We play on a 6*3, and 200 points is starting to feel quite pinched as soon as we had the first expansion drop. In Armada we started with 300, them went up to 400 once 'enough product' found its way out.

I could see this pushing pretty easy to 300 range, what do folks think? Maybe after Uthuk when everything starts to 'settle in'?

I say if somewhere down the road a points increase makes sense, then why not. But I think it'll be a year or more before that happens.

I see it in conjunction with the 1 hero/100 restriction. Taking 2 heroes in 200 points is near half your army, not sure it is incentivized enough. 2 heroes at 300 though at least lets you feel like you brought an army, you know?

More than likely it would happen if we ever got behemoth type creatures, i.e. multitray models. More than likely they would be in the 70s or higher on their own.

Prior to something like that happening, i doubt it. The board can get rather congested even at 200pts

57 minutes ago, Ywingscum said:

I say if somewhere down the road a points increase makes sense, then why not. But I think it'll be a year or more before that happens.

I agree. Surely they won't bump the point-level up before all factions have access to their "core" unit expansions, infantry command, and second hero.

Typical builds range from 3 to 7 units so far. 100 points additional might add 1 to 3 more. Certainly well within the range of playability but how balanced the game will be I have no idea. Still realing from being blighted to death in my last game.

I kind of like the 200 points for a tournament style, because the games are short, and they keep your lists tight. You build around a concept or idea. Its not so much, well ill have a bunch of this and a bunch of this. Youre making a decision of ok I want a reanimate archers raining blight with lancer embedded in reanimates to get damage. Much tighter, plan built lists.

I kind of think of 200 like a min point magic/ccg deck. You COULD put 100 cards in your deck. But a 40 (50? I dont play magic) card deck will be more consistent, and arranged around a playstyle/strategy.

I don't think a point increase is likely. Some of the deployment zones are already kind of tightly packed at 200 points. The scoring of the current objectives gets skewed as the points rise. 200 points also makes for a game that fits into a reasonable amount of time for a tournament schedule that will allow most games to be played to completion instead of being called on time.

Once you play all the scenarios and a lot of 200 point games you will realize there is no room for an increase.

Another thing to consider, is a point bump also implies that the 8 turn game will take longer. For organized play this is a consideration. For the tournaments I've run 90 minute rounds was ample. Compared to Armada, Armada rounds take forever! (2:15)

I can completely see a 300 pt competitive environment, it'll require there to be lots more forces to pick from tho. We really don't have that today. Two Daqan armies at 300 pts now wouldn't be all that different. Still, as we get more, the more likely you'll see vastly different styles in army builds if constrained to 200 pts. That's flavor and creative uniqueness for a player's army. I really like that and at least in other game systems that's kept things interesting.

Which is basically why i was saying i wouldnt expect it until we got something massive to field.

Even with all the spoiled content, daqan armies at 300pts would only vary on which unit they focused more on, but they'd probably have everything regardless. Once we got like 8-10 more things to pick from we'd see some variance. Hell even at 200pts its kinda same-same right now

Agreed. I think 200 will be the standard, but I'd love to see an Epic Play mode coinciding with the release of HUGE UNITS. Notably, there's a very large skeletal dragon featured in the official art.

200 pts is an excellent balance point.

It requires you to pick and choose which tools you bring, without being able to simply flood the board with everything all at once.

It leaves the field relatively uncrowded, making maneuvering and flanking maneuvers possible.

Honestly, once you start adding points, the game becomes one of scooting forward and killing the unit matched up across from you, rather than a game of position.

I think 200 is where competitive play will stay, but then, this game has almost limitless potential for non-competitive play!

I mean, what's stopping you from playing a 300, 400, 600 pt game RIGHT NOW? Nothing at all, so why would you need FFG to tell you it's okay? (They do, btw, it's in the back of the L2P guide)

I don't think it will increase, at least not for standard play. There's often barely enough room to maneuver on the board with 200 pt armies... if you bump it up higher then the game will just become a contest where you line up your forces and then smash them together without any thought of outflanking or out maneuvering your opponent. To do larger battles, you'd need larger tables and I think that would be a big limit on where you could physically play the game.

Armada was only put on a different track because of the sheer amount of time it took to get the bigger ships out, let alone the actual wave 1 expansions. It was a band aid for the player base that was suffering due to a logistics nightmare, not an intentional design choice built into the growth of the game.

If Runewars was planning to do this, we would know by now already.

Valid points on it just becoming a slugfest at higher points.

Heck, look at Xwing. The game is geared around 100pts so much that even going to 150 shifts the balances a ton, and doing a proper Epic game (300pts) is almost entirely who's dice failed first/harder?

I vote for the "Keep it at 200" camp, as it gives you room to make choices, but not so much room that you can do whatever you want. The game is a good size, with plenty of units on both sides, and upgrades aplenty.

300pts would really start being too much methinks.

2 hours ago, taylorcowbell said:

I kind of like the 200 points for a tournament style, because the games are short, and they keep your lists tight. You build around a concept or idea. Its not so much, well ill have a bunch of this and a bunch of this. Youre making a decision of ok I want a reanimate archers raining blight with lancer embedded in reanimates to get damage. Much tighter, plan built lists.

I kind of think of 200 like a min point magic/ccg deck. You COULD put 100 cards in your deck. But a 40 (50? I dont play magic) card deck will be more consistent, and arranged around a playstyle/strategy.

I agree that 200 will likely be the continued standard for tournament play and it should probably stay at that.

However, I think the CCG analogy is a bit misapplied. When you make a bigger CCG deck it usually takes a longer time to get to the cards on the bottom and at a certain point you hit the law of diminishing returns in that the game will almost ineveitably be over before you reach the majority of your deck.

In a wargame, however, you usually access every unit every turn. It's a much different process and the only point at which you would run into problems is if the game bogs down time-wise becoming less fun and/or (in the case of IGOUGO) resulting in too much downtime for the non-active player. This is the problem that occurs when scaling up an already-complex IGOUGO game like 40k has with "Apocalypse" mega games. It takes all day to play a game and there's lots of sitting around waiting for your turn when what is really needed is a faster set of rules.

Runewars on the other hand is already a rather fast-playing game as wargames go and the semi-alternating activation mechanic means that you don't have to do much waiting before it becomes your turn to do something. The result is that there's alot of room to scale up the scope of the game without impacting the fun factor.

As long as you're willing to tweak the scenarios/terrain/deployment and upsize the table a bit (4x6 perhaps or even bigger?) there's no reason that 300 or 400 point battles couldn't be easily run. When I finish my next two starter boxes of Daqan (I've got 2 done so far) and my infantry upgrade I should be able to easily put well over 300 points on the table and I won't have even started acquiring new units.

I think 200 points is a fantastic place to play. You have enough room to maneuver around the board and you have to make interesting decisions in squad building. Not only that but the games are only 90 min-ish long.

If 300 pts means a 3 hour game, I'll pass. If it means I'm constantly slow playing because there's no space to maneuver I'll pass again. 200 seems to be a good sweet spot.

1 hour ago, tgall said:

Another thing to consider, is a point bump also implies that the 8 turn game will take longer. For organized play this is a consideration. For the tournaments I've run 90 minute rounds was ample. Compared to Armada, Armada rounds take forever! (2:15)

I can completely see a 300 pt competitive environment, it'll require there to be lots more forces to pick from tho. We really don't have that today. Two Daqan armies at 300 pts now wouldn't be all that different. Still, as we get more, the more likely you'll see vastly different styles in army builds if constrained to 200 pts. That's flavor and creative uniqueness for a player's army. I really like that and at least in other game systems that's kept things interesting.

I routinely play Armada games done in 1:00-1:30. Runewars is about a 45 minute game. There are no long games, only long players.

Also nothing is stopping me (and a few others) from being passingly interested in bigger games, I just wanted to test waters here. I feel 300 may be a bit far, but something like 250 would sit nicely. As far as playing 'a few games' I've played a solid dozen, and still hold this opinion. Either way, we roll with what they give us.

A runewars game lasts us about an hour now that we know what were doing.
Armada with the same person typically takes an hour/half depending on if one or both of us did a heavy fighter list, which REALLY drags the timer.

Still, nothing is as long as 40k games lol (3hrs....)

FFG will keep 200 pt. Standard for tournaments. Fielding 200 pt. Army is enough for 3x6" play area and because of time. But you can play as many points as you want. It's your choice in friendly games.

I am really looking forward to 500 points........

:D

I like 200 for the way heroes balance out. At 200, you either:

-run two heroes and focus on a small amount of superb units

-run one hero and focus on the army building bonus.

-run none so you can field a huge army.

As you get bigger, I think the army building bonuses will not scale well. Ardus/Hawthorne become gross as points get bigger and Kari/Ankar just kind of keeps on not having a really awesome army bonus.

The only changes for Points I think maybe a campaign?