Hi, All! I am REALLY on the fence re. pre-ordering Runewars and am looking for someone to push me one way or the other! I'm reading posts that compare the game to TI:3. I have NOT had ANY good experiences with that game and find it quite long and tedious. Any insight here? Am I getting into the same thing with Runewars?

I don't really ming LONG games, but boredom is right out!!! THANKS!

As far as I can tell the only real similarity between TI3 and Runewars is that both games involve a long struggle for domination over their respective playing fields (the galaxy in one, the land of Menarra in the other.) Both games involve building armies and controlling territory. Both games seem ot have some sort of influence mechanic for non-combat procedures, although it doesn't look like Runewars is going to have a real political element with voting and so on. At least not that I've seen.

You say you don't have a problem with long games. That is good because I expect Runewars will be a particularly long one. In generall all of FFG's "epic box" games can be expected to take a while. Perhaps you could be more specific about what exactly you find boring about TI3, since it apparently isn't a fear of spending several hours around a table?

I can never understand how someone mislikes TI3 unless he never tried the expansion.

From my experience :

• because it can last for a *very* long time, much more than what parents and generally busy people can reasonably commit
• you can get boned very early in the game without much chance of coming back
• the game can be wildly random
• there's just too much going on, too many rules, too many systems etc...

TI3 is definitely not a game for everyone.

Seboss said:

I agree TI is not a game for everyone. If you don't mind, I'm going to analyze these reasons with regards to the OP's original concern:

- He said he doesn't mind a long game.

- It may well be possible to get boned early on in Runewars and not be able to make a comeback. Won't know on that count until we see the rules.

- Runewars does appear to have its random elements. Random rewards for completing quests, random exploration tokens (in the most recent preview), real and fake dragon rune tokens. If this is a concern for the OP from TI3 then it might well hold in RW.

- Judging by photos on BGG it doesn't look like the assembled map is quite as large as TI3's. Also each hex is one location, so no worries about two or three planets per hex. The rules will still be complex compared to some games, whether it will qualify as "too much" remains to be seen. Might be an issue, but we'll know more when the rules are posted.

My previous post was merely a reply to Stefan comment. I don't necessarily subscribe to these observations, but I have to admit I became reluctant to commit 6hrs+ to a single game of TI:3 and rather play more shorter sessions.

From what we've seen so far in the previews, it's obvious that RW is mainly focused on combat and exploration, whereas TI:3 encompasses a lot more (time consuming) aspects such as politics, trade and such. In consequence, I'm fairly confident Runewars will be much shorter and fast-paced than TI:3 which is totally fine in my book.
Now I just hope RW keeps downtime to a minimum (another main gripe about TI:3), but we'll have to wait for the rules on turn sequence to make any judgment about this.

Seboss said:

Agree here.

I also hope RW is really playable with two players, ( in the sense of being an optimal number ) in which case it should definitely be playable in an evening session and downtime should be minimal. From what I've read so far, a 2 player game looks very promising to me.

Well, if you have a halfway decent LGS you can try it there, and then make your decision. Otherwise, we're all in the same boat 'till the game comes out and gets played.

Well, I can't expect every heretic to repent, so I have to bow

Thanks for the input! The boredom in TI:3 is basically in the downtime. To be fair, the games I've played have all involved at least one AP player, who must analyze everything TO DEATH before deciding what to do. This, of course, adds to the already long downtime. Our sessions have gone 5 -6 hours each time (either three or four sessions, I believe) and we've never actually finished a game. Maybe I just need closure... Almost forgot...the games I've played were base game only, no expansion.

I guess I enjoy a bit more combat in my games than our TI:3 sessions have tended to involve. The political end of things does tend to head toward boredom for me.

Thanks again for the comments so far!

playdead said:

I can certainly understand complaint with TI3. Be glad you never played TI2 or 1 then, as they were much worse for that!

Downtime will always be a concern with big long games, I suppose. The more options a player has, the more time he has to spend thinking about what to do. Hopefully RW will address this question somehow. So far the number of different game elements seems lower than TI, so hopefully it won't be as big an issue. As others have said, though, it'll be hard to properly answer that until we actually play the game.

THAT'S for sure! I certainly am intrigued with the game! I think my best strategy is to hang back app. 6 months and see what (if any) "fixes" are up for the game. Could be as simple as errata or as "complex" as an expansion to "fix" the base game (my understanding is that the expansion "fixes" TI:3 to some extent).

In the meantime, I can read lots of reviews and maybe have a chance to kick the tires myself with someone else's copy before taking the plunge myself...

playdead said:

Trying before buying is always a wise idea, especially when you're not sure if the game is what you want.

The expansion to TI3 does fix a lot of things from the base game, but I don't know that it does much for the downtime issue. It spreads things out a little more. FT aren't quite the menace they were before, the SCs are more evenly balanced so there's no "obvious" choice everyone will go for, things like that. But actually, those fixes probably *increase* downtime, at least among inexperienced players, since there's no obvious powerful choice...

It seems like player downtime is one of the main aspects FFG has been addressing in their recent releases, so I don't foresee them dropping the ball in Rune Wars. Take Chaos in the Old World for example, turn play is divied up between the players, with each person taking part of their turn, rotating to the next player, etc. until everyone has done all their actions, leaving very few occassions where a player must sit idle waiting for someone else to do their thing.

Though I haven't personal played either of these games, a friend was telling me about Middle Earth Quest in comparison with Runebound. Apparently, both games seem to operate on a similar concept, heroes moving around a world map, co-oping and powering up to thwart the one evil player, however Middle Earth Quest is apparently much more involved, always giving the player something to do, while Runebound pretty much has one person play the game at a time (in a manner of speaking). Basicaly, he was using these two titles to show FFG's progress in game design and execution.

So, while I can't offer specific insights in comparison to TI:3 (no one can really until we see the rules), FFG has really been on top of their game lately and I think they are well aware of how important it is to keep all players constantly involved in game play.

TI 3 actually runs quite smoothly if you have players who are playing to win, When I play with my brother and his friends games take forever because no one tries to get victory points, they just try to beat each other up.

DarkElf said:

We did lots of 2 player playtests, and I thought it played great. You lose some of the inherent diplomacy found in larger games and 2 tactics cards are less useful, but besides that it scales very well.

Oh, and to answer the original post, the mechanics are entirely different, it plays must faster and it is fantasy themed.

YourBestFriend said:

Oh, and to answer the original post, the mechanics are entirely different, it plays must faster and it is fantasy themed.

Good to know. Even though TI3 is still one of my favourite game, I wouldn't care for another 6hrs+ monster game to be honest. TI3, Britannia, Descent and friends have been collecting dust for quite some time now
Should we expect a game of Starcraft-aGoT length?

Stefan said:

ditto

DarkElf said:

So sorry, disagree here. Not about the downtime, less downtime is always better, but to the optimal player number. I hope it is easily playable with 2 3 or 4 and hope that the expansion gives us 4 more factions and more tiles for a bigger game. My gaming group fluctuates in six, especially on boardgame night. We've played TI with 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 players. The best seems to be 3 and 6 players for that game (3 for speed 6 for massive amounts of player interaction). But the thing is, I don't want a game that s going to be mediocre with more than 2 players; I have war of the ring and it's great, now I want a multiplayer map wargame.

Also, related I wish the base box came with more factions. It would be nice to have Dwarves and Orcs like in Battlemist, or to add Dragons and Nomads as factions as they existed in Disk Wars.

I pray Runewars can be played with 4 players in ~5 hours. The 12 hour TI3 marathons almost killed boardgaming for my group, and we're hardcore boardgame vets.

z22 said:

I was hoping we could tackle it at the LGS in 4. 6 if at my house and we are drinking. Ok, make that 7.

playdead said:

WOW, be glad you never played the expansion then, with us the expansion games take even longer then the base game!

I actually like both the base game and expansion around the same, Itmakes it more combat oriented in addition to some of the things it balances from the base game, but also has some imbalances that it introduces as well. As stated above, it can also actually INCREASE downtime (especially since there's normally more combat which means more two people bashing each other while everyone waits).

Great game, both the base and expansion though, and with all the official variants in the rules, there are different options one can try to make the game a game they want. However, I can understand disliking the downtime, never had it in the basegame that bad yet (luckily for me, sounds as if you haven't been as lucky) but I do recall an expansion game where it felt I was just twiddling my thumbs as two players constantly battled back and forth over the course of the entire game over one insignificant planet (in otherwords, no idea why they were fighting over a single system that didn't have any of their goals in it, they both lost that game anyways, exhausted themselves on that system and each other instead of their actual objectives).

From what I'm seeing RW will have many of the elements of TI3e, don't know if it will have the downtime or not, but I am excited about it to tell the truth.

Thanks for all the input, everyone! My friend picked up his copy of RW yesterday, so I'm sure it'll see some table time at our game club SOON! Looking forward to taking it for a spin and HOPING a game doesn't drag on toward that dreaded six hour mark...

The preview event run by people that knew what they were doing took 3 hours on average from what I remember reading.

My one game, we only ran three of the 6 years, it was our first time, I was reading the rules as we went, and the 3 years took about 3 hours. The years DEFINATELY were speeding up as we learned the rules, etc. I could easily see this game being a 3-4 hour thing, with the 5-6 hours only being if lots of beer, side conversations etc were dragging things along.

To those who've played this game, does it have the epic feel like TI:3 or does it feel like it ends too fast?