add a dice, your choice of the d8 red or blue. The number of hits you get on the die, plus any ability bonus (so my spearman can attack slowly but get a bonus hit) When a unit is 2+ trays wide, you multiply the number of hits.
As the commander of the spearman, I have to think in terms of, if I order a fast attack, I lose my hit bonus, but I inflict damage on the enemy before they hit me possibly dragging down either his re-roll (2 full ranks of trays) or whittle down the damage multiplier (how many trays wide the unit is).
One of the ‘fun’ abilities of the undead (er re-animates) warriors is with the magic tokens, depending on what is rolled, they can get a certain number of figures back per turn. That’s a pretty powerful ability so that was the unit I really wanted to get rid of quickly.
Midway into the game, things were looking like they were not going well. The Gollum wasn’t in any danger against the carrion crawler and was managing to put on a wound here and there. He was able to do this by again taking advantage of the magic tokens having a positive uplift to his damaged output. It didn’t happen every turn, but over the whole of 8 turns, it was definitely going my way for that fight.
In the middle, given the replacement of losses, by the undead (err re-animate warriors) meanwhile my spearman were slowly dropping a man here and there this wasn’t a fight I was going to win unless the dice seriously cooperated.
My Cav evaporated not lasting more than about 2 turns in combat. Big knights on big horse, RAWR(!), they should be tough, err not when taking on an evil hero it would seem. I think the lesson learned is trying to understand if there is potential ways to up armor the Cav through some set of upgrade cards and well… attack better targets.
Another piece to consider is that on a 3×3 field, there isn’t a lot of room to maneuver so I really should have given them a better angle to go after the target of my choice.
At the end the reanimate warriors finished off my spearman, the Gollum took out the big-ol-bug and it’s undead rider, while my hero Keri was barely holding her own against the other evil hero and the archers.
Tallying up the points for the winner, you tally up what you have left vs what they have left and then add in victory tokens and there you have it. Partial banged up units, like the archers unless they have 2 full trays don’t count, least if I’m reading that right. I’ve posted a q out in the fora about that.
It ended up being a small victory for me since I had both of my heros left which counted for their full points.
For the next game, the introduction of terrain I think is an important add. At least in the base box, there are pieces of 2D terrain and ok, sure that works for those new to miniatures gaming. For the hard cores tho, umm that’s just not contributing to a pretty table.
In miniatures gaming, partially what we try to recreate is the conditions of the battlefield, where in some games, you have just as much of a battle against the terrain as you do against the opposing force. I don’t get the sense that is where FFG went with the rules on this one. Terrain seems like kind of an afterthought. Still in a ‘formation of units’ type of game, you don’t want terrain to be too distracting, yet you also don’t want to rule out what could be some very very fun scenarios, such as a battle for a town, or a castle/keep or other defenses. It’s early, we’ll see where it all goes and FFG certainly has added new game dynamics over time. Right now, there are no flying creatures for instance and I find that interesting. Dragons just seem like an obvious add.