does any one else feel that it takes to long to feel confident to fight yellow challenges. eventually the doom track will be up to 5 doom counters. But the threat track goes to slow and we lose interest. anyone else use the the variant of exp equall to your level (level= exp counters +1) but then for 2 players should the cap off for number of exp cost be 9. then even if you have 11 exp counters it costs 9. Is that a good cap off. should there be a cap off. Also in this one game i kept getting knocked out. i lost all my items and lost 9 gold then 5 gold then 3 gold in almost a row. I use standard knockout rules. Do all of you guys use the standard knockout. i kept thinking that not losing gold would have people getting to 20 or more easily. And not losing items makes a lack of item variety. And not losing highest cost item means theres no more point of escape tests. Should i just leave regular knockout rules and learn to deal with it.

So do i continue this level up exp with capoff 9, should i use doom track, but use threat track for solo. Also should i use travel hazards. Do you guys use travel hazards.maybe i should use it in solo and the punishment for not being able to get on an adventure counter is to miss your turn. or just use travel hazards. Should i use travel hazards in adventure varaint decks. And for sceptor of kyros do you think its a good idea to replace the red jewel spots with blue adventure counters. help is appreciated

shadow? said:

Still early in my RB-career with three games down, but I have made some initial impressions (don't use doom or threat track currently, might employ one or the other for single Hero games). First game took my sweet time before daring to take on a Yellow Challenge. Second game, Mad Carthos took on a Yellow Challenge as his second Challenge of the game. Today, Varikas the Dead took on a Yellow Challenge to go from 3 to 5XP for his first upgrade. In the last case, Varikas had bought the Dragontooth Hammer (activate for +1W in melee) with his starting Gold, so combined with his Before Combat, he was capable of doing 4 damage. In the Mad Carthos game, okay, so his eagerness to go for the Yellows backfired when the dice went absolutely cold and he lost to the Forsaken Vampire, had he gotten even average rolls, he would've beaten it.

I plan on getting a game with my friend next weekend, introducing him to RB and have devised the following scheme for describing the decks:

Green: 2-3 Lives, 1-2 dmg

Yellow: 3-4 Lives, up to 3 dmg

Blue: 4-5 Lives, up to 4 dmg

Red: 5+ Lives, up to 5 dmg.

If you get a nice Ally or Item and/or have a solid Hero, taking on Yellow Challenges even without having a single upgrade isn't something I'm scared of anymore. I think in the first game I thought they would be a significant increase in difficulty over the Greens, instead, I feel like they are a minor bump up (didn't look at the cards before playing).

Pretty good breakdown of the risks and ratings. The only other factor (which you hint at) to keep in mind is that RB's use of 2D10 makes outcomes a bit more uncertain than games built on using D6s.

The first thing a newbie shall learn in Runebound is: "you can complete the game without a single knock-out and feel very clever, but if you don't take calculate risks you won't be the winner".

A couple of Green challenges are more dangerous than the average Yellow, but considering the great advantage in Exp and Rewards that Yellow Challenges offer, it's worth the risk. The sooner you jump to the Yellow, the bigger the advantage against the others. Runebound is all about taking the chance at the right time; the occasional bad roll can upset your plans, though, for this reason you always have to consider how many rolls can you fail without getting knocked out.

Unfortunately Characters are not equal; some are very powerful (Jaes, Trenloe, Bogran, Grey Ker), some are tricky to play (Ispher, Landrec the Wise, Spiritspeaker Mok), others are really weak. I tried many times to get a good game with Sir Valadir or Runewitch Astarra, but it never happened. Chance to deal damage before you get enough Wounds to die it's too low.

Additionally, about incremental experience... it should be capped at 5, not 9. For 10 exp counters by the normal rules, the total cost is 40 exp points. The same number of exp. counters will cost you 55 if you use an uncapped incremental. Incremental capped at 5 brings the cost of 10 exp counters back to 40 again but still allows quicker build up to that 10 exp counters.

The downside is that after you hit that 10 exp counters, capping at 5 is little better than the standard 4. Build up of exp. counters actually accelerates the more you get, contrary to how RPGs work where the next level for a characters is always much more costly. Accelerated build up helps keep the game from getting overly long, but it also means that any character that falls too far behind the others has a statistically poor chance of ever catching up.

This is the only factor that supports an uncapped graduated exp system; without the cap, the higher the number of counters, the slower it is to achieve the next one. And so it lengthens the latter half / third of the game. It also gives characters that fall behind (say, because of a knockout) a chance to catch up, if you're willing to play a longer game.