Greetings! Ah, what a time to be a game's fan! The expectation in the final week before release! The open vistas, the wild-west of an unknown and undefined meta! The endless easter eggs that will be yours over the next few months! I congratulate you, Runewarrior, on being in the right place at the right time.

I, however, am not one of your ilk. I fly tiny ships and go 'pew pew' for a living. So to that end, as a sucker always open to a new avenue of losing all my money to plastic crack, I come here to ask you a simple question: Why should I (and my fellow squadron pilots) join you?

Can those among you who know the two systems give me a sales pitch as to how RMG improves upon X-Wing? Why it scratches a different itch? How the patched game mechanics work? (For example I'm a little worried that the wonderful maneuver system will make actually engaging in close combat a bit of a fright fest - in X-Wing you just have to get your opponent in arc - in RMG you need to make base to base contact.)

In all seriosuness, it's probably an important topic, really. I'm guessing RMG will need FFG customers to be seduced over into playing it in order to make the game viable, as early adopters - it can't just be predicated as a business model on poaching disgruntled GW players - especially as AoS seems to have recently staggered to its feet, tucked its entrails back inside its stomach cavity, and be making a decent fist of being an actually good game.

Yours, pewpewingly,

Banjobenito

Well it's fantasy instead of space combat and the minis are not painted so that definitely scratches a different itch. As I haven't really read teh rules i can't tell you what's different but I think you yourself shoudl know bes if you want another game and if that game should be a fantasy rank & file wargame.

One more thing though thanks to Terrinoth beeing FFG's own IP you do not have to fear to lose your game thanks to license shenanigans.

Thanks Iceeagle! I'm happy with the fantasy setting, and the painting/hobby aspect... I'm more interested in list building, rule systems, how the game 'feels' if you know what I mean. I've had a leaf through the rules, but that's very different to the experience of building and playing your lists, where all the facets tend to jump out at you. Just looking for some informed opinions on all this biz.

Also, they have promised (and so far delivered) that you will not need to make cross-faction purchases to get all available upgrades. They announced the essentials pack so if you just want Elves or Uthuk you won't need to buy a Core set.

I've played it but i think it's tough to say yet.

By the way, I also started a thread over in the X-wing forum, asking people's opinions on RMG over there, if anyone wants to chime in and advocate for the system.

As someone who has played X-wing for over three years, and been playing RWM since last July, I think I can shed some light on the differences for you.

To start off, one of the things I really like is the way engaging an enemy unit is handled. You have to run into the enemy, which in X-wing can be very finicky because of having to line up exactly where you hit because of arc being so important. In RWM when you hit an enemy you square up to them, meaning if it is obvious you are going to hit them, and you can see what side you will contact, you don't even really need to pay attention to how you would move along the template. You just square up to that edge and call it a day. You also don't have to pick up and mark the position of units to get the template down, because you never move through enemies. If you would run into them anywhere along the template, you hit them and then square up. It's much more elegant.

The other big thing is the variable initiative system. Your activation order is different every round based on the actions each unit is doing. This eleminates both the "PS race" that X-wing has experienced occasionally, and also eleminates the "activation advantage" that makes most big ships unviable in armada lately.

Speaking of armada, the scoring system from RWM is very much like armadas great scoring system of objective scoring mixed with kill scoring, which is the one big complaint I have with X-wing. 100/6 gets a bit repetitive after awhile and gives very little room for multiple vastly different squad compositions.

I don't have a core yet, but I've been slowly becoming a fan of Terrinoth and the Runebound universe over the past few years. That was enough to get my attention.

But the part of the rules that really got me hyped was terrain. In X-wing, there's not much interaction with terrain - try not to touch it, get punished if you do, get rewarded if it obstructs enemy attacks on you. In this game, you can send your unit into a forest or guard wall/tower for defense, and you can emerge from it at any angle you'd like to surprise your foes. Probably not too different from most wargames, but different enough from X-wing to be tactically interesting.

I'm definitely going to jump in to terrain building once I have a sizable army. Trees! Rocks! Spiky barricades! Fortress towers! I can't wait!

So, knowing your opponents' dials is really really important because the core of tactics, at least at the level i was playing, is getting the resolution sequence right.

Excellent stuff! How does list building feel? I'm guessing it'll change as the game proliferates, but right now, does it feel restrictive?

Great news on the terrain, movement and objectives.

8 minutes ago, DrCthulhu said:

Also, they have promised (and so far delivered) that you will not need to make cross-faction purchases to get all available upgrades. They announced the essentials pack so if you just want Elves or Uthuk you won't need to buy a Core set.

Yes. This. So much this. I'm as big of an FFG fanboy as the next guy, but mixing in useful upgrades in another factions units, like X-wing and armada would've been murder in this game.

Nobody has touched on army-building, so I'll tackle that.

In X-Wing, a given ship has a set of upgrade slots, with the most variable slot being whether there is an Elite upgrade slot or not. There are some upgrades (like Virago and Smuggling Compartments) that change this up. Overall, however, a K-wing is a K-wing, no matter who is flying it.

In Runewars, your access to upgrades is dependent on how big your formation is. Larger formations cost less per figure than smaller formations but can take a wider assortment of upgrades. You also have the trade-off of larger units giving you fewer attacks per round. It's an interesting system to work with.

Speaking of upgrades, some upgrades are "figure upgrades." These have a figure tied to the upgrade. If the figure dies, you lose the upgrade. It's like being able to shoot Autothrusters off of Soontir Fel! I really like this mechanic!

Just now, banjobenito said:

Excellent stuff! How does list building feel? I'm guessing it'll change as the game proliferates, but right now, does it feel restrictive?

Great news on the terrain, movement and objectives.

The list building seems like it would be restrictive since there are not too many upgrade types and you can only take each unit in predefined formations, but the way the formations affect (effect? I'm a math major... I suck at English) the units combat effectiveness really makes deciding on exactly which formations to bring and how to deploy them a very interesting part of list building. And like all FFG games, the perfect list you come up with will always be just a couple points too much, meaning you will always have to make those tough choices about where to shave those points and which upgrades are the most important to your list and play style. I have always loved that aspect.

4 minutes ago, TallTonyB said:

The list building seems like it would be restrictive since there are not too many upgrade types and you can only take each unit in predefined formations, but the way the formations affect (effect? I'm a math major... I suck at English) the units combat effectiveness really makes deciding on exactly which formations to bring and how to deploy them a very interesting part of list building. And like all FFG games, the perfect list you come up with will always be just a couple points too much, meaning you will always have to make those tough choices about where to shave those points and which upgrades are the most important to your list and play style. I have always loved that aspect.

Affect.

Thank you sir.

This game is more in my wheelhouse. I played X-Wing for a while, but the dependency on upgrade combinations and the prepainted system, it felt more like a CCG to me than a miniatures game.

RWM feels more like a, for lack of a better term, proper miniatures game. Yes, it'll have upgrade combos, but they don't seem as dependent. And the hobby aspect is much more immersive. I also think they've taken so much attention to detail with the components of this game that the overall value is really high

Effect is a noun, affect is an action, that's the simple distinction

On topic, mechanically the best part of this game versus x wing is the dual dial system

Just now, Taki said:

Effect is a noun, affect is an action, that's the simple distinction

On topic, mechanically the best part of this game versus x wing is the dual dial system

It's not always that simple, because you can also effect a change in something, which is using "effect" as a verb instead of a noun. That's possibly where the common confusion comes from.

1 minute ago, Budgernaut said:

It's not always that simple, because you can also effect a change in something, which is using "effect" as a verb instead of a noun. That's possibly where the common confusion comes from.

The joy and wonders if the English language lol, but as you'll notice I did say simple test

Just now, Taki said:

The joy and wonders if the English language lol, but as you'll notice I did say simple test

You're right. Your method works the vast majority of the time. And upon further reflection, the confusion between "effect" and "affect" has much more to do with being homophones than the fringe cases of "effect" begin used as a verb.

Hey, can we ditch the argument about affect vs. effect and get back to more important questions, like, how do you feel about Comic Sans?

Seriously though, the game mechanics differences were spelled out pretty well by others, but I think a main reason for many folks is going to be the theme. You're going to spend a lot of time building lists and painting. You'll develop a possibly unhealthy relationship with these bits of plastic. It's really important that you like them and identify with them on some level.

1 minute ago, Budgernaut said:

You're right. Your method works the vast majority of the time. And upon further reflection, the confusion between "effect" and "affect" has much more to do with being homophones than the fringe cases of "effect" begin used as a verb.

Honestly, I'm surprised that American English hasn't just merged them into one word yet

Massive X-Wing, Imperial Assault and Armada player here. And I've got a full collection of Battlelore.

For me, I'm buying in because:

- it's a fantasy minis game so it fills that niche

- I used to try and play and collect WHFB back when I was aged 10-15, but it was too obtuse and retrospectively I actually hate GW systems - they just feel so antiquated and inelegant to me

- so back at GenCon when FFG said "Hey, who wants WHFB, but with our awesome rules and OP?" I was well onboard

For me it is the rank n file miniatures-game 'feel' I want.

Not gonna stop X-wing nor Armada for it though.

Eventually I might transfer my salary directly to ffg. That day seems closer and closer...

I'm going to completely ignore theme to answer this...

Play it because it is the refined successor to a game you already love.

X-Wing did a lot of new things in the miniature game industry. People were blown away by the dial and template system and the simplicity of play.

Can this system be scaled up, we asked? Of course it can, replied FFG!

Armada happened, and Armada learned a lot of lessons from X-Wing, introducing new methods of diversifying gameplay through objective cards, and expanding ship upgrade mechanics.

Meanwhile, another set of games evolved, starting with DOOM years ago, evolving into Descent, which evolved into Imperial Assault (And the new DOOM game) With each incarnation being smoother and more refined than the last, mechanically speaking.

These two branches of game design converge in Runewars. With lessons learned from each series of games, the damage deck system and template movement from X-Wing, the surge system from Descent/Imperial Assault, an expanded objective/deployment system from Armada, with each of these features crafted with several years of metagame and high level tournament play in hindsight.

Each time FFG releases one of these games, it's more balanced and polished than the last.

So, the question seems to be "Why WOULDN'T an X-Wing/Armada veteran want to try the latest and greatest incarnation of a game system they already love?"