I've recently played this game for the first time, along with everyone else at the table other than the game's owner who'd played it only a few times. We all enjoyed it tremendously, but the game ended rather abruptly after maybe three years, only for us to realize that none of us had actually battled each other. There was one attack, but the defender retreated. The game's owner said that it wasn't an unusual way for the game to end and that player-on-player battles were oddly rare.

Is this the case? It seems anti-climactic to set up this huge fantasy army, learn how it all works, and then only ever use it against weaker neutral units. I'm wondering if maybe we didn't have some of the rules right or if we just did not understand strategy well. Obviously with three of us new, we made a lot of poor decisions early on, but I would have thought it'd balance out.

Anyway, I realize this is kind of hard to answer since you don't know what rules we might have screwed up or what our individual strategies were or how the map was set up, but I suppose my question boils down to:

Is it normal to have few or no battles, and if not what are some good opening strategies to get moving and make a quick assault?

It can happen sometimes. It depends on the map layout, which runes come into play when, where the resources are, etc. However, from my experience it's also largely a matter of really getting the strategy. And expectations.

It is important to note that at it's core, this isn't a hard-core battle game. Battles are a PART of the game, but it's not the drive, the goal. Battles are fought when there's a reason for fighting them. Some games have a lot of conflict, because key territories are important to getting a good strong grip on winning.

There are two ways to win at this game: Wait for luck to give you the runes to win first, or take control and be aggressive, doing what you can to get that final rune yourself. With two aggressive players, it can be very tense as they struggle to gain that one rune that will win them the game. With passive players, it can often turn into a "race game" with a skirmish here and there.

You CAN play it peacefully, yes. And sometimes that can be a good strategy. But once the players start learning when to attack, and when to hole up, the combat aspect of the game becomes much more vital.

Also, another way to help with this is to use the Epic rules - the game takes longer that way, and thus often opens the door for more combat opportunities as the game progresses. And if you ever want to encourage more combat somewhat "artificially", try and make the map smaller - the less territory to fight over, the more fighting there will be for it.

That was my thought, to make the map smaller, but I'm not one to start modifying a game after only one play, so I doubt we'll try that any time soon.

And yea, I got the impression it wasn't a purely battling game, but to not have a single direct conflict seemed strange. I like the non-battle stuff a lot actually, but I just hope to make it a more even mix next time.

Anyway, thanks. It's good to have an idea of how an ordinary game goes so we know we aren't doing anything terribly wrong.

I second the suggestion for the epic rules. They make the game far more interesting.

Adam said:

One easy way to make sure the game has more conflict would be to go on the offensive yourself. Just make sure you're doing it for a reason and not just randomly lashing out at other players. (By which I mean, make sure your attacks are moving towards the goal of claiming hexes with your opponent's runes in them.)

Steve-O said:

Or, to a lesser extent, claiming resources; there is one season card and one objective for each side that deals with resources