The third edition of Runebound hit stores in Decemeber last year. It is an adventure boardgame by Fantasy Flight Games and is very much marketed at the ‘Adventure-in-a-box’ style game. I think I should start by stating that I have never player any other edition of Runebound so I only have this one to go off. Whether that makes me ill-informed or more impartial is up to you. Straight away, as soon as the lid comes off the box you can sense the production value of the game, something that folks who know Fantasy Flight will be used to. The cards, the board and the miniatures are all beautiful. Though I’d like to just mention that Fantasy Flight have seemed to have switched from putting standard rulebooks in their games to two volumes; a ‘learn-to-play’ guide and a ‘rules reference’. I’m not sure what the reason for this was, I imagine it has something to do with making the rules easier to understand for a new player but I have found this new way of doing things (both in Runebound and other FFG titles) to be unintuitive. I find myself, or my friends, spend half the time asking which book the answer to an obscure rules question is in rather than playing. I’d be interested to hear other people’s views on this and if others have found this newer system more useful and why.

In Runebound each player assumes control of one of six characters and must travel the realm of Terrinoth collecting items and becoming more powerful. Each character is significantly different from the others and my only gripe is that there aren’t more of them. It’s a game that, in terms of appeal and atmosphere, is very similar to Talisman, for me at least. When you factor in that in a six player game you have no choice in who you play it feels worse than it probably should. I was expecting more characters and it’s a shame they’re a bit scarce. The board itself is divided into hexes and uses custom dice to determine how far a character may travel each turn by rolling a number of movement dice equal to the characters movement score and then allocating them as they see fit to terrain tiles on the board. This is where Runebound shines, and where for me it becomes praise worthy game. I enjoy the fact that the encounter decks are split into three different types; combat, exploration and social and it give me a real sense of adventure. Some of the encounters are very interesting, becoming a permanent fixture on the board and the fact that these draw decks are modified by the rules of the game’s scenario. We had one game where, as the vile dragonlord Margath was slowly building his power (the first of two scenarios that ship with the game) that a heretical cult of dragon worshippers set up shop in one of the outlying towns of Terrinoth. This changed how we played because anyone entering the town was subject to the cults wroth and as result we avoided the place like the plague.

Another element that I really enjoy about Runebound is the semi-co-operative elements to it (I have a serious love for anything that lets me quest with my friends). There is only one winner to the game, but to achieve that goal the player must work with others otherwise everyone loses. In the first scenario is ‘The Ascendance of Margath’ in which the aforementioned Margath the dragnlord is getting ready to slither out of his hiding place in the Mountains of Despair and attack the city of Tamalir. The game involved players getting ready for a final showdown when the dragon finally rears his ugly head. Continue reading “Review: Runebound” →