April 13th was officially launch day for Runewars. I sprung for a second copy from my local game store (Gamez and More in Bryon) which in theory would get me closer to being able to field a full 200 pt army. So close but not quite… more on that in a bit.
Up at the Fantasy Flight Games Center in Roseville Minnesota, I helped out running the Launch day event. We ran it in the back room and took up about two rows of tables. By my count in players we had 12-14 with a decent stream of people walking over and checking it out. Not bad for both a week night and a holiday weekend to boot.
The launch day kit was made up of the hero alt art cards and a card specifically for the skirmish mission that is included in the rules reference but not as a card in the game box. Huge thanks for Dave at FFGC for making it possible!
We did an evening of casual play, while the kit encourages 3 rounds and the winner of each round walking away with a card, we decided, naw, let’s enjoy the new shiny in the game and just try to come up to speed on the rules and our forces. Besides 3 games on a weeknight would have been a late evening.
A few of us sprung for the new mats. They are nice! I picked up two and while I don’t mind playing on a star field as much as the next player, having some solid tera-firma to game on for this fantasy setting is pretty cool. Mats are pretty much same as X-Wing/Armada mats just green with pretty nice pattern that isn’t too busy.
Additionally kudos to the FFGC staff, Dave and company for bringing over a few mats for people to use too.
For the first game of the evening, I played with my Daqan and we did the skirmish mission with full on terrain and some upgrade cards. With the full 100 on 100 match, we did the Bounty objective. I put my token on the Rune Golem and the guy I was playing put it on Ardus.
Quick summary on this one, my Cav fell to Ardus’ axes. The carrion lancer was taken out by the golem. Kari and the spearman took out the reanimates so I ended up the victor on this one tho neither of us picked up the bounty.
For round two, we did a 175 pt game on the full 6×3. Whole experience, time to dive into the pool with no more water wings and go for it all.
I field Kari with no upgrades. A 2×2 of Cav with Rank Discipline and Master Crafted Weapons. Two golems, naked with rune goodness. Last two 2×2 trays of spearman, one had master crafted weapons, and like metered march and the other something different.
I faced a 3×2 of reanimates, a 2×1 of reanimates, Ardus, 2 carrion lancers and a full 2×2 of reanimate archers.
Using the system to generate the deployment areas and the mission, we did the Careful approach where you’re basically setting up in the corners, and then the Confluence of Magic mission.
Confluence of magic is where you each put out 3 victory tokens. If a unit scoops up a token and then does it’s ability as a secondary or primary order, that’s the only time you can recast the runes. If you have just one token, you get to just recast one rune.
It was a crazy fun mission as the initial casting of the runes yield 1 blue, no red and like 2 green magic. Not so great for my golems.
Last for the terrain, using the luck of the cards we ended up with pieces of deadly terrain and the raised terrace in the middle of the table.
We both deployed to go and pick up the tokens as best we could. I figured my cav would pick up two and then my spearmen one while sending in Kari and my spearman to maybe get the terrain in the middle before the reanimate archers could. I also sent my golems to cover my right flank.
So about at this point having more real-estate is awesome, but you suddenly realize with a new game like this, you’ve got some learn’n to do cause driving using the movement tools to judge distance is an adjustment. Kinda forget about my early days of Armada and X-Wing where I’d be off a bit here and there and oops, suffer problems. Well my cav who were going to pick up two tokens, suddenly were just settling for one.
On the opposite side of the table the reanimates had no problem picking up their tokens, OTOH, pausing to use the ability to recast runes wasn’t also figuring big into our plans at the moment, who wants to stop for a turn?
About mid-game at this point. I was lucky in that my cav managed to catch Ardus and throw a couple wounds on him, and then get munched. I also was able to charge into the carrion crawlers with one set of spearmen. In the middle, while I’d gotten to the terrain before the archers did, it was kind of a stupid place to have spearmen since they have no distance attack. They couldn’t charge out to engage the archers since there wasn’t enough room for them to exit the terrain so they had to go out the side door which then put them against some reanimates.
Blood makes the grass grow, kill! kill! kill! (Or so we say at the Ren Fest)
Last pic. So Kari I’d sent back to pick up the victory token, and really all that did was take her out of the fight. She totally missed the token because obviously I can’t drive. I definitely need some practice with those maneuvering tools! Moving and doing so effectively seems to be really important in this game especially if you can get on the flanks for that extra attack die.
My cav finished Ardus but at a huge cost. Likewise my spearman knocked the Carrion Lancer down and cause him to flee due to moral. In the center the archers held the high ground and my other unit of spearman were getting the bad end of it. Likewise my golems were down to one and save for one turn where he did 8 hits, he didn’t really do much.
Through the victory tokens I was able to adjust the magic to 1 green and 2 blue which sure helped the golems for that one turn of great damage output.
At the end a loss for me but a very very fun mission with a great setup.
Afterwards there was table talk about regular Runewars gaming at FFGC, sounds like Wednesdays or Thursdays is what we’re thinking. We’ll get it figured out over Facebook. If you’re not in Land of the North, join up! Don’t like Facebook? Yeah yeah I know.
FFGC is also going to host their first store tournament for Runewars. Details yet to be worked out, but it’ll be Saturday May 27th. Mark your calendars, sharpen that sword, check your runes, you’ll want to be there!