im hoping on more races and hopefully more map pieces and i agree on adding more Neutral baddies is a great idea things that are harder to kill would be nice

Some other things that would be cool;

I hate when there are "Holes" in the game board. What if they had a single hex tile to put there? It could be a large mountain, lake, or an uncrossable swamp. (A huge uncrossable 3d mountain would look cool, and a whole lake could have cool ramifications each winter.)

More stronghold upgrade types could be cool, and definetly more season cards. More of all those things.

Now, if they add races, and intend to expand past 4, there needs to be more land hexes. Which means they'll need more hero spaces, so we can have new things like that. What would you guys like to see?

LOVE this game.

Steve-O said:

Alternatively, they could assign the new races values like 1.5 Influence, and for your actual starting influence you round to 2, but for purposes of tie-breaking, you use 1.5. But that may be more complicated than just printing a list of tie-breaking order on the back of the rulebook.

Someone mentioned having an expansion that focused on the political aspects of the game (like in TI3)...

I don't know. I'd have to see.

I'll admit, if I want a political type game like TI3, I'll play TI3. I like that Runewars is focused more on the war, and less on the politics. Not that the politics is bad, but it does make for quite a different game, one that works well for TI3 but I don't know that it would for Runewars.

sigmazero13 said:

I actually thought (after posting) that the tactics cards and season cards have political effects, a political phase would just bog it down. For example, blackmail is a political card, as is trading route. (also the three titles are political) So there is a political layer but it's not as prominent as TI3.

Man, I want more map tiles more than anything else. And additional races (but no steam-punk gnomes; I am so sick of that!) I'd love to see some "blank" tiles like lakes or deserts that could be fit in... a long river maybe, or an archipelego?

But above all, I would like at least one expansion that gives more options but doesn't dramatically change the game play. I want to get some serious play out of these mechanics before adding new subsystems. Sure, maybe a special rule about terrain here or there... armies can only cross this river at the bridge, stuff like that. But not a whole new system like, I don't know, fleets or something. Although stuff like that would be fun down the road, I guess.

Agreed. There are political elements, though I don't know if they are strong enough to really call Runewars a "political" game. TI3 is very heavily politically-oriented. Sure, there's battles, warfare, and conquest, but players who ignore the political strategizing are going to have a tough time winning.

What I somewhat miss in Runewars is environment dependant tactical advantages, so eg. a wood hex would benefit the elves; barren lands would benefit undead/uthuk etc.

I think it was already mentioned by someone...

special vantage points on the hexes would also be cool and could be included on additional objective cards (eg whenever you occupy 3 tiles including "insertspecialplacehere" discard this card for 1 dragon tune erm rune)

apart from that I'm curious how the tie breaker or similar issues could be solved with future expansions

looking forward to it

As long as they dont make the game too complicated... Terrain effects, extra mechanics, and other additions might seem more realistic, but they add one more check to the game, and dont really add fun...

More quests, objectives, hexes, rewards, factions, and season cards add variety without really adding complexity or additional steps.

I also am in love with Rune Wars. Excellent game.

With an expansion, I also like the idea of more races, recognize that that is somewhat of a balancing act. i think that any new races should be of neutral alignment.

However, more than a race, I am interested in more options for the existing races. More units, tactics cards, quest cards, tiles, reward cards, season cards. These things I would get excited about.

Also, I would like to see some more options with Heroes. No I don't mean have them directly participate in battles. I would like to see their "spy" like options increase. Sabotage, being able to maybe add an advantage to a battle if they are in the same hex. Akin to the battlefield being scouted out by the hero, maybe allowing for some sort of initiative advantage or rout advantage. Just little subtle actions that can potentially influence the board.

Right now, I think a 4 player game of Rune Wars is a grand thing. Having the capability to have a 6 player game makes the game longer. I don't like the idea of a longer game.

simpatikool said:

The problem with adding new units for each of the races is that they would either have to change the Battle system, or have all the races have units on all 5 Initiatives. The latter would be kind of boring; I like how there are situations where you don't have a unit for that initiative. So if they added a new unit, it would plug the hole, and make them all fight on all 5. Or they could change the battle system to have more than 5 Initiatives? In either case, though, they'll have to definitely change the faction cards, and I don't like that idea, because I hate it when a component from the base game is "obsoleted" by a component from the expansion. When the component is an updated card, I don't mind as much, but something as big and significant as a faction sheet? Just seems wasteful.

As for Tactics Cards, Season Cards, tiles, etc, those would indeed be cool!

simpatikool said:

Hmm, a cool Tactics Card could be similar to the "Sabotage" Action Card from TI3, but only be playable against Battle-oriented tactics cards, and only if you have a Hero in that area.

simpatikool said:

I don't either, but at the same time, I wouldn't want them to exclude the possibility just because of that. If they can make the game work 6-players, but not take away anything from the 2-, 3-, and 4-player games as is, go ahead

sigmazero13 said:

I also hate it when important game components are made obsolete by expansions. I'm sure FFG isn't too keen on the idea of needing to reprint components that are 90% the same as previous components just to change two little things either. I agree that removing the empty space in each race's initiative track would also make things a bit boring, but there is another option. They could add a second initiative track as a separate component that gets put on the right-hand side of the faction sheet, having a new range of 1-5 initiative units for that faction. Then the race just has two units at the same initiative, a combat process which is already covered by the rules because they needed to consider neutrals having the same initiative as faction units.

Of course, if any of the new units had the "blank" initiative value that would be the same as adding a fifth unit to the basic lineup, so ideally that space would remain empty for each faction on the new lineup as well. I'm thinking there could be a second (or even third) empty space on the new track as well, so there's a diminishing returns aspect to adding these new lineups beside the originals. If they decided to go with the idea of adding sea hexes and sea units for each faction, then it would effectively be adding a new lineup that never overlaps the original since sea-based units would stay on sea hexes and land-based units would stay on land. Dealing with Flying units could be tricky, though.

If there's one thing I love about discussing future expansions, it's playing with all the possible ideas until you find something really exciting =)

i see no naval combat in the future... a lot of work for little fun.

Maybe a couple tactic cards that allow travel across water outside of winter (like hidden mountain pass), but boats and such would require a lot of changes and a lot of new hexes, and IMHO, would add a lot of extra work and cost without a lot of fun.

maybe the tactic card would require the cost of 1 wood, to simulate the building of a boat, which allows a one time movement over water of a few units.

Steve-O said:

True, that could be done, but they'd also need to somehow alter the Resource dials for GAINING those units (or have some other means of gaining them).

A simple, though not necessarily the best option there is a one for one replacement of the unit for another unit type.

i have to admit, at no point in playing this game have I thought "boy, lets make more units for each faction."

It would involve fundamentally redesigning each faction board to add them to the resource wheel, and I sincerely doubt it will happen.

sigmazero13 said:

Good point, I hadn't thought about that.

something I have thought about that could work is adding a special leadership objective card option, that if you accomplish some goal (or spend some amount of resources, or get the right tactic card/season) you could earn a leader unit. And that leader unit could do whatever it is that so many people want thieves, sexy red demon girls and red pandas to do... lead armies. This wouldnt require changing any of the faction boards or dials, and could be a simple add on mechanic.

I guess the same could work for other special units... but Im really happy with the remaining units as is. Balanced and give each faction interesting capabilities and limitations.

In another thread sigmazero13 said that he was trying to add spells as a house rule. I think that would make for an awesome expansion. A few racial spells, a few scrolls you could find as quest item, maybe a few you could gain from the Wizards council. It would be fun having a few powerful abilities that you had to choose between. Oracle (look at season card), Eruption (target mountain is really a volcano!), Blizzard (cross a lake, even in summer), camouflage (Elf only, better defense in forests), etc... And for those of you who want heroes to do more, you could make them the source of the spell effect (the mountain next to the hero explodes. Wisdom test to see how big the explosion is).

Potential Casting Mechanics

• spells take wood/iron/food
• new, fourth resource added (mana)
• spells require you to sacrifice units (evil only?)
• you get one mana token each year that you can apply to one face down spell. Flip it over and cast it when you meet the cost. Or maybe each spell can have a lesser and greater version with different costs. Although it might be a good idea to call them rituals instead of spells.
• you can cast one spell per year, but your hero must be on a font of power

What I would like to see.

-More factions

-Some more faction-specific gimmicks, for example a special order card for each faction.

-5-6 player capability

-Enough runes to play epic with false runes.

Anything more is just a bonus.

About new units, imo if they want to add new units for each factions, they shouldn't tie them to the existing wheels. This units could be added to order cards or they could be created like the archons in starcraft, they could add a foruth wheel, they could add cities that let you recruit your new unit, they could be added with a Stronghold developement, etc.

I really think all areas of the game play well with none being weaker than the other. Although i have often heard that heros are not effective i cannot agree with that. Your group is either not playing tham correctly or not playing them enough because they are something that good players of the game have to worry about.

What i hope is in an expansion is some cleaned up small holes in the rules and some alternate narrative scenarios to start a game with. Two new races would be fine with me and a whole lot more map pieces to choose from. Although more map pieces means more cards but hey it's a card driven game so bring on piles more for me to sleeve up. Any new rules added to the game should be in the political area though since that is the one area which is lacking just a tad bit.

Baenre said:

What small holes are you referring to?

Baenre said:

I agree, in one game as the elves, my militatry was loosing badly, nearby areas had only 1 food, The one time I managed to exceed 3-food, a bad season card reset my food dial back to 3. So fielding even an "adaquate" army was impossible. I eventually won, by duelling opposing heros to end up with control of all 6 of the rewards that the other players had produced during the game. Converting those to 2 dragon runes was enough to win.

sigmazero13 said:

Okay just one example i can think of off the top of my head has to do with initial board setup. The randomness is great and i like that a great deal. However early in our playing of the game several games had cities right in front of starting realms and none in front of others. This wasn't to big of an issue till we really got experienced with the game. That's when we had to institute some house rules to make sure everyone had a fair shake at a balanced city setup to start off. It's not so much a hole in the game as maybe just something that needs some wording changed to avoid this kind of issue.

We have played so much and slighty changed a few things that i cannot remember them all sorry. I will say though that playing the EPIC varient is a must. If you play the original game with experienced players it's not much fun and just becomes solitaire for 3-4 seasons for a win to one lucky player.