After six games of Runewars I have learned a few things...

1) Your heros will be coerced to join the enemy at the worst possible moment. My group now believes that Mad Carthos is the most powerful figure in Terrinoth. In two seperate games his switching sides determined the winner. In both games he switched from the Evil to the Good side

2) Collecting influence is rarely a bad idea. Particularly in the seasons leading up to winter. Most of the Winter season cards are responsible for a hero gaining a dragon rune.

3) Location, Location, Location. Starting locations are very important to determining the course of the game. Food is particularly important for the Elves, lest your armies starve in the winter. Having all the ore in the world will not feed your armies. While having a bunch of dragons and giants nearby may seen as a nice deterent from enemy attack and may seem like an opportunity to gain a powerful ally, it is more likely a thorn in your side.

4) Heros, while not essential to victory, can certainly help your cause and enemy heroes questing unchallenged may spell their victory.

What have you all learned from playing Runewars?

I've learned that I prefer dice. A lot.

Also, I hate famine. I hate it so much I no longer trust autumn.

Trust no one, recruit giants and dragons.

LOL fun topic!

I learned to try to get myself stationed near a city if possible.

Never underestimate influence, take the two tokens over a tactics card if you are low

Tactics cards can be awesome, but there are some in the deck that are full of suck if you aren't in the right situation

Battles are incredibly unpredictable, strong/hexagon units can be routed easily by a horde of weak units, a few fast units can easily stop a larger group of slower units with the right special abilities and a bit of luck

I miss dice at times! *shakes fist as several no-damage/special-ability/rout cards come up*, they may all work on percentages, but i personally feel more hosed when the cards go against me than the dice

ALWAYS remember to never leave your allied-neutral units alone! I got careless once and moved my army away from my routed dragon to try and finish off my opponent

Winter is always coming around, 'ware the food supply!

Here's what I learned.

Playing as an elf, having no food near your starting location is aweful. Likewise letting the demon people get 6 ore is rough!

Don't fear a battle against a lone dragon or giant. With 3 (maybe 4) weak units, you will have initiative and probably get one rout. Even if not you may well win combat resolution with 4 units. We saw a lot of "mighty" neurtals run away like pasny elfs in our game.

It can be harder to defend a fort than to take one. We actually only once had a fortress successfully defend itself, the attackers were something like 4-1. Conquest reducing the fortress to only a bonus of 2 never made up for the ability to missively overstack. A fort only wirth +2 (after supremacy bonus) with 7 defending units still can't defeat 14 attacking units (unless maybe you are undead or demons with the disposable).

You can't win the game (f4rom our one test case) by solely focusing on only one aspect. You have to achieve a balance between heroes, military and influence to be most likely at succeeding.

Look at exactly how the water and mountain boarders carve up the world. That sounds like a no brainer, but even for our veteran group, we had not noticed that the demons were cvhanneled literally through one hex to get out of their starting area. They captured ~4 territories then HAD to go throyugh one specific hex to get any fartehr. That was also one of only two ways forthe elfs to expand. We did not see this at the start. In the end, it allowed the demons to focus their entire army on that one territory, and made the rest of their gains pretty much untouchable. Hopefully next game we will understand that from the get-go!

I have learned this:

Runewars kicks ass.

Never underestimate the importance of influence.

Large armies of weak units beat small armies of powerful units.

Threatened Home Realms in the last Fall of the game SUCKS!

Another thing I have learned:

16 Reanimates is not enough.

Something I learned : I want this game. ****...

Things I have learned:

The game is all about aquiring those runes; don't get distracted by the need to dislodge your enemies. Especially in a four player game. A couple good influence bids and one enemy's runes will win the game.

Also, never trust the growing army next to you when he promises not to attack just because you are both the same alignment (especially ore heavy demons). It is an FFA game by default and the following will generally apply:

Necromancers are wonderful, especially in smaller skirmishes: nothing like coming out of a battle with a bigger army than you started with.

Tactics cards or influence both rock, but sometimes you just need to pick one and run with it. If another player is influence heavy, odds are you will be wasting your time trying to catch up, so dig through those tactics cards for that card that automatically takes away his locked up title or a mountain pass that will catch them off guard (won me my first game).

Try to keep your supremecy bonuses going, but after the first year, don't be afraid to break the order if it suits the situation. Winter is a great time for assaults, especially if your food supply is higher than the enemies (or you have necromancers )

And finally, this game is awesome.