sepayne7l said:

I hope so!

cadamec said:

And now to date myself. I see them as more like Mad Martegan from Willow. Yeah he s a bad@$$ guy who takes names and beats people down, but either he can't or wont join the army. They would have let him out of the cage and he would have escaped to go about his business elsewhere. And while in that movie he eventually joined the army and fought at the final battle, the castle was basically taken by his forces even without his help. He just happened to kill the enemy general after the battle was decided. Also, I m pretty sure that the heroes will interact with armies via tactic cards. I know that s just a guess, but I really think they wouldn't miss that opportunity.

Lindsey said:

Yes, this bugs me somewhat as well. However, in the Duel example in the rulebook, Mad Carthos has the Rageblade which lets him "deal damage equal to the heroes strength" when he draws a special ability symbol. So it looks like at least with artifacts, the heroes attributes do matter.

one thing that bugs me is the harvest:

- I understand that when conquering new regions, you don't immediately get the benefits. That makes sense: you need to get your workers established and start collecting the resources.

- But why the hell do you not lose immediately your benefits when LOSING regions??? Your loss will only be updated if you choose to harvest, so in the mean time, you're working on resources that don't exist? I really hope some of the seasons cards force you to update your resources

Johncraven said:

My guess: Maybe Harvest was invented so you wouldn't need to count resources nearly so often?

That's not an especially good explanation for why it makes sense to wait for a Harvest before counting, but it could still be the reason for the mechanic.

If you zoom in on the art on the back of the box (picture on BGG), you can see that there is a season card which forces you to adjust your resources to their actual values.

Johncraven said:

Resources tend to get collected and stockpiled over a length of time the likes of which this game covers. I can see an argument for the idea that your kingdom has a reserve of resources gained from that region which takes a little time to deplete. Thus, even though you have lost the land itself, it may take a few seasons to run through the overstock in your storehouses.

since you have to use the Harvest order to collect resources, it adds another factor.

If you believe you are going to take a territory, you might hold off on playing your harvest order until you have the additional territory (and resource) under control. Additionally, if you think you might be loosing territiories, you might harvest sooner rather than later, to ensure getting resources.

By using the harvest order as the time to collect/adjust your dials, it seems to place an emphasis on the strategic level of the game. All these musings though are simply that. I can't wait to actually play the game and see how it all pans out.

To be fair, are we really arguing about realism in a game with magic, flying horses, and undead?

broken said:

Sharp eyes!

broken said:

This same old argument is pretty weak. It's not because a game has magic that it needs to be completely stupid, and have an universe that makes no sense at all, otherwise (not that it is the case there, but still, even fantasy universe need to be coherent), unless background reasons exist for things to behave the way they do.

broken said:

If you want to handwave the entire universe because magic exists, that's your business. Personally, I'm willing to entertain discussion up to a certain point in the interest of making the world more complete in my mind by way of critical thinking. If people start insulting one another for their thoughts or trying to argue logic as an excuse to twink out the rules, then I usually walk away, but that's not what's happening here.

Any (good) fictional universe requires suspension of disbelief sooner or later, but that doesn't mean that we should ignore everything just because some things aren't realistic. That's how I feel anyway.

Descent is a bit of a special case in this rule of thumb, since it has a lot of illogical rulings that need to be upheld to maintain game balance. As such, for that game, I don't usually waste time trying to explain logical conundrums. Rest assured, however, if I could find a complete ground-up rewrite of the rules that made logical sense AND preserved game balance, I would switch over in a heartbeat. I've often considered making my own, but I can never find the time.

However, just because Runewars takes place in the same universe as Descent doesn't mean it's rules will suffer the same logical flaws. I haven't seen anything to indicate that's happening as yet, so I will happily continue to discuss logical implications here as long as everyone can remain civil about it.

Steve-O said:

yea, that's what I thought too, can't edit my post. that's why I think it only makes sense if there are regular season cards that force you to update.

because if I am getting crushed by an opponent and losing a lot of lands, I would not want to play harvest to keep my current production and defend better.

If you don't like my argument about a fantasy setting, how about this: does it really make sense to argue about realism in a world where battles are decided by drawing cards? You have to give way to game mechanics at some point, and it wouldn't have worked the way they wanted it to if you gained and lost areas immediately.

Johncraven said:

That's probably a valid strategy, but Harvest does more than update your dials. It also lets you get goodies from developments and build more developments. You're going to be shooting yourself in the foot if you keep completely skipping harvest.

The "update dials at a specific time" mechanic is going to be familiar to anyone that's played Game of Thrones since it's supply mechanic is exactly the same. You can invent all sorts of rationales for why it could make sense, but the bottom line is simply play balance.

broken said:

And what has cards to do with it? Drawing card represents the randomness of the battle. Whoudl you like to lay sword blows at the enemy figure with your one to be realistic?

Mechanics is one thing but this mechanics has to be backed up by some logic/realism.

For the most part, just reading the rules has made me very excited to buy this game. There were two errors that I noticed: the first was in the harvesting example, the ore token says 3, but the player only has 2, which is also noted on the dial itself, secondly, I can't remember but I will keep you all posted. The one concern that I have is that the end all determinate for the winner of the game and influence bids, in case of a tie, is who started out with the most influence. This seems like it might be a bit unfair and would make things complicated when selecting your race. I haven't played myself, but I can see fights erupting for the choice of the player with the highest starting influence. I realize that it would be a rare case, but just in case, it is better safe than sorry. Anyway, I am still excited to buy and play this game. Can't wait until I can find somewhere that is selling it.

Vitalis said:

Given the option, I'd take good, unrealistic mechanics over bad, realistic ones any day. Perhaps in a world where magic is involved (which doesn't make any logical sense, at all, period, in our world), the logistics and diplomacy of resource management are different as well. You are overthinking it, especially when you don't bat an eye at a dog that breathes fire, or a DRAGON.

broken said:

Why don't you just go all in? How much sense does it make to argue about realism in a board game?

For that matter why does anyone argue about the realism of a TV show or a movie? I mean it's all scripted, right? Even the ones that are supposedly based on true stories are still recreations at the end of the day, unless you're watching the news you probably aren't looking at real footage of the events described. So why does anybody waste their time questioning the realism of a show like CSI? No border between Ontario and Vermont? Who cares, it's just fiction!

Why do people spend so much time analysing classic literature, exploring motives of characters and themes of old books? None of it is real. What does it matter?

It's an intellectual exercise. I agree there is such a thing as taking it too far, but I don't think one simple question about resource production constitutes taking things too seriously. In fact, I'd say you're the one taking things too far by jumping on the mere notion of someone trying to make fictional sense out of the way the game's mechanics work after a single question. If you don't care about the setting and just want to draw cards, move plastic units and win or lose by the book, no one's stopping you from doing that. If all you care about is the mechanics then it really doesn't matter what they game universe contains. Maybe it has magic, maybe it just has big guns. The way you talk it's all just plastic on a board, so who cares?

Also, for the record, I don't recall anyone in this discussion suggesting that the rules should be changed. We're talking about why it happens within the game universe, we're not proposing house rules. Even if we were proposing house rules, no one's forcing you to use them.

You don't need to comment on every thread you see on this forum, if you don't like what we're talking about just move along and quit trolling.

when the theme makes sense with the mechanics, it helps you process the rules better, because you can figure out the rules by intuition. this particular bit is a bit counter-intuitive and it's no coincidence that's it's included in the FAQ section, because it's not logical.

Actually, gaining all available resources through normal harvests, tax collections, etc from newly conquered areas in just a few years isn't realistic either. They should have called it 'plunder' or 'pillage' instead.

But hey, I think this mechanic will work out great. It will sometimes lead to some interesting tactical/strategical choices.

Johncraven said:

Eh, maybe. Your armies conquer the territory, but you don't get anything out of it until you use Harvest to build the economic infrastructure (mines, plow the fields, cut the timber, etc). Again, perhaps it's because I played Game of Thrones, but it doesn't feel counter intuitive to me.

ckessel said:

we're not arguing the conquering part, we're arguing about the losing territory part

Johncraven said:

True, but it'd feel incredibly clunky to have a different mechanic for gaining resources than losing them.

Having read the rules, I can't wait to lay my hands on the game. Might take some more days though, as I live in Germany and still

have to wait for the airmail to arrive

Anyways, I keep wondering why people want to use heroes in battles. Battles are fought by soldiers and by the way, you wouldn't want e.g.

Red Scorpion battling Siege Towers, would you ? Additionally, it makes sense that heroes are able to move through enemy territory, as it would

be quite easy for a single person to travel through a forest, or virtually any not-too-plain terrain and remain hidden, even if there are hundreds of

enemy soldiers present.

That's why i appreciate the hero/questing system being separated from the battlefields of the great armies (a Footman rather represents

a Company or even Battalion of Footmen; your giant realm will surely muster more than 10 soldiers, no ?)

If heroes were to participate in battle, they would become merely powerful Units. That's not what heroes are. Heroes are specialists of some kind,

adventurers, able and willing to act on their own and seek out places hidden to others (such as locations of Dragon Runes). With the heroes

separated from armies, raw military strength does not guarantee a victory. Rather, even the militarily most powerful player cannot only concentrate

on overrunning the lands of his opponents. He too is forced to compete on a non-military level - in questing. This adds to the diversity of the game

and adds the requirement for more tactics.