Hello you Runebound people,

I read in your posts that most people don't like the Doom track optional rule from base set. Well, I tried it a couple of times and finally decided to abort it, because no player was able to confront Margath or other red challenges when Doom track was full.

I would like to know why the Doom track looks unbalanced. Are the Doom counters assigned too early (=too few cards)? Are there some player arrangements (e.g. 3-4 players) where Doom track works fine? Have you devised a house rule to fix the Doom track?

I don't like a Runebound game that lasts forever. Eventually you will be able to win, but I think that Terrinoth has not many days left before Margath and the Dragonlords arise to conquer... I want a rule that works fine, possibly with any number of players. Can you help me?

I have heard good things about the Doom Track rule from Mr. Skeletor. Here is a cut and paste from his rules from the boardgamegeek website. He also describes rules for all the other card sets for a solo game so it might be worth a look to you.

THE STANDARD RULES

You will need the Threat Track from the Midnight expansion to play (or if you don't have it just make it yourself - you should be able to find pictures and details of it on FFGs website).

Additional setup
Set the Threat level to 0, and the threat difficulty to whatever you like - I recommend starting at 20 and lowering it by 1 each time you beat the game. Begin with 0 doom tokens in your pool.

Playing
Play the game exactly as normal, including standard knockout and winning conditions. The only difference is there is now a Step 6, the Threat roll.

Step 6: Threat roll
This step comes each turn after the experience step.
Make a Threat Roll by rolling 2 dice and adding any doom tokens you have in your pool. If this roll is equal to or higher than the Threat Difficulty, increase the Threat Level by 1 and discard all doom tokens you have accumulated from your pool. If this roll is below the Threat Difficulty, add one doom token to your pool.

If the Threat Level ever goes past 10 (i.e. your on 10 and your Threat Roll is over the Threat Difficulty) you INSTANTLY lose the game – there is no ‘endgame’ under these rules (unless otherwise noted.)

That’s all there is to it. The sections that follow deal with the different adventures and expansions.

Here is the link to the source website:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/122763

Cheers

I actually find the Doom Track rules as they stand are very workable. The trick is, however, to play with them in mind.

First, and most obviously, since the doom track advances with each discarded card, you need to make sure you get the most bang for your buck out of your challenges. Advance to Yellow and Purple challenges as fast as possible. This means taking chances.

At the same time, don't be afraid to run away. Since you're taking bigger risks earlier in the game in order to cope with the doom track, you need to be prepared to flee if a challenge proves too tough. Keep in mind also that flight from a challenge doesn't cause the challenge to be discarded, and therefore doesn't advance the doom track. Feel like the clock is running a little bit fast this game? Need to catch up after a knock out? Run away from challenges that discard themselves and grant a fixed gold reward in favor of those that read "take this card."

Hand in hand with that: don't activate encounter abilities that require you to discard the card. Sure, maybe you don't make that Diplomacy check without the +2, or you won't get to Frostgate until your next turn.

My wife and I routinely play with the doom track option as it appears in the rules. Occasionally, Margath wins. Usually, though, one of us can take him.

Thanks for suggesting Mr.Skeletor solo rule. I read about it in the other thread, but I look for an adjustment of the Doom Track for 5-6 players.

BD Flory said:

This is the real problem. Not everybody accepts to play with the Doom Track limitation, because most people like to play it safe. I was the player who tried Yellow and Purple Challenges first and was eventually knocked-out or forced to flee. Other players went around doing green Challenges even if they were almost ready for the Purple ones. I don't believe that players with such attitude will consider making the game more challenging and tense. What I sincerely disliked in the 5-6 player games we played, was the long time stretch everyone must wait to play. If you don't play it with tension, Runebound becomes a straightforward game for power-players (I hate this kind of outcome).

BD Flory said:

Fleeing from Challenges should happen more often than my average game with friends. I believe I was the only one who ran away from Challenges I was not sure to beat, while others fought to death or easily won.

I'm trying to say that players are not always disciplinated and wise enough to manage Doom track advancement as you and your wife do. It could be done in 2-3 player games, but 4-5-6 is impossible. I tried it 3 times and every game I was really upset because I was unlucky every time I took chances, while other players where sitting down on easy Challenges for most game. After 4 long hours, Doom Track was full and nobody was able to confront Red Challenges. Fine. Let's ignore Doom Track and keep on playing our way. This caused some argument with my friends: I accused them to cheat and to misunderstand game mechanics. However, the result of my "courageous deeds" was an under-developed Character in most games, with less or no fun (bad rolls are never funny).

BD Flory said:

I don't like this, because it makes Events and Encounters unwanted. They usually give small bonuses, and you can't prevent Events and Encounters from popping out from the deck and accelerating the Doom Track. Rules say you must draw cards until you reach a Challenge. I'd rather not consider Events and Encounters in Doom Track, because you (usually) don't gain experience from them (though you might gain Objects).

BD Flory said:

Hey, I played two solo games today to check if your suggestions were good. They are indeed. Even if the Doom counter advances every 2 cards, the time and the rewards are good enough to build a decent Character to defeat Margath or 3 Red Challenges before Doom Track is triggered.

There's only a thing that still upsets me: Events and Encounters. Sure you can keep the Hidden Treasure/Wanted an Assassin and similar Encounters, but you can't do nothing if a well shuffled deck gives you 4 Events/Encounters in a row (it happened me once in both games! I swear I carefully shuffled the decks!). Some Encounters require you to make a roll and gain something (some give you a bonus you MUST use) and some Events really slow your game down (i.e. "Like Animals Before a Storm" if you have a less diplomatic Character like Mordrog). You can't escape from them, nor keep them.

For this reason, I don't consider Events and Encounters to count towards the Doom Track. Otherwise, the Doom Tracks works fine, if you manage not to get knocked-out with many cards to discard.

There are couple of cheap items in the market deck that allow you to hold back an event or encounter that you draw for later, but I think that they might be in one or two of the card expansions (I generally play with every single expansion bar the character decks and have also shuffled in most of the MIdnight market deck too as I wanted to make some use of it). Think one of them is the lantern of revealing and another is the sphere of something-or-other. If you are going to play with the doom track then they can slow down the Margarthocalypse a bit. Also it might be worth choosing the chap with the falcon (whose name escapes me at the moment) as a character as he can look at adventure cards before facing them and - if he wants - put them on the bottem of the deck instead.

Running away from any challange that you can't keep after killing is also a **** good idea, although obviously more viable for those with high mind scores. There's a green encounter called master huntsman, er, I think (I'm too lazy to go and open the box as it's rather late) which is great as it lets you keep any challenge that you defeat on a forest or swamp space even if the card doesn't specify you can keep it as part of the reward. Normally the cards are for selling at towns for extra gold, but there's no reason why you can't keep them (aside from the practical issues of dragging a whole bunch of mouldering critter corpses around, but hey it's an abstract fantasy game). If you can get that one then you really are sorted. Again though, I think it's an expansion set card.

Basically, if you can persuade the other players to co-operate with you in doing anything possible to not discard cards, at least until you all have a few stat upgrades behind you, then it shouldn't be too difficult to put the brakes on the doom track long enough to make winning the end game a valid proposition. Of course not all players might want to cooperate, especially if they think that whilst they might not be able to beat Margarth or three other dragon lords, they won't lose as badly as the rest.

Hey, I carefully re-read the Doom Track Rules on the Rulebook and was a little confused by the diagram that explains how you deal with cards for Doom track purposes. According to the illustration, which is for a game in which you put a counter every 8 cards, when you discard the card nr. 8 (on the Frostgate space) you should bring down the same card to the Vynelvale Space, put a new counter and discard the other 7 cards.

This procedure is kind of weird. You place a Doom Counter after 7 cards from the first counter on! What about single player games? Put a Doom Counter for every card you discard?

Has somebody clarified this before? How do you rule the Doom Track advancement?

I've experimented with using 2 experience to select a skill instead of 4 or 5 (two players). This makes the game go quicker as you "level-up" quicker. It almost goes silly-fast, but is an option for Doom Track players.

I think it's unfortunate that the Doom track is a 'recommended variant' in the rule book. We started playing the first game with the Doom track, and luckily I hit a thread in this forum and just skipped the track before it harmed our first game. I interpreted the recommendation so, that it is essential to the game, but it really should say something about being an additional rule for advanced or experienced groups. So thanks people for the advice !

It is good that the games have variations and alternative rules, and FFG makes great effort in providing us the expansions to keep the games alive. In this case the Doom track should be labelled a bit differently to be actually of use in stead of potential downer for the players.

I don't play using the Doom Track.
Instead, I use the Threat Track developed for the Midnight expansion when playing any of the Runebound games solo or when playing with new players.

I believe it is also recomended in Mr. Skeletor's Solo Rules.
Anyway .... If you are interested, you can find photos on the BBG site.