I love the premise of this game. Adventurers traveling the land and completing quests, getting gear, fighting monsters...classic stuff. The board is gorgeous and makes you want to play on it. The combat system seems unique and interesting. So far so good!

But...

I played the previous version. Just the base game without any of the expansions. It felt as though all of the players were playing their own solo game at the same table together. There was no interaction. There was no way to effect another players game. We could have easily all played our own game without saying a word to eachother. That made for a long, and honestly, boring game for everyone. I know not every game has to include direct conflict. No every game has to be a co-op. But, this game feels like it should be epic. With 3 other players just going about their business and not interacting with eachother, it didn't feel epic.

Did any of that change with expansions? Home brew? Will this edition be the same? I want to love this game.

Runebound definitely got better with the expansions.

We don't know much about 3rd edition yet but we do know that one of the hero's has a bounty hunting ability that interacts with other hero's. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come.

Well, looks like they kept it a 4 player solo game where there is no to significantly little interaction with other players. I was hoping they would change this. That's a no buy for my group and me. Maybe next time.

My thoughts on this so far (Coming from reading the rules download, game should arrive tomorrow)

Actual PvP combat in Runebound has always been a bit lackluster. Since you were playing a race toward the finish line, it was never in the best interest of the stronger player to bother, and the weaker players would have to hope for luck on their side. Even if you did win at PvP, you just got to shout "yoink!" and take an item or gold or whatnot. Not a whole lot of encouragement to be bothered. Add in the ticking clock with the game timer variant and you'd have less reason to bother, short of knowing they had a specific item you wanted. This was one of the biggest complaints the people I played with had.

Looking at the new edition, I see changes that I like. Ditching the challenge level decks in favor of a more evenly powered deck of types of encounters gives flavor to it, while opening up options. The biggest change that effects it is this: Every single combat encounter is now PvP. All creatures play out as full combat using the token system, controlled by another player. I can actively interfere with another players attempt at victory without using up my own resources. And because a person's play style can influence how they use the tokens they have, the same monster might act very different when controlled by a different player. The challenge of the deck is presumably balanced by the tokens available (All monsters use the same tokens, and later in the game the token pool is increased to account for hero growth). Yes, players can still try to pit their heroes against each other, and with the same goal of taking their stuff.

To list them in short order, here are the ways that a player can disrupt other players in 3rd edtion:

1. Controlling combat encounters (and doing a good job at it)

2. beating them to the more easily accessible challenge tokens, forcing other players to travel deeper into the wilderness.
3. direct PvP combat, made far better by not being bound to the old Ranged/Melee?magic phase system.
4. Tactical purchasing of items from shops.
5. Finally, getting an edge on Story quests. It seems that in both missions the story quests will likely play a big part in beating the end boss. Both gain or lose health from factors on the board, and I'm fairly certain story quests will be factored into that.


So that's my take on it. I see 3rd edition as likely to be an improvement on a game that I liked a lot already. I may be unhappy with it once I get hands on, but I doubt it. I'm planning on doing a full review when that happens and of course youtube will be flooded with play videos in the near future as well. For now, that's my take based solely on the rules PDF and past games of 1rst/2nd edition.

-Cheers ya'll!