I picked up a copy of Runewars last night and a couple of players that had had the game for a few days walked me and another first time player through the game. My first impression was that the game played well and seems like it will offer a nice depth of play even before the expansions start rolling in. I really enjoyed the variable initiative and the rotating of which player went first.

My one beef with the game so far is that it can be kind of hard to read. The pictures that identify to which unit the dials belong were too small. I had a lot of trouble telling the dial for Kari apart from the dial for my spear men. This will probably get better when I'm familiar enough with the dials that I know who they belong to based on the content of the dials. Since dials were left on the table next to their unit for most of the game this isn't as big a problem as it would be in X-Wing where dials are picked up and moved around quite a bit.

The symbols for the runes were too busy and confusing and just look like a squiggly mess. When printed in the card text they were cramped and hard to differentiate. Historically, runes featured almost completely straight lines to make them easy to carve and chisel. I thought it was an odd design choice to deviate from the simple readability of real world runes. I had a little cognitive dissonance with the Golem because the color of his defense increase option was printed in red but used the symbol was for the blue rune. I think that ignoring all of the squiggly stuff in the middle of the runes and just focusing on their basic shape will be the way to go: blue = square, red = triangle, green = circle. The rune coins are the component that I'm most looking forward to replacing with a third party version. I'd like something a little more weighty to toss.

My last complaint about legibility is with the unit cards. The font was cramped and small. It seems like a there was a lot of dead space on the card. This is another thing I expect to become less annoying as I become more familiar enough with the cards that I stop needing to read them with any regularity.

My only other complaint with the game so far is that I wish they would have used single piece models (the Golem and Worm could have stayed the same) for the units in the core box, allowing a new box to be cracked open and ready for play in a few minutes. Keep the multi-part models for the expansions. This gives a solid, more approachable, game that can be played with just the core set while still having more complex models available for hobbyists. With a mix of expansions and core models of the same unit type, players would have models with more poses and the single piece models can fill out the back ranks of trays.

I don't have the best eyesight, but luckily haven't had the same struggles. The magic runes are easily remembered by their shape or color. The squiggles are confusing, but unimportant.

Red - Unstable

Blue - Stable

Green - Natural

Or if it's easier to learn by shape

Triangle - Unstable

Square - Stable

Circle - Natural

My only complaint is the choice of words is a little odd. Could just be me though but i had to reread several areas and read very slowly to understand properly.
Considering im used to speedreading through the 40k rulebook that feels weird to me lol

It's definitely daunting at first to play using the reference cards and matching up all the symbols to what they mean on the rules reference.

14 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

I picked up a copy of Runewars last night and a couple of players that had had the game for a few days walked me and another first time player through the game. My first impression was that the game played well and seems like it will offer a nice depth of play even before the expansions start rolling in. I really enjoyed the variable initiative and the rotating of which player went first.

My one beef with the game so far is that it can be kind of hard to read. The pictures that identify to which unit the dials belong were too small. I had a lot of trouble telling the dial for Kari apart from the dial for my spear men. This will probably get better when I'm familiar enough with the dials that I know who they belong to based on the content of the dials. Since dials were left on the table next to their unit for most of the game this isn't as big a problem as it would be in X-Wing where dials are picked up and moved around quite a bit.

The symbols for the runes were too busy and confusing and just look like a squiggly mess. When printed in the card text they were cramped and hard to differentiate. Historically, runes featured almost completely straight lines to make them easy to carve and chisel. I thought it was an odd design choice to deviate from the simple readability of real world runes. I had a little cognitive dissonance with the Golem because the color of his defense increase option was printed in red but used the symbol was for the blue rune. I think that ignoring all of the squiggly stuff in the middle of the runes and just focusing on their basic shape will be the way to go: blue = square, red = triangle, green = circle. The rune coins are the component that I'm most looking forward to replacing with a third party version. I'd like something a little more weighty to toss.

My last complaint about legibility is with the unit cards. The font was cramped and small. It seems like a there was a lot of dead space on the card. This is another thing I expect to become less annoying as I become more familiar enough with the cards that I stop needing to read them with any regularity.

My only other complaint with the game so far is that I wish they would have used single piece models (the Golem and Worm could have stayed the same) for the units in the core box, allowing a new box to be cracked open and ready for play in a few minutes. Keep the multi-part models for the expansions. This gives a solid, more approachable, game that can be played with just the core set while still having more complex models available for hobbyists. With a mix of expansions and core models of the same unit type, players would have models with more poses and the single piece models can fill out the back ranks of trays.

I don't have much issue with this, even though I usually suffer from difficulties distinguishing certain colours it works well with RMG.

But I do agree with you, certain fonts, icons and other design choices could have been made to be more clear at a glance. Just for quality of life. I do believe that some things will be fixable with third party accessories when they start appearing, such as the runes, tokens.

The dial one way or another accompanies you units, if they have a lasting effect ill leave them by the unit laying down, if not I lay it down on or beside the unit card. They could have been made more distinctive but its not a biggie.

9 minutes ago, JasonGlass said:

I don't have the best eyesight, but luckily haven't had the same struggles. The magic runes are easily remembered by their shape or color. The squiggles are confusing, but unimportant.

Red - Unstable

Blue - Stable

Green - Natural

Or if it's easier to learn by shape

Triangle - Unstable

Square - Stable

Circle - Natural

You just had to go confuse things more by using those names. =)

The cards and components don't even seem to reference those.

1 minute ago, Soulless said:

The dial one way or another accompanies you units, if they have a lasting effect ill leave them by the unit laying down, if not I lay it down on or beside the unit card. They could have been made more distinctive but its not a biggie.

I imagine that my P-Touch label printer will resolve this issue for me.

16 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

My only complaint is the choice of words is a little odd. Could just be me though but i had to reread several areas and read very slowly to understand properly.
Considering im used to speedreading through the 40k rulebook that feels weird to me lol

That is a UK vs US game design thing really

5 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

You just had to go confuse things more by using those names. =)

The cards and components don't even seem to reference those.

...that's the point of using symbols.

You'll only see those names in the rulebooks.

2 hours ago, WWHSD said:

I imagine that my P-Touch label printer will resolve this issue for me.

Each units dial has a silhouette on the back so it should be easy to distinguish that way.

7 minutes ago, Orcdruid said:

Each units dial has a silhouette on the back so it should be easy to distinguish that way.

I totally missed that. Thanks.

when the rune symbols are referenced on a deployment or upgrade card, I don't know why they're printed in black - they could have easily printed them in the colour matching the rune.

8 minutes ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

when the rune symbols are referenced on a deployment or upgrade card, I don't know why they're printed in black - they could have easily printed them in the colour matching the rune.

That's why they're simple, easily recognized shapes on top of being RBG color coded.

3 minutes ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

when the rune symbols are referenced on a deployment or upgrade card, I don't know why they're printed in black - they could have easily printed them in the colour matching the rune.

So, Nature Runes would be nearly impossible to see on the elven cards...

4 minutes ago, Tvayumat said:

That's why they're simple, easily recognized shapes on top of being RBG color coded.

He means on the cards themselves

The only issue I had with reading is that the rune symbols on the stat cards could be bigger. The green vs. blue is a bit hard to make out. I get that green = circle, blue = square, and orange = triangle, but I kept seeing the Regen green as the blue symbol when it wasn't up by my face. Those could be larger without much impact on the cards. The action symbols are big enough, and they're easy to read smaller.

1 hour ago, jonboyjon1990 said:

when the rune symbols are referenced on a deployment or upgrade card, I don't know why they're printed in black - they could have easily printed them in the colour matching the rune.

That would have made them near invisible to people with color-blindness, depending on the background they were printed on.

I struggle to read them on the cards and have had to learn by memory - colours on the card for the runes would be nice, but I appreciate that background colours and colour blindness of users could be a problem.

If the runes were less "fiddly" and more a straight Triangle, Circle, Square without added cruft they would be soooo much more legible on the cards.

3 minutes ago, maxam said:

I struggle to read them on the cards and have had to learn by memory - colours on the card for the runes would be nice, but I appreciate that background colours and colour blindness of users could be a problem.

If the runes were less "fiddly" and more a straight Triangle, Circle, Square without added cruft they would be soooo much more legible on the cards.

Nothing is perfect and a new concept will have issues. Someone could just make a card with the symbols and what colors they are for.

Just now, Lyraeus said:

Nothing is perfect and a new concept will have issues.

Agreed.

Quote

Someone could just make a card with the symbols and what colors they are for.

The symbols and the colours are not hard to interpret - that isn't the issue.

It's looking at a unit card and being unable to distinguish what the squiggly blog printed in the body of the text is. Standing at a playing table and looking down on a unit card, I can read every bit of text, but I cannot tell what the runes in the text are. I can read and understand the tossed runes. I know the symbols. I know the colours. I know what they represent.

I just can't read the small squiggly blobs of ink on the unit cards.

At any rate, after a few games I've memorised what the relevant units in my army use/need in the rune department, but it seems like a missed opportunity/dropped ball by the design department.

Yea. That is a thing. Thankfully they won't change so Wind Rune which is coming out in Wave 1 uses the Square Runes and Fire Rune uses the Triangle. Once we know that we are good.

They should of make it larger but hopefully they improve on that in the future

I agree simpler runes would have been preferable. It's bad graphic design really. They could have kept the squiggly bits and just made the overall shape bolder. That would have helped so much. Or just removed the squiggles on the dials and kept the basic shapes.