A quick question for the Epic Variant of Runewars (which uses no false runes):

The Fortify order lets a player choose any two areas he owns and move Rune tokens between them.

When playing Epic, and there are no False Runes, can one of the areas be empty? So, basically allowing a player to move a Rune from any one area he controls to any other (that doesn't already contain a Rune)?

The text from the Rulebook for moving Runes with Fortify:

"The player chooses two areas he controls and picks up any rune tokens in the areas. He then randomizes the rune tokens, looks at their faces, and places each token facedown in one of the two chosen areas (limit one rune token per area).

You can move a rune to an runeless territory you control even if you are not playing the Epic variant. You choose two territory and pick up "any rune tokens" in them and switch them. So if one territory doesn't have a rune token you pick up zero rune tokens and move them to the other territory.

Perfectly right. It says "choose 2 areas", not "choose 2 rune tokens".

Take all the rune tokens from thes areas (even if that is only one), and then put them in any of your areas not containing rune tokens.

Well, it's choose 2 areas and swap runes between them. You can only move to or from a total of 2 areas, so if you move one rune to an area you control that has no rune, you can't then move a rune to the area you just moved a rune from.

Once again, broken is right.

In case of 2 rune tokens being in the chosen 2 areas, you may only swap runes, not place them where you like.

Technically, you don't have to "swap" them - you could put the rune(s) back in the same place as they already were. While with only 1 rune between the 2 areas this wouldn't be very useful, with 2 rune tokens, this could be a good way to bluff!

Well, in an epic game you may as well just not do that, since there are no false runes. So the only time you would actually use it in an epic game would be to move a rune to a controlled area without a rune.

True. I've only played one epic game. It was a blast, but it may not see QUITE as much play simply because it does take longer. Granted, not nearly as long as Twilight Imperium still, but in our 2-player game, it did take an extra 90-120 minutes. or so. It SEEMS like it's only playing to one more rune (7 instead of 6), but really, it's like playing to TWO more since you only start with one

I heavily prefer the epic game to the regular. The regular game feels too short to me.

Oh, it's definitely more fun, it just takes longer

Although none of my "regular" games have felt too short to me. Most of them have gone the full 6 years, and the one that didn't ended in Winter of year 6.

Granted, they have been 2-player games, and my brother and I are very aggressive with both our armies and heroes, which meant that it was harder to get NEW runes on the table sometimes.