So does this game live up to all the hype it has gotten? Should I shell out another $75-$100 for a FFG?

In my opinion, yes. I have not been disappointed by a single play of this, and in fact after every game, I have wished I had more time to play again

ditto. Everytime I play this, I want to play it again. I keep learning new strategies and nuances of the seasons and tactics cards. The things I was less positive about initially (heros, diplomacy) I now see are very well designed and strategic. People want this game to be everything, which it is not (this is NOT an adventure game), but what it does do (epic kingdom simulation with armies and heros) it does superbly, and the components are just about the best Ive ever seen.

As the others have said, its great. But the most important thing for me has been that players who normally don't like playing TI for all time it takes or all the complexity, really like this game. I feel that is has a very broad appeal for being a pretty large game

Well honestly, I wasn't all that impressed by the hype preview articles. But after actually playing the game, I can say that this is a great game indeed.

Just read up on the rules before purchasing this so you know what you're getting. The heroes don't go into battle with the armies, they don't take control of neutral or ennemy land. What they do is run around doing quests for loot or they might go and kill an ennemy hero to steal his loot. If you're lucky that loot will be a dragon rune, if it's not then it's loot that should either help you get more loot or kill enemy heroes. And you can turn in any 3 rewards for one dragon rune. I'd say that most games will be won by the heroes.

The battles are really fun and the way the recruiting mechanics work I found that I didn't mind losing units so much. This game has a lot of similarities with the a game of thrones board game (also made by FFG) but they've obviously learned what worked and what didn't. It shows. In AGOT, losing even a few units was often game crushing. Here, it's not that big a deal. Also the equivalent of the recruit and harvest orders came in randomly after every turn in AGOT, which sometimes created games where you would never get any more units than what you begin with. Now you choose when they come in, but you have to spend that season's order on it.

The influence mechanics are also improvements over AGOT's power tokens. There are more ways to earn it and there are more ways to spend it.

And the game has many more great mechanics, it's by far my favorite board game yet.

dont forget that heroes can also destroy enemy units (2 can as special abilities), rout enemy units (with rewards), uncover dragon runes (either by finding the dragon throne or peeking at tokens on the map, help create fortresses (tactics cards), interact with neutrals (tactics cards) and generally do just about everything but lead an army. And for some reason, thats what everyone complains about! seriously... who would want some sexy chick thief leading their army? or some one handed orc with a hook...

my opinion... heros are great as they are.

it would be nice having more heroes, more quests, and more interesting quests (perhaps ones with choices that affect alignment (save the princess by dueling a beastman and gaining influence, or rob the king by doing an agility check and gaining a reward... depending on your choice and alignment, your alignment might change), or multistep quests for greater rewards... maybe a separate EPIC rewards deck) etc...) but I believe that this game is too vast and epic to focus any more closely on individual heroes.

Plem45 said:

Plem45 said:

I'll never understand why messages like these appear in the forum for the game in question. Surely anyone who hangs out in this forum is going to say good things about the game? Heck, I wouldn't even ask this on ANY FFG forum if you truly want an objective answer. On the other hand, if you're just looking for a bunch of strangers to get you pumped up and excited about your future purchase, you've come to the right place.

sigmazero13 said:

everytime i have played i was in the same boat.....in fact.....every game...we look up and say " Wow...this is fun".......you really get nevious when it comes down to year 6 and your fighting over land and you on the edge......its intence....BUY THIS GAME! for the $100 easy

Hey Sigma!

Well if you really want some detail on the game, watch our video:

http://www.boardtodeath.tv/review/1749

Hope it helps you.

I, for one, am not a fan of the game. In the time spent to play the game, I'd rather play a couple of others. For the money spent to buy the game, I'd rather have 2 or 3 others. There are plenty of great games out there. I don't feel that this one meets my "price/performance" ratio.

Personally, I suggest you play someone else's copy before putting any money into it. That way, you can determine on your own whether you like it or not.

Yes, it was worth the investment. I have had several non-board gamers want to play it again.

Trump said:

Granted the majority of responses will probably be positive on FFG's own forum. It's also true, however, that FFG's fans know the game backwards and forwards. Sometimes even better than FFG themselves, I'd say, judging by some of the rules questions we come up with.

So while a great many responses will probably be along the lines of "yeah! buy it, it's great!" there will also be a few posts pointing out the bigger concerns players have. As long as the OP can wait long enough for those posts to filter down, it should give him a better idea of whether the game is really worth it. Compare that to a more generic forum like BGG, which, for all it's inherent qualities, will also have a number of repsonders who haven't actually played the game but just judged it based on past experience with FFG.

I guess what I'm saying is, you might not get as many positive answers elsewhere, but that doesn't mean the info you'd get on another forum is unbiased either. The internet is, after all, the misinformation highway. =P

I'll be as objective as I can here. Yes, it's worth the hype. It's still not yet my favorite FFG game, but with it I'm getting the best of both worlds. Arkham Horror, which is my favorite, takes a while to set up and remind everyone how to play-including myself. It's also hard to get people to want to play given the prospect of everyone losing.

Runewars, for being a big game, is simple to teach, easy to remember, and very fun to play. And like other people said, there are many paths to victory and part of the fun is trying them all. So what I've gotten with Runewars is a big, complicated game that I can get people who wouldn't normally try anything harder than Carcassone to play. Best of both worlds.

Board to Death TV said:

Thanks for the website, it answered many of my questions!

Board to Death TV said:

Um, I already have plenty of detail of the game, having owned it since the day it was released and have played it many times. I'm sure I'll watch the video sometime, though.

Steve-O said:

Funny you should say that about this being FFG's own forum. You should take a peek at the Battlelore forum these days. It's amazing that FFG hasn't banned half of us from posting on that forum for what we've been saying about them in the past week. Probably just an indication that nobody at FFG actually reads the forums.

Nematode said:

Oh, they read the forums. At the very least, word has a way of getting back to them from the mods. The number of times I've seen rulings overturned in FAQs or ideas first proposed here by fans find their way into an expansion, it would difficult to deny, imho. The best example that comes to mind is when FFG recently proposed Arkham Horror minis - and then cancelled them - based on fan feedback on these forums. Back in the day, I can remember when Kevin and Corey used to regularly respond to threads, although they seem to have gotten a bit busier of late.

I haven't read the BL forums as I don't own or play that game line. If people are posting blue streaks of swear words or pictures of their naked ass with "FFG" written in **** and not getting banned for it, then I would be surprised. Otherwise, I would hypthesize that the reason for the lack of bans is because the folks at FFG aren't 12 years old. People don't (and shouldn't) get banned for speaking their mind, even if it is negative. As long as they aren't inciting racial hatred or something I don't think FFG would step in, but I am quite sure they're listening.

This is all somewhat off topic for the Runewars forum, though, so if you'd like to continue discussing this I would suggest we take it to PM.

I think this game is fantastic and easily worth every penny. Though the real question is how much more expensive the game became due to the 3D mountains ;D Luckily my gaming group bought this together so we split price on 3 people

mateooo said:

doh forgot Battle Lore too