Quote:

Remember that You can use every hero ability just once per turn - the only exception is Inner Fire skill, which allows You to use it twice.

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Define "turn". From how I understand it combat is in Rounds and each round you can use your skills. When you are done useing your flip coins and you both recast you move to the next Round and can use your skills again.

Rules reference, pag 14, Turns:

A player’s turn consists of spending three actions. After a player finishes spending three actions and the player finishes learning skill cards and/or using abilities, the game advances to the next player’s turn.

Rules reference, pag 11, Rounds:

The game is played over a number of rounds. During each round, each player takes one turn, beginning with the first player. At the end of each round, and before the first player takes his or her next turn, the first player moves the time token one space down the time track.

Rules reference, pag 5, Combat:

Combat is divided into rounds, and each round of combat is further divided into three phases. Players continue fighting rounds of combat until one combatant is defeated or retreats.

I honestly don't see what we need to define here, rules are pretty clear

And Inner fire "Once per combat ROUND as a combat action, you may exert to trigger the surge ability on your hero. (free) This allows you to trigger that surge ability more than once per combat ROUND."

When you are fighting a monster you have multiple rounds you go through each time you can reuse these abilities. Its still broken imo. At a minimum you get to do it twice and I could do 6 dice each time. Thats still far better than any other combo I've seen possible in the game for the cost of the cards to buy the extra movement dice and ring that adds an extra die to exploring. But how I see it you can use both cards and do it 3 times in one round if you have the surges and exert cards needed.

First of all, you need to gain these two skill cards. This means that

a) you have to have both of them (getting exactly those 2 cards out of a 60-card deck is not impossible, but certainly not something happening every game you play; the definition of "broken" should be related also to the frequency events happen. If something happens every time, it's broken. If something happens once every 50 games, then it's a lucky combo)

b) you have to learn both of them. Jack costs 1R, 1G, 1B; Inner Fire costs 2N. This means 5 trophies (so, most of what you'll earn in a single game) and 3 of them must be of specific colors, so again, triggering this is not exactly cheap

c) you must have the slots to learn them, 1 skill is Mind, the other Spirit, if you have 1 hero not having the slot in Mind or Spirit you can't trigger this combo

Then, if you're able to pack these ability on Lyssa, with the other players allowing you to build a six-dice pool, well, they are not understanding how the game really works. They could also buy the items for you and giving them to you directly. But it's not the game being broken, but the way it's played. Items boosting movements are the strongest in the game because they help exploring (hence, better odds at getting the best rewards) and they give you a bonus on the most important resource of all: time. You move faster, hence you gain actions over the game's integral time. Allowing a character like Lyssa to pack up 6 dice is suicidal, period. So far (33 games to my last count, IIRC) we had only once a character having 6 movement dice.

In any case there are some combos that are extremely powerful in the game, that allows you to deal easily 6-8 damage / round to any of your enemies, thus, killing Margath in one round and a half even if you're not Lyssa. Another important point: before saying something is broken, you should be sure of the power level of the game. If you see one combo that is very strong, it doesn't mean that all the remaining combos are weak

quote: "One could also argue the opposite: The ppl who think its too easy are playing some of the rules incorrect there by affecting the ease of victory."

Possibly, but honestly, I don't think so. I'm sure to be playing by the rules, and most of the people on BGG sayin' Margath's really easy they are also answering to countless threads about rules, so that it's easily provable they are actually playing correctly

quote: "The next game I play I'll look into how much gold and trophies I attain along the way. So far with playing solo I have engaged in the boss fight at the last possible moment as there are no other players to compete with and this gave me more time to upgrade."

That's an interesting point. You're playing solo, but the game is not designed to support solo play. One could argue that essentially it's a multiplayer solitaire, but actually it's not, because the presence of other players will help incredibly on other aspects of the game, the first one being farming the markets for good cards; the second one is farming the skill deck to get the skills they need (then it's a lot harder getting the Jack of all Trades + Inner Fire combo; still feasible, but still, you decrease drastically the odds); then story cards are resolved differently; and so on.

quote: "There is also just bad luck with the flipping of the coins and the Boss has the potential to dish out massive damage. Personnaly I just feel like I never get enough time and gold to really buy a full setup for my char, and I don't enjoy deadline mechanics in games I play. Im lucky to get 2 or 3 pieces of gear. Skills are easier but most of them are geared to helping you with quests or more stats to pass tests etc and not directly aimed at improving your end boss fight with damage or defense."

The deadline mechanic was designed to avoid games to drag forever (one of the most common complaints about 2nd edition was that the game lasted ages); as said, this is incredibly easy to houserule, just give yourself a few more extra rounds to fully develop your character and it should be ok. 2-3 pieces of gear means all and nothing to me, sorry. The max items giving extra tokens you may have in a given game is:

a) one weapon (unless you've learned the Dual Wield skill, of course)

b) one clothing

c) one general piece of equipment

all the rest is cool, but gives no extra tokens. So, it's exactly 3 pieces of gear, but if these are Runic Armor, Truesights Bow and Shards of Fate it's pretty impossible you lose a game; if these are Marsh Cloak, Ancient Sword and Ring of Strength then you're doomed to certain death.

As said, try to focus on gold & trophies parameters to tune the general strategy. Then, if you're going solo, create a houserule allowing you to flush the cards on a market at the very beginning of the shop action, just to farm faster through the deck (considering you'll be the only one working on these decks)

Hope this helps

In the majority of games I've played ( which is nowhere near 33 ), I find that a lot of people under-estimate the markets and items. This could just be my group, but the last game I played I think I only completed 4-5 adventures. I spent the majority of the game running between the cities collecting and selling goods and buying equipment.

To my surprise this worked quite well!

I had only one skill learned by the end ( ironically the one that lets you learn other skills for one less trophy, so that was a great use! ), but I was a beast!

I had about 18-20g worth of items on me and could tackle pretty much anything.

That said, it isn't the only strategy and the skill combos can be quite powerful as well, but don't under-estimate the shop items.

They're the only things that give you additional combat tokens at the end of the day.

A lot of my friends in the same game were running around learning skills and completing adventures but getting little progression from them. They all claimed it was too difficult to save up enough money to buy the decent stuff (which I obviously proved them wrong in). It takes a bit more effort, but gives a lot more in return. Especially given you can sell items in cities for the same price you bought them so there is no disadvantage to buying a mediocre weapon early and upgrading later if a better one comes up.

I remember I had the horse (actual card name I can't remember, +2 terrain dice) which I used to sell a bunch of goods then sold it off for the 7-8g it cost in the first place to buy a badass sword. Very fun game for me.

Mitchjmiller scores a great point here. He says "I spent a lot of time using the markets to get goods and deliver them and so on". It's a good way to go. It's not clearly the only strategy for winning the game, but it's a strategy that pays off, because you start a gold-based engine focused on equipment and items. It's not always said that markets help you in this way because there could be a paucity of goods around, and there are no ways to flush the cards and reset a market (think of the third spot option on Cliffwatch Inn if you've ever played Lords of Waterdeep, for example), but it's a way to go.

The more a player's knowledge of the game grows, the better the ability of tuning movements and actions will become, and different engines will become more and more evident. I remember a Margath's game won with a guy mostly helped by skills and only one medium weapon, for example. And I remember when I started exploring the game (eons ago in terms of gameplay): I started mostly by hoarding gold thanks to the goods. They I tried red adventures and got trashed, and thought "this game sucks so hard". Then I tried again, and again, and finally now I have a playstyle eons away from where I begun: I train a lot more, rest only if needed, go for red adventures mostly during act II, and I try to build two types on engines, one optimizing the movements / actions, and the second one working either on gold and equipment or on skills. I don't win every game I play, but all games are pretty darn close.

Truth is that this game could seem like a "light" game, where you wonder around a fantastic world exploring and doing stuff (and it's true), but it's also a difficult game, with a rather steep learning curve, that require trying a few strategies before reaching the correct balance among all the different options (which is something I honestly like a lot, because it grants quite a replayability to the game)

I have no problem with using cards instead of dice, even if I thought I would have.

It's pretty neat and shuffles the ability deck some more, which is good, I believe - giving more diversity to every game and a bit of chaos too (it's harder to hunt the ability card You desire, but if You miss one, You can always count it'll be back in the game when whole deck will be reshuffled).

I love the argument that tossing the tokens are like casting runes.

This is so neat!

Very easy to control, but so many possibilities!

Dice is just fate - even if You can reroll some of them it's still just double take on fate.

Here, with the option to flip some tokens - You can exactly predict what You'll get and make Your battle strategy basing on that.

Easy, quick, and more in control - so far I just love it.

I don't have a problem with pulling cards either. Plus, to me, it makes skills feel more valuable in that the higher the skill number the more cards you get to draw for a better chance of success.

And sometimes the fates are just against you and it's hard to pull/get the skills/items you need or to even get trophies. I had one game where I played Lyssa and I just kept getting my ass handed to me by enemies(partially because I didn't stop to heal completely) and so was not able to advance. I think this is the exception once you get a good idea of how the game plays, but it's still possible because there IS an element of luck involved. Overall I think the mechanics are much better balanced than 2nd ed. The only complaint is that I felt the flavour and variety was a bit more interesting in 2nd. I LOVED all the flavor text with the items, the companions and the enemies. 3rd feels much more generic in that regard as well as in the art for the cards. It's more cohesive and consistent in 3rd but not quite as compelling.

I had one game where I played Lyssa and I just kept getting my ass handed to me by enemies(partially because I didn't stop to heal completely) and so was not able to advance.

Hey bigmac , but Lyssa can exert to immediately heal all the damage after being defeated!

I'm not so surprised You didn't win if You overlooked that!

(no offence)

No, I didn't overlook that, I used it on a regular basis. I was talking about having a couple damage from a previous win or just bad luck right after something like that.

It is easily possible just to have a string of bad luck in the game.

I played another couple of games. Another one solo this time with Laurel. I won at the end with 14 total trophies and 21 total gold. The next game was be and a friend playing Laurel and I think Mok. I didn't get to record our gold and trophies totals but we both waited till the dragon was actually two spaces away from the town before I engaged it first. I died in about 2 rounds. Next was Laurel who fought well and went many rounds but I was able to heal a few times and eventually had enough to out damage Laurel and kill her.

To be clear I don't mean to sound like I hate this game due to the challenge. I like games to challenge me. But I don't like unbalance. My friend seemed to really dislike the combat mechanics and was not enjoying it. There was even a fight with a monster where he insisted I let him win or he would not really want to play any future games. I'm not sure I understand why he felt this way but everyone is different.

I like the game and ya the time mechanic is to get the game time down but when I play it even the game with my friend that took longer than my solo games, I get lost in the game and forget the time. So to me a longer game would actually be a good thing.

In the game where I had both of the skills with lyssa the one with the high cost I was able to pay for with one of the quest cards that allow you to bypass all costs from the card and get it for free if you roll the correct outcome.

He'd just faceroll us with 7-8+ damage every round (we started calling it the damage dumptruck). Any key symbols would get flipped to something less useful, then he'd heal.

He can't heal faster than you damage him

Could you possibly post the equipment you were using / the skills you had learned while challenging him?

Sure he can if you toss poorly and/or don't have tons of amazing gear and skills, which all take time and luck to acquire.

And he doesn't have to out heal all the damage, even a little of it is usually enough with him swinging regularly for 7+. No hero can really withstand that for more than a few turns.

I don't remember what gear we had, it didn't matter much in the end because at best it would give you say a token with +3 damage, which he can probably flip to something useless, while still swinging for like 5-6.

If there aren't trade goods early and/or you draw strong fights early, you can be taken out of the running pretty easily by just bad luck of the draw.

Like I said, we only had a few games, but it was brutally random. If Margath tosses well and gets the dumptruck, odds are you'll just lose, especially if he does it two-three times in a row. Sure he wont heal, but he doesn't need to when he deals 22 damage in three rounds.

I love the game only thing i dont like is the fact that its a race to defeat the dragon it can be a lackluster ending

I played Margath with 4 players recently with the following outcome.

We had Mok, Laurrel, Hawthorn, and I was the wizard with the ability that lets you move x spaces after you get a trophy with an exert.

I did horribly and only earned about 6 gold total all game, I had a few skills trained but nothing useful for combat with the boss. I also only got 2 lore.

Mok was decent with the player pumping up his mind value to get more draw power for more damage. I'd say he had a few items maybe 15 gold worth and a decent skill setup. I'd say he had about 4 lore.

Then there was Laurrel who did great and got a ton of gold at about 30+ she managed to get quests that gave her free items as long as they were over the cost of 7 and 5 and got a lucky 12gp weapon. She had the dual wield skill and had 2 weapons. She only had 2 lore.

Hawthorn did bad as well only getting a little gold and few skills. But he had 7 lore.

At the end we all waited until the last moment to attack the dragon, he was two spaces from tamalir. Larrel attacked first and we all thought she was going to easily kill the dragon. It went several rounds and was close but she failed by about 3 hp left on the dragon.

Next up was Mok who got really unlucky and didn't get surges he lasted only 2 rounds and when he used his power and drew cards (6)+3-4 with exerts only managed to get 3 damage.

Then came Hawthorn who we all thought was going to loose horribly, he maxed out the HP reduction with lore and started out the boss with 8hp then he had two skills that did damage upon engagement lowering him to 6. Next he focused all his coins on damage and would flip over coins with shields. It took 2 rounds and he managed to kill it.

In the end we had two situations where luck overtook our expectations of how the fight would go down. Our game took 9 hours. And my prior 2 player game took 5 or 6. (My group are players who don't like to make any mistakes so combat is a long process of careful planning.)

The group played 2nd ed before and one mentioned that they missed how you could choose the difficulty of the cards in 2nd and disliked how 3rd has them all mixed together and when you fail it costs you alot of time to heal then move to a town and heal again. Another really didn't like the coin flip mechanic and wished it was dice. I personally like the coins and it feels less like math and more thematic. Also everyone did not like the feeling of being rushed into fighting the boss because of the time turn counter mechanic and felt in 2nd ed it was the players that decided the game length by competition as to when a player was ready to go for the boss. It also makes you feel like you never get enough time to level up and get rewards which is the most enjoyable element for this game to be honest.

Next game I will try the other quest line and see how it goes.

Also, Lyssa starts with the least amount of money of any hero which makes it bit easier for other heroes to initially buy things out from under her. And remember you DON'T have to buy something when you use the "shop" action. You either buy or discard down to three cards. If people are so concerned about her getting movement items just "shop" and discard the item that gives movement.

very good looks and plays well,but badly needs more content..that was the massive bonus about 2 edition..lots of packs/expansions and pretty regular too...why not convert them to this edition of the game? would save on money and time for FFG its a no-brainer I would have thought

just had a thought... wouldn't it be good if you could mix this with dungeonquest..that base game has lots and lots of stuff..but its just too quick to appreciate a lot of it.

games have changed in the last 5 years or so. not only boardgames, but computer games too, and both in the same way. this change is a wrong one, as the fallen numbers of players significantly show. see WOW, which was once an ADDICTED game. can you imagine to become addicted from that today oir from any other actual game ?

The only addicted game for me was Skyrim and this only because of the mods. without mods, this game is as poor and full of bugs like any other actual game. its trash.

so you dont need to wonder what happens with our beloved old ffg games. even Talisman get a ffg-shock with the fate , allowing to reroll dice rolls for every player. what milkdrinkers are the target group for these games ? is it in the calcuiation that more and more low minded people populate our culture?

Games today, boardgames and computergames, are not to be played as they are. they are like deepfrozen food. you need to make it tasteful by yourself. in the end, be honest, what counts is the game material and maybe some ideas in it, you cant expect more ! you cant critize actual games because they are no games, they are just some game material you can use to make your own game version out of it, thats, my friends, is our time!

now runebound 3 is really record breaking in how to demolate a game. it is not only half of the map and half of the other content from the 2nd ed, basicgame, most of it you can simply throw away. combat tokerns for example. simply kick them away, make your own dice system, thats it..

you can not expect a full satisfying game for your money nowadays and all the critics i read here i just think : how stupid they are, how immobilie, how lazy. they can simply make their critic points better witth some rules, some die, some tokens.

Hi there,

I am wondering what the average playtime is when you are 2 players ? Besides in term of difficulty would you compare it to Runewars or is it easier ?

As for the playtime, I can easily play this 2p in 90 minutes, or so. A for the difficulty... I haven't played Runewars, so, I can't compare. The game has a learning curve, tho, so, a few games are needed to find out the correct strategy to develop properly your heroes and win the scenario (or at least have a decent chance at winning it)

Difficulty is hard to express due to the token system and the fact that I don't know what you mean by difficulty.

The rules themselves are quite simple but I have't played Runewars.

However the game uses a token flipping system instead of combat dice and this makes it harder for a new to player to determine their character's strength. With dice you can say I need a total of 15 beat this guy and I get two dice+6, so I need 9 from 2 dice. With the tokens you can't really do this. You flip the tokens and spend them to do or save damage. This means that most players won't really have an understanding of their combat value until after they have played a few fights. This plus the randomness of the flipping can lead to some players thinking certain battles are impossible. They are not, but with limited experience it is quite tricky to gauge when you're strong enough for the final battle.

90 minutes is not that long. I really feared that it would be a lot more.
So the unique difficulty would be the combat system with the tokens, not so hard to handle i suppose, and then at least it makes a change.

The point is that some play buddies don't stand games that go for hours, and i really hesitate between all the new stuff (SW Rebellion, FuryoD, and RuneBound).

I haven't make my mind yet, but i would say that RuneBound is for now ahead on my wish list.

I played (and tested) all the games you listed, Tintaglia. RuneBound is by far the shortest of the group, I had SW:Rebellion games lasting easily over 4 hours (with a peak of an insane game that lasted 5h30'), and Fury of Dracula is not that shorter (3 hours on average). Clearly, both Rebellion and Fury have a hide & seek mechanism that could result in a very short game if some guesses are lucky, but if the game goes full steam, hey, it's loooong. RuneBound has a fix number of turns to play, but if you don't have players suffering from eccessive AP, it flies rather smooth

I played the game a few times with with 2 other players (a total of 3) and it took us a little bit over 4 hours in the game where we all knew the rules. However I have to say that we took our time and played the first scenario, which nearly lastet for 3 Acts (2 Acts is more normal) while one of the players could have easily finished the game before the end of Act II and in the end everyone got to battle the final boss. So realistically I think you should calculate ~70 minutes per player for the first games where you are grasping the whole game-system and strategies, after that I can imagine it to become faster and the second scenario ends with the end of Act II so it's probably a little bit shorter or at least has a more consistant play-time.

Compared to Runewars (one of my favourite games), this game is significantly shorter, a lot less exhausting and much easier. The strengths of this game is building your character and there are so many different ways to build your character that it really doesn't get old. You can't level stats, you only level and build your character with specific skills and all the items you acquire come with unique combat tokens. This means your strategies are quite smaller in scope and there is a lot less to take into account compared to Runewars, which makes this game more of an engaging adventure than a fight for every tiny bit of advantage.

After playing this 4 hours+ session of this game, we didn't feel exhausted, like we do after Runewars (which takes us ~7 hours to finish) or even after Descent or Imperial Assault. Imo it's the perfect game for these sessions, where everyone feels a bit exhausted and isn't comfortable with engaging in heavy tactical thoughts, yet there is enough room for decisions, excitement and a nice game-ark, to make it an enjoyable expirience.

After playing this 4 hours+ session of this game, we didn't feel exhausted, like we do after Runewars (which takes us ~7 hours to finish) or even after Descent or Imperial Assault. Imo it's the perfect game for these sessions, where everyone feels a bit exhausted and isn't comfortable with engaging in heavy tactical thoughts, yet there is enough room for decisions, excitement and a nice game-ark, to make it an enjoyable expirience.

Thx Damaz. that is it ! so thx for the feed back.

Yes, I agree with Damaz, Runebound is much easier than Runewars and much less time- and mind-consuming.
It's pretty good fun, really, very replayable, with a lot strategies and ways to customize your character and have fun with it.

However, for me, the best game from this universe so far is clearly Battlelore - awesome, simple and intuitive - but for 2 players only.