Hi everyone,

My wife got me really into Talisman about a year ago, and recently I started searching for a similar game that is as much fun, but adding a little more depth to it. While I still love Talisman, I think I've found what I'm looking for. Before purchasing the game I did a lot of research about it, reading the rules, forum posts (here and BoardGame Geek), the official FAQ, etc., and I had the rules more or less understood before our first game. Having played our first game this weekend (and another one after!), I feel like we have a great grasp of the game, but we are missing some of the nuances (we were refreshing ALL adventure counters upon events for our first two games!), and there are some ideas that I had that I thought I'd share to get some feedback. Our second game we played with my wife, my brother and I, and we had a blast – my brother won with Red Scorpion. I thought I'd list my questions numerically for simplicity:

1. Item limitations – I understand that we can have two weapon types provided they aren't the same type (i.e. mace and mace) and one armor piece. Can we have one Armor: Shield and one Armor: Gauntlets card on our characters? Up until now we played where it wasn't allowed, because it was two armor pieces.

2. Item limitations – Are there limitations on artifacts or relics? Up until now we played (using more common sense than rules) that we can have one item per "slot". We were able to equip an Artifact: Cloak and Artifact: Ring.

Are artifacts and relics also limited to one? By our rules it was allowed as long as you didn't have two items in the cloak spot for example. If this is allowed, are rings limited to one or two (we played one is the limit).

3. Items in combat (activate to use and discard items): As I understand it, we are allowed to use one before combat item, one activate to use item per round of combat, and as many discard to use items as we like. Does this mean I can use the Dwarven firebomb (discard to deal 3dmg ranged before combat) AND a weapon that gives me a before combat attack (activate to use)? We played until now you can only use one item. Also, we can use one activate to use item per round of combat. Can I use my Dragontooth Hammer to deal an extra damage in melee, then use my armor to prevent a heart during the magic phase?

4. Runes and Rituals – Just for clarification (the rulebook isn't in front of me at the moment); we can have as many rituals as we like but the rules state we can only have one Rune with capital letters in its title. As I recall 90% of the runes are all capitalized – what am I missing?

5. Now that we know that sunburst icons are the only ones refreshed, what if we run out of green or yellow counters with no event happening? Are we supposed to try for blues and keep escaping until we see an event?

6. Hero death – We played with semi-softer knockouts (lose gold or item, whichever is most valuable). In my opinion death is not penalized enough, or at least it should be done in a different way. Not necessarily strip your hero of everything, but have a different penalty. In the early game when gold is scarce, we found it much easier (and cheaper) to die to a challenge in order to heal, at least for the first few levels Otherwise we'd be spending our reward gold on healing anyway, and this would save a turn. In PvP I found this system flawed as well. I killed my brother and took his 20 gold from his character and put his hero in the nearest town. The next turn he was fully healed, moved two spaces and killed me in one go (I was wounded from our previous battle). What I thought to propose was one of two things.

My proposal - Either have hero death make the player lose his next turn as well (to prevent exploiting dying as a healing alternative early, and prevent PvP from being less fun/effective in my opinion), or an alternative would be to have players roll a die to determine their hometown in the beginning of the game (or assign it based on the excellent Cities of Adventure variation), and whenever they die they go back there (1-8 can be assigned to specific towns, 9 could mean roll again, 10 choose your own, or 9-10 choose your own). Just my idea of an interesting house rule to make the game more enjoyable. Also, I'm not sure if this is a rule or not, but we made a house rule where towns are PvP safe zones.

Those are my questions/comments for now I guess. I'll probably come back and make some additions in case I forgot anything. This is such a great game that I am looking forward to next weekend when I foresee another great gaming session going on (and sleeping on the couch if I knockout the wife's hero too many times).

Hello, it's always nice to have people who get themselves into this game. Runebound is a quality product (not flawless), but many details make ruling interesting and not immediate to understand. As a keen Runebounder, I try to give you my best answers.

Booster said:

According to the Rules all Items with "Armour" keyword count as Armour Items. If you wear an Armour Suit you can't wear Shields or Gauntlets. It's not a realistic limitation, just a limitation to your Hero defensive power.

Moreover, please notice that the limit of two weapons of different types is a game variant (detailed on page 10), not basic ruling. Rules As Written, you can wield two Lightning Maces if you like to. You can even use two bows (which is quite absurd, of course, but permitted)

Booster said:

Artifacts, Runes, Relics and all Items that have no Weapon or Armour keyword have no limit. You can have as many as you can carry, but beware of use restrictions (next question)

Booster said:

You can use a Dwarven firebomb and another activate-to-use item in Before Combat. You can also use each of you Hero and Allies Before Combat abilities once.

For the second question, you can't use the Dragontooth Hammer in Melee phase then an Armour to prevent damage in the Magic Phase. Only the Runeplate will allow you to do so, because it's an Always-on Item. Remember that a "combat round" is the succession of Escape, Ranged, Melee and Magic Phases. You can activate one (and only one) Item per combat round.. Always-on Items always work and discard-to-use Items can be used when needed.

Booster said:

Sorry, I don't know what rule are you talking about. I do own the "Rituals & Runes" expansion but never tried it; as far as I know, the base Rulebook has no restriction about Runes, with or without capital letters in the title.

Booster said:

In the unlikely case that this will happen when nobody is ready for Blue Challenges, you have no other choice. Just take care when you shuffle the decks: put Event and Encounter cards after every two or three Challenge cards, then give a brief shuffle. This prevents Events from clustering in one point of the deck.

Booster said:

PvP happened only once in my Runebound games, simply because there's not much need of it except in the late game, to prevent someone from winning. General game practice should be: try to focus on your hero progression while taking the Items and Allies that will also benefit the others. If you really think that PvP could be worthy, try to attack another Hero in a space where he cannot easily reach you afterwards. There are some hexagons that are far away from cities. Attacking somebody near Tamalir or Nerekhall is not that wise and you just understood why. You can attack someone in Towns, but I think your house rule is fine. We mutually agreed somthing like that.

I think that losing all Gold and the most valuable Item is a good penalty at every stage of the game. Obviously there are some situations where it is better to die instead of getting wounded and spend money for healing, but the problem is that at the first stage of the game there's lack of Gold. You make a big effort to gain 5 Gold to buy the first useful Item, so it's a bad outcome to lose 2 Gold, even if healing costs you more. In the first part of the game, you should try to gain some Gold and rapidly spend it. Never try a challenge just because you're nearer to the jewel than to the next city. You also have to plan movement in order to stay close to the city where you have seen a useful Item.

Losing much time with Green Challenges is not that useful, except when everybody does that. But you need to maximize gain in comparison to damage and losses, try not to get knocked-out. Unfortunately, there are some deadly cards in the deck that can kill almost every Hero (Assassin on the Loose is one of them, if you draw him at the beginning you're dead and will lose 3 precious Gold coins, if you were not lucky/wise enough to buy something before).

Thanks for your detailed reply! You really cleared up a lot for me. I double checked the rulebook and found that Rituals (not Runes) have the capitalization restriction on them - I had them confused. 90% of the rituals do have capital letters in them though, which leaves it a bit confusing.

I understood your point about grabbing your first item, but what I found is that I would buy an item (say for 4 gold) and be broke. The next challenge I would take a few wounds and get my 1 gold reward, so I wouldn't be able to even heal myself adequately. Sometimes I would get lucky and stay alive, others I would die and lose my new item. What we ended up doing is just hoarding gold (hence why my brother has 20 gold, although he did go overboard). If anyone has any feedback on my PvP proposal (for those of you who like PvP) it would be greatly appreciated - I'll give it a playtest this weekend and hopefully there will be some PvP to talk about.

Thanks again for your insight Warlock!

Booster said:

You're welcome.

Choosing the best Item for your Hero to buy with available Gold is the cornerstone of Runebound play. To play well you got to know your Hero well and his strengths/weaknesses, in order to plan which Items you need. You also got to know the Challenges, which rewards they give and the amount of risk you take when facing them.

Some Heroes are better than others, since Runebound is not thoroughly balanced. Battlemage Jaes is by far the best Hero to choose, while Sir Valadir and Runewitch Astarra have some traits that make their quest harder. We always deal out Heroes randomly. Some need a boost to be safer, others need some power-up to simply survive.

The first thing you may look for is an Armour. Best choice is Chainmail, if available, but also a Padded Leather can help you save not only your Life, but to avoid costly damage. Some low-cost Allies are really valuable too, since they can provide excellent abilities and also help you against easy Challenges. If you see a Rune Seeker, an Acolyte of Flame or a Burning Priest in a Market stack, just get close to that city as soon as possible. If you get one of these, almost every Green Challenge will be a safe run.

I don't see the point in going on facing Green Challenges and eventually dying to avoid paying Gold for healing. There's nothing to gain but experience and you will rapidly deplet the board of the counters that are not replenished by Events. Your strategy should be focused on staying alive and getting the minimum damage. Only way to do so is: know the Items, know the Allies and know what you have to expect from Challenges. This doesn't guarantee you'll never be knocked out, since there are many combinations of your current Hero and a special Challenge that will kill you without giving you any real chance to survive. At least you're doing your best to proceed well.

Just to answer my own question in case anyone does come across this thread in the future; with the Rituals and Runes expansion, the rules for having more than one ritual with a capitalized word was misread by me. You are not allowed to have more than one ritual with the same capitalized word in the title. For example, you can't have the ritual Tempered Armor and the ritual Tempered Weapon at the same time.