The Epic variant states that the fake Runes are not used, which I prefer anyway but this leads me to the following questions.

Why was this not anticipated with Runewitch Astarra and the Lord Commander Title card ?

Runewitch Astarra's Special Ability lets her look at Rune tokens in her area or adjacent areas.

Obviously, this ability is completely useless when playing without fake Runes.

The Secondary Ability of the Lord Commander Title card has a similar "look" effect, which becomes useless as well when playing this variant.

Some might call it an "oversight", but I feel this is just too blatant to be a simple oversight.

Any Chance these two cards could be redone and be added to the first expansion ( a la TI3) ?

In the meantime I set the House Rule Department at work which came up with the following alternatives

1- Runewitch Astarra :

Instead of taking an Action ( Move, heal, Train ) you may move a Rune Token from the area in which you currently reside to an adjacent area.

( she is a Runewitch after all )

2- Lord Commander Title Card second ability :

When resolving a Conquer Order you may draw one Fate Card. You may use this card to replace one of your Fate Cards drawn during this season's battle. Discard this card at the end of this turn if it wasn' t used.

While I can see your point with the Runewitch one, I'm not entirely convinced the Lord Commander card "needs" it. The +2 to all battles in Rune Token territories is pretty big already - you don't even have to be the DEFENDER of that land, if you just attack someone else's rune, you still get the +2. That can (and has, in at least one of my games) be the difference between winning and losing a key battle right there

ditto. like the idea about the rune witch though!

Just don't use runewitch in the epic game. The epic variant says to discard anything that refers to false runes anyway.

The title is plenty strong without the "look" ability. I think that text was just added to make fix it for the short game.

Well, technically Runewitch doesn't refer to false runes - it just talks about looking at runes. IE, her power is useless, but that doesn't mean she can't help out in a game. She's certainly better than having NO heroes.

But I agree that I would probably rather just discard her than try and rewrite her for Epic.

cant she look at encounter markers as well?

I don't have the card in front of me, but the exploration tokens are an optional rule, so I don't think anything in the base game references them.

sigmazero13 said:

Whether the Lord Commander card "needs" a second is debatable, the reason I think it needs a second ability is because

1- the other title cards each have two uses as well

2- I don't like "one use" special cards

it's exactly the fact that you get multiple effects out of the Title Cards that makes them earntheir place in a Strategy game IMO.

"One use" is just too straightforward IMO and becomes "old" very fast.

One of the cards I like the most for example is the Rally Cry Tactics card, simply because it is so versatile.

To be honset, in the games I've played with the Lord Commander card, I've never had a game where I've really even USED the second part of the card. My heroes already told me the information I needed to know, and it wasn't a big deal.

Adding a power just to add a power, especially since it's such a MINOR power, just makes a card more powerful than it needs to be. The +2 is probably just as powerful in the end game as the Primarch card is during the mid-game.