Ok so I finally got my copy of Runebound in the mail monday and I played my first game monday night. I have a few thoughts because unfortunately my first play was less than satisfactory. Now this might be the case for a number of reasons. One reason is that I had just played Arkham Horror again a couple days earlier. Another reason might be because I was super tired from work and on top of trying to keep my eyes open I was trying to teach myself a new game with all sorts of new rules and whatnot so it got frustrating at times lol. With that being said this is what's on my mind.

The game seems easy. My fiance and I played and she didn't even play any green adventures. She started right into the yellows and just beat the game mercilessly. We played for a while but the both of us just destroyed anything we went up against and she was the one that started going to the red cards first. She would draw a red card, beat it to death, and then wash rinse repeat until she had 3 dragon runes and the game was over. So i couldn't believe how fast and easy we beat the game and then just for the hell of it I looked at the card for lord Margath(sp?) and he was less that scary. His ability was you could escape for free but he was stay undefeated and that was it. He didn't have any of his own scary abilities so basically he is just all stats. That bothers me because he is essentially the end boss, the guy you DON'T want to fight. But if you do there's a good chance you'll win fairly easily. In fact just to see we had my fiance fight his card after the game ended and she owned his face. Now comparing this to Arkham when an ancient one awakens you're pretty much screwed or at least close to it. Which is awesome it adds a lot of fear and urgency to the game and then if you happen to fight it and win you feel EXTREMELY satisfied. Well not with margath...he was kind of a wuss.

Another thing I didn't like were the adventure cards. There weren't a whole lot of them. My fiance and I almost went through the majority of the decks and we were only 2 players. With my normal group of 4-5 I can only imagine how fast we get through them. I know that there are countless expansion decks you can buy but some of them say to replace an entire deck and not add to it. So that is something I'm going to need to look into to see about giving us more cards to play with. My other gripe with the cards was that they only seemed pretty similar. They were either monsters, which were not very hard, or they were events that were pretty bland in my opinion and didn't have that exciting flavor that Talisman or Arkham cards have. So once again I think I'll have to check out some expansions. I can only hope that these gripes are taken care of by more cards.

So I think as I look back those are some of my main problems with this game. I think the next time I play I'm going to try some of the variants listed in the rule book like the random encounters when you land on an empty space on the board or the doom track variant. But basically I'm looking to make the game harder, more flavorful, and more fun. Oh and now that I think about it where was the story line? I know that someone is trying to resurrect a dragon god but it was never really mentioned in any of the event cards or anything so after the initial read of the story at the beginning of play I kind of forgot about it which bugged me because I'm a huge fan of a good story line. I hear that Sands of Al-Kalim is good because you get to "tell your own story" but that is a bit further down the road for me.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated since I have massive faith in this game. I feel that with the right expansions and maybe some house rules this game can be as fun for my group as Talisman or Arkham Horror.

I don't know how to account for a player's ability to skip right over green challenges and start attacking the yellows on their first turns other than to say you got some extremely lucky rolls. While its certainly possible to get through a yellow challenge without any gear or leveling up, the liklihood of completing multiple such challenges without needing to retreat to town to heal between each battle seems somewhat slim.

If you managed to run out of challenge cards during the game you must have spent a long time leveling up and gearing up before facing the red challenges, in that case its possible the red challenges may have seemed easier than normal to you. Were you pushing each other to try to be the first to win the game or just mutually agreeing to a long leveling up phase before attempting red challenges? Maybe the doom track variant would help you to be artificially pushed along towards the red challenges earlier (and therefore at a time when you are less powerful). At any rate these 2 issues (running out of challenge cards and red challenges being too easy) go hand-in-hand. Its understandable that when you try a new game you want to take a little longer and experience as many of the cards as possible to see how they work, try to speed up the early/middle stages of the game next time.

As for your issues with the game's storyline. I think it's there on the challenge cards. Its not George RR Martin, but its a story that progresses as the challenges move from green to yellow to blue to red.

At any rate, I'd suggest adding the doom track variant and/or travel hazards to your next play to see if the challenge increases and your enjoyment increases before you start spending money on expansions.

The first thing that stood out when I read your post was your description of your fiance skipping Green encounters and going right to yellow. Like Miles601 said; it's definitely possible to beat a yellow with no level or equipment but to but to fight them until you're strong enough to encounter purple without getting really roughed up or knocked out is really really lucky.
Just a quick thought, In combat do you attack the encounter once and defend twice in each round.
That is in one round of:

ranged, melee, magic

Do you attack only once in only one of those phases and then defend in the other two? This is how it's suppose to be done. I've seen posts where people confuse this part of combat and attack more than once. Basically in one round of combat you have one chance to deal damage and the encounter has two chances to deal damage to you.
With one Allie you can attack twice in one round but the basic rule is as above. I only say this because I'm trying to think of how it could be so easy for you.

I expect to beat Green encounters and hope/expect to do it without taking any damage... then sometimes you'll draw the Assassin and just get knocked out!
With two or three levels and full health I might start taking on Yellow. I'll also expect to take some damage. Then maybe go to town to heal or draw another green or two.
For me Purple and Red have always been huge threats.
Even though skipping Green and running right to Yellow sounds very aggressive I think you played too conservatively. If you're really focussed on getting your three dragon runes before another player you will start taking challenges sooner.
It might not feel like it, but Runebound is pretty much a race and the faster you go the harder it is. But unlike Arkham the players determine the speed and challenge level of the game.

And you're 100% right about the number of encounters. In the core game there aren't enough cards. You'll get too familiar with them too soon. But most of the small deck expansion actually mix into the core game instead of replacing cards. Usually it's the big box expansions that have you replace the encounter cards.
So I would really recommend all the small deck expansions that add to the encounters and market decks. I love Runebound and these are must haves.

You're also right about the story... aside from reading the blurb in the manual you wont get too much from playing the game. But I don't mind this; I enjoy building my character and the decisions that have to be made when considering how close or far your fellow Hero's are from victory.

Also, to me, a 3 player game seems to be a nice sweet spot. 4 is ok if every one enjoys watching others take their turns (as I do).

Hein99 said:

It has three chances to deal damage to you, actually. If you fail your own attack roll the challenge deals damage the same way it would if you had failed a defense roll in the appropriate category. Of course, yellows usually have one 0-damage category so I suppose it is two chances at least for yellow.

If the OP has been forgetting to apply damage for both failed attack and failed defense rolls, that might go a long way to explaining why yellow challenges seemed so easy.

As far as the events being bland, I don't know what to say. One of my favourite aspects of the game is the high flavour and story content which is provided mainly by those event and encounter cards during play. If you find them bland, I don't know if any of the expansions will give you a different experience. The quality of writing is about even across the board. The whole deal about "you telling the story" in Al-Kalim is mainly because of the end goal (to collect X many artifacts of legend and earn yourself an immortal place in the 99 Stories, rather than to defeat of all-powerful evil monster as is the case in the base game and most other expansions.) As far as events and encounters go, Al-Kalim isn't that different.

Yeah I think after reading these I'm going to play another game with the base rules and see if anything changes. After that I'll play a game with the doom track and travel hazard variants. After those sessions I'll start getting some card expansions. I'm really excited about crown of the elder kings and scepter of kyros. I'm also probably going to get some of the monster expansions to add some challenge.

Thanks to all for the posts I really appreciate it.