As part of the Tuesday night gaming crowd at Gamez and More in Byron, was able to get in my 3rd playtest of Runeways. Launch day isn’t far away and I’ve been busy painting away the core set I’ve received at AdeptiCon.
The figures sure paint up well and I enjoy the fact that these are approx 25mm/28mm scale which while it makes it easier to paint, also means there’s more detail crying out for attention.
The army painter guys have put out some painting guides and they’re pretty great especially if you’re newer to painting. That’s probably one of the potential barriers to the game, those players out there who don’t want to paint or less than excited about it.
For this 3rd playtest, we added in terrain as part of the skirmish scenario following exactly what they want. Likewise we added in a mission, which was the bound mission, where kill the unit identified, then get an extra 75 victory points.
So drawing the 3 pieces of terrain, we had the pond, the raised area and the (thing), deployed on the table. This new element does really add to the strategic element of how you want to approach the attack with your army and hopefully press an advantage.
I figured I’d throw my cav out on the wings, with the core of my force in the middle with the hope I could turn a flank to then work left to right. I figured that the golem and Kari should be able to hold the right flank for awhile and in theory allow me to chew through the undead horde.
The first couple of turns of the plan worked out really well. The Cav charged the archers and poof they were gone with 8 hits.
Meanwhile in the middle my spearman contacted the main unit of reanimates and traded blows for several turns. My golem lumbered in but didn’t get much accomplished. Kari on the other hand got double teamed in the terrain. While her armor is great, the flow of tokens to blights, stun etc etc her really added up to a general bad day.
Getting towards turn 5/6/7 my spearman suffered a pretty bad moral failure and ran, being down to one tray. My cav charged in, with a 3 length charge and missed the target ended up short. This caused the reanimates to live one turn longer and did help to relieve Kari from her foes.
So a snapshot of just as the final turn was going off. Kari basically started to run for it, having 3 wounds. The cav would charge in and finish off the reanimates. Nothing more would be accomplished against the Waiqar, this day. Unfortunately Kari would fall on the very last turn and thus give the Waiqar their 75pts for satisfying their part of the mission.
Terrain added quite a bit to the strategic side of the game as well as having a mission for focusing your efforts in the battle. The heros are just huge in this game and you’ve really got to think about how you want to engage/defeat them.
Likewise my Cav ripped right through what was expected of them and during the course of an 8 turn game, it still took them time to recover and setup for targets.
One thing I’ve been thinking about is just how realistic/playable it’ll be getting to 200 points with with core boxes. You can’t field Kari twice. Golems you can, so that’ll leave about 30 some points for upgrades which is a fair amount, presuming you did’ trying to field something like a 3 x 3 tray of spearmen since the point costs aren’t linear.
If anything I do want to get off the 3×3 star fields and on to something green!