so i'm an experienced twilight imperium player, and i enjoy playing games such as this with larger player numbers.

is anyone else looking forward to a possible expansion for this game? adding orcs and dwarfs as two new races to play with would up the player number to 6, and i think would be a very wise move for FFG.

i certainly bought my copy already and it's very fun, but i feel the 4 player max is my only real gripe about the game.

do you see many people playing this game at stores or often with your gaming groups? i'd like to hope it will prove successful enougth to justify an expansion some time in the future? (obviously not right now, but perhaps later)

yes indeed! i am really looking forward to new races like dwarfs, orcs, "high elves", "dark elves". also map expantions liek the Runebound mapes, frozen stuff, and the sands one....would be very cool

this one thing, i got a problem with it too since my group is 5:P new races and new map tiles qould be nice

but for me more important is that heroes become more substantial role in the game not just mainly beeing game inside a game. Let them participate in battle (or influence it more at least) or give them more infiltration skills. They just feel to...out of the game for me.

Vitalis said:

But this game isn't ABOUT the heroes - it's about the armies! They aren't meant to be more than they are.

I agree. That is why i opt to make heroes more integrated into armies. Became armies leaders and generals instead of just bunch of greys hanging around:P

I definitely want to see more races and more hexes. More of everything the game currently has, really. But as far integrating heroes into the battles, I'm with Sigma. This game isn't about the heroes, it's about the armies. If you want a game where the heroes are more important, play Runebound. Here in Runewars they are an interesting side-game, but not the main focus.

There's certainly enough air in the original box.

I would love to see more races, new Heroes, new map hexes to represent the various locales already present in Runebound and Descent as well as some expansion cards and new neutral units to really mix things up. There is a lot room to expand the game...even overseas and island battles like in Island of Dread and Sea of Blood. And I have to agree with Sig13 and Steve-O that the Heroes are not the focus.

even though FFG more than likely has one in the mix an his testing, the world of terrinoth is mostly filled with Humans,Elves,Dwarves and what ever ispher is, and the elfish halfing riding a wolf, or the fairy thing......dwarf race would be great; plus one ore for strong holds in moutain terrain, can move through mountains, but what would the 1-5 Iniative be? 1 crossbow dwarves 2 battlehammers 3 blood ragers 4 clerics?

HellBoundOL said:

My guess is that Ispher is a member of that draconic race, or a halfbreed thereof. Now that Battlemist and Rune-world are officially joined, this makes even more sense, but even before the two settings became one I thought this hero might be an oblique reference to that race.

The others feel more like one-offs to me. I'm sure they belong to races of their own, just not world players that would likely be making a bid for these dragon runes.

The expansion would ideally bring 5 new races :

Good : Dwarves

Neutral : Orcs

Neutral : Draconians

Neutral : xxx

Evil : Dark Elves

That would bring the total to 9 races, 3 of each alignment.

That's a whole lot of combat balancing to do.

Are there Dark Elves in the Runebound and/or Battlemist realms?

My guess is the Dwarves would be neutral - they were neutral in Battlemist, and I think many (most?) of their Diskwars units were also Neutral.

The Orcs would likely be either evil or neutral; I'm going to lean towards Neutral since their heroes are all neutral (but in Battlemist they were evil, but the barbarians were "neutral", maybe the barbarians sold their souls and the orcs did a Warcraft and decided to follow their own path).

ok so dwarves are in..... for good... how about a Overlord evil race with the baddies that never got into the nuetral pile

HellBoundOL said:

2 crossbow 3 Battlehammer 4 blood rager 5 Thane.......IMO dwarves are slow also i like everything you have there....tho i think the can only move one threw mountains on a Conquer or Moble and they can on strategize. and the HP on the units needs ot be, in order of how i ahve them placed, 1, 2, 3, 4. Crossbow special: Repeater: Deal 2 damage, Battle: Crush: deal 1 damage and rout 1, Blood: Crazed Fury: Draw fate cards equal to your influence amount (red symble) rout 1 for each card showing this symbol, Thane: Grey Beard: Draw Fate cards equal to your influence ( yellow symbol ) un rout 1 for each card showing this symbol. starting rez: 2 food, 2 wood, 3 ore. the home realm should have atleast 3 mountains. 3 tactic cards 3 influence....and relitivly less influence on the dials.....also, dwarfs tend to be stuck up so hording the influence and not recuiting nuetrals seems, for fluf sack, a good thing .

sigmazero13 said:

There are Deep Elves in Descent, which are essentially blatant rip-offs of your standard fantasy dark elves. That's only one monster though, so I have trouble seeing them as an entire race unto themselves suddenly. Beastmen I could see a race, but they've already been dropped in as neutral units so I doubt that's happen either.

I agree that Orcs should be neutral (at least in my ideal version of the game.) One of things I've always liked about Descent and RB is that there are Orc heroes, implying that orcs as a culture are more than just bloodthirsty monsters for shiny knights to cut down by the dozen. They interact with the other "standard" races and cooperate when times are dire. I suppose they cold be more the scheming evil than the violent evil, but that's not the way I'd prefer it.

I also don't see an expansion giving us 5 races when the base game only gave us 4. Are there even 5 more (playable) races from BM besides the ones we've been introduced to already? At most I'd believe another 4 races in an expansion, realistically maybe more like 2.

Steve-O said:

Battlemist had 6 races:

Daqan Lords (they may have been Daqan Knights, I'd have to look), and Latari Elves, which were both "good"

Barbarians (a tamer version of the Uthuk?) and the Dwarves, which were both "neutral"

Orcs and Waiqar the Undying which were both "evil".

Obviously, the Uthuk/Barbarians have sold their souls to the demonic forces and have become evil, so I agree it isn't that unlikely that the Orcs in this could have pulled a Warcraft and decided serving the demons wasn't helping their race, and decided to enlighten themselves a bit and become more shamanistic (and sort of neutral; not really friends with their former foes, but not driven by demonic rage, either). So I can see them being neutral.

In Disk Wars, which was also the same universe as Battlemist (except the Uthuk were there and were evil?), there was also the following:

Mahkim, a swamp-dwelling amphibious race. Mostly neutral.

K'Ryth, demonic forces from the otherworld. Obviously evil.

Dwarf (as in Battlemist), who were mostly neutral.

Dragons, who were mostly neutral and evil. They kind of remind me of the Dragon Lords of Runebound, etc.

Acolytes, mostly good, a magical race.

Really, though, I can see the Dwarves and the Orcs being the new factions, but it wouldn't surprise me to maybe see another two; if so, my guess would be the Mahkim and the Acolytes, as the Dragons seem to have kind of lost their power in the land, and the K'Ryth aren't very numerous. But then you'd have 3 good, 3 neutral, 2 evil, so it's possible the Acolytes will shift to neutral or the Mahkim will shift to evil.

It's also possible in the expansion, that there will be no neutral factions at all (despite the neutral icon on heroes) and everything will be good or evil. I find that a little less likely, though.

sigmazero13 said:

Thanks for the info! Very informative. I also agree that the Draconic race sounds a little like the Dragon Lords from RB. I suspect the idea for the Dragon Lords may have been "unofficially" borrowed from these older games a while back, but that's just my gut feeling.

I hope there are Neutral races eventually, even if it isn't the dwarves and orcs. I think this game would be missing out on something if all the races were good or evil.

how about gnomes with siege tower kerplunkers or... goblines with crude balistas.....

Vitalis said:

I agree heroes feels a bit strange. The whole "walk wherever you want to and get away with it" thing.

Though what really doesnt feel much fun is how easily killed the heroes are. That most has only 3 health and most weapons seem to have it easy to deal 3 damage instantly killing them. Also I feel there could be more room for variation in duels (kinda like in runebound). Dont get me wrong that I want heroes to be more important or anything just that the whole PART where they do exist could be more interesting.

All heroes ever do in our games is kill eachother over and over repeatedly and nobody hardly care about getting new ones since then its the same story again. Everyone focus on killing each others heroes and taking their rewards instead of getting rewards themselves. And it really just comes down to 100% luck on who draws the best combat cards for the duels.

HellBoundOL said:

Ugh. One thing I definitely don't miss in the Rune-World is gnomes. No offense, they're just normally used as comic relief and an excuse to introduce technology beyond what should normally exist in a fantasy world. I try to ignore them in other licensed universes and I've been enjoying their absence here. =P

i like the dwarves and orcs idea. and i think that the dwarves are almost for sure. since they are talked about in the story and quests. the orcs also have a good chance since they are some of the heroes.

As much as I'd like to see more races (and options for 5-6 players) I'd really like to see a lot *more* in the expansion.

More hex tiles (kinda required if we're adding players #5 and 6), more heroes, more quests, more rewards (though I imagine too many would dilute the frequency of Shards of Timmoran which may be a problem) more season cards (MORE SEASON CARDS!), more tactics cards, more objectives...

The hex tiles and seasons cards specifically, will really add to the replay value of the game. With only 8 season cards currently available per season, you basically play through every single one in an epic game, and many of them are repeats anyway.

Just a curious though concerning the adding of races to the game (which I really believe it needs!). The four races are currently fanned out from 1-4 starting influence, which is a tiebreaker. Adding new races cannot have any of those numbers, OR they need a new tiebreaker. So, adding just two races 'could' be a 0 influence (lowest) with 5 Tactics card start and a 5 influence (highest), 0 Tactics start. Both of which seems somewhat odd. However, the true problem arises when trying to introduce a 7th race as it have to go beyond this balance and each new race (except for the 0 influence) wil have to have a higher and higher starting influence in order to uphold the tiebreaker function.

edderkoppen said:

This issue has been raised in other threads, too. It remains to be seen how FFG would handle the dilemma. 0-5 and 5-0 work fine for two new races, but you're right that going beyond that would be tricky to say the least. Another option would be to introduce a new set of 4 races witht he same distribution as those in the base game and give each expansion race a rule that says "race X trumps race Y on starting influence in the case of ties." Whether the expansion race is X or Y would depend on whether the new races need a buff or a nerf considering what else they might have going for them. If using that methodology, hopefully all expansion races would trump all base game, or vice versa, as a mix of the two would get confusing pretty fast.

It's also possible that they could add new races without increasing the limit of 4 players. Basically there would be more choices, but not more players. Player would be required to make sure no twoplayers chose races with the same influence/tactics combination to maintain the tiebreaker. This would have the advantage of increasing options without bumping up play time (the current remarkably low play time for a game seems to be one of the high points of RW thus far.) Those of us who are inclined to longer games with more players would then be left with the task of making house rules to allow more players, something I'm sure the fan community could handle on their own if they really want it.

At the end of the day there's no way to predict how FFG will handle that question, but there are definitely options available.