My copy of "Oath and Anvil" (the first expansion for Rune Age) arrived in the mail yesterday and it is fantastic. Not only did the designers include two new factions and units for the original factions, they went out of their way to add even more value by providing new event cards for the original scenarios as well as two new scenarios. But most importantly, the new neutral cards add so much more strategy to this game. Although they recommend which neutral cards to use with each scenario, there's nothing stopping you from mixing and matching as you see fit which would dramatically change the way each scenario plays out which in turn gives this game a lot of replay value. New landmarks also add new twists and mix up the core set.

The artwork is amazing and seemlessly blends with the core set. Often during play I find myself just looking at the cards, especially the landmarks which are truly awe inspiring.

In conclusion, his expansion was almost everything I could have hoped for (I say almost because I wish the elves had gotten a little more of power boost). There is huge value here for you money because the expansion not only adds two new factions and scenarios, but makes the original factions and scenarios so much more interesting. This is a solid homerun from FFG and I really hope they plan on making more Rune Age expansions in the future.

Style75 said:

Though my friends and I have only been playing the Resurgence co-op variant to reintroduce the game to friends, yes, I do agree this expansion was a big success. I am anticipating to play Overlord next chance we get, which sounds overly fun. The one thing I would disagree with is I believe the elves did get a good strength boost: one new unit for influence accelerates your draw a bit and the other lowers all influence prices for unit abilities. I also like how the strongest unit in all the armies is never destroyed, only discarded. Merc variant forces also finally add the variety to the game beyond the now six-unit barracks for each player. Well worth anyone's money to purchase now but only if you buy core and expansion, imo.

Hey thanks for mentioning your thoughts on the expansion. I've played a couple of games with the core set and I love how the game plays out. After reading this I have no doubt about getting the expansion. Thanks again!

I was considering if the elves really were under powered in comparison to the other races, so I did a solitaire play of Resurgence of the Dragonlords.

The set-up for all the races involved Dawnsmoor and Riverwatch cities, the Battle Cry, Forced March, and Demon, and the mercenary cards Ferrox, Promise of Riches, and Archaic Scroll (if I remember those titles correctly).

The quicker the win results in a higher number, as the number is how many cards were left in the Event deck when the objective is defeated. These are the results:

Humans - 7 7 7

Humans without using Battlecry - 7 6 5

Undead - 7 7 5

Barbarians - 6 6 5

Orcs - 6 5 4

Dwarves - 7 4 3

Elves - 5 5 4

I only did a few retries with certain races if I felt they were getting really unlucky against the event deck or bad draws. The humans I literally got the high score of 7 every time I attempted it with Battle Cry's. They are just insane. I questioned if they were dependent on Battle Cry and banned the use of the card for three more trial runs and they still did better than all but undead by 1 event card. Dwarves I had to do a few retries and got really lucky on grabbing the 7. They otherwise got a 3 and a 2 when first playing with them. Lastly, I retried like crazy with elves, and they just could not pack enough power. I don't know if I didn't try them enough but they were my first race to play with. When I saw how well the Orcs and Humans faired, I went back to using Elves and still couldn't get them to do better than 4 or 5 Event cards left.

The results show clearly, at least to me in Dragonlords scenario, that the weakest armies are Dwarves and Elves. What does this prove beyond that? Really it was a question of how fast any race could seal the objective would also mean in other games how fast they could theoretically take an opponent out with brute strength alone. Humans and Undead are without a doubt the strongest.

One thing solo mode does not show well is how destroy opposing unit synergy works against an opponent. I do believe that given the opportunity, the elves may still excel slightly better in a versus fight simply because their anti-unit card is a 3 strength one and when you get their mythic, it costs 0 influence to destroy an opposing unit. Likewise, their mythic is indestructible in combat itself. The dwarves I cannot say the same for. If anything, I think they might be the weakest race now in the game. Though it is nice that no matter what hand you start the game with you can get a Digging Machine, the Forge Masters always afterwards clutter the deck. But who knows, I may be playing with them wrong like I used to play humans wrong, and when I watched my friend play humans, they started to really blow the competition away. Comments?

Just an overall reply here. I really love this expansion. It added a LOT of replay value to the base game. I'm a family guy so I don't get to be a full time gamer anymore, so I haven't really developed any of the strategies I read about here.

Based on just casual play I really like Quest for Power. We've only played three games so far. One was two players, three players, and four. Each game had very different strategies and twists and turns. I really enjoyed this one.

The Overlord scenario was great. We did this twice and both times the Overlord was victorious. I was the Overlord one of these times playing the humans. I have to confess this is one of the few times I did look up some strategy online and used a good human build. The Roc really beefs up the humans! Looking forward to playing this some more.

I really liked the mercenary cards. We went back and forth as to how to implement them. Sometimes we did it RAW but other times we separated them into two piles or even by card type just to get more exposure.

Overall I'm glad I bought this. I saw Tromdial's post about a 9 player game. Unfortunately I rarely have 4 player games so that is just a pipe dream for me.

Yes, the Quest for Power and Ascent of Overlord are great scenarios from the expansion.

btw Tony, you can still play a big multiplayer game if experienced players don't mind using two decks at once. Just an option.

I think I might have a 5 player game happening this weekend. I only have one copy of the base game and the expansion so I need some advice on how to best work that out. I'll just start a new thread.

For me, the option of not playing elves was a big plus It fixed the balance issue right away . As for the flavor and feel of the armies new cool cards, yes its a good expansion. Hope to see more, and maybe someday they bring the elves back to their glory.

rvillaver said: