Hi, I am new to Runewars. I just bought the newest release recently and I absolutely love it. But I still have trouble with some rules or confusing imprecisions on gameplay. May someone help clearing this out for me? I read a bunch of topics on this forum and elsewhere already and I am glad to have found some answers for myself. Here are the few points I still don't get:

A) When using the Order card 8 to move dragon runes, the rules say you choose 2 territories you control and then move the rune. Do the chosen areas need to be connected or linked by territories you control in order to do the move?

B) The rules say that you can leave units on the territory while attacking (not participating to the battle). I am not sure to get the point of this? I understand that it can destroy the enemy’s stronghold when you lose the battle but then those units are destroyed. Logically you could only leave 1 of the weakest units in the area to achieve that keeping a maximum units in the battle right?

I read somewhere (from other people on forums) that the enemy’s stronghold could be destroyed (meaning broken down or flipped side) even if you DON’T leave units on the territory when you lose the battle, but if you still have standing units on the faction sheet? Which rule is correct?

C) Then, can the defense leave units on the territory upon a battle and is it beneficial in any way?

D) There might be something I don’t understand about activation tokens. Why do we have 4 activation tokens when there is the use of 3 activation tokens per year max (that is if we use Order cards Mobilize along with its Supremacy bonus and Conquer)? We then we recover them at the next spring.

E) When an enemy has a controlled area with only a stronghold present, how can we take over? Do we need to enter the area, starting a battle (with no enemy units) and tally strength? This would require moving in using a minimum of 6 units to take over for example (if no development is present)?

F) Then if the enemy has no standing units in his home realm, can you use the Strategize Order card to move units all over those areas assuming you move from an adjacent area?

Thank you so much for helping out, and sorry if those questions repeat what other poeple already posted.

Rudy502 said:

No, they can be any two areas you control on the board. You can even pick one area with a rune token and one without, to effectvely "move" the rune from one area to another. Or you can pick two areas with tokens to "swap" the runes (or to pretend to do so, and bluff).

Rudy502 said:

All attacking units must participate in the battle; you can't leave any in the area. All standing defending units must also participate. The only units that stay in the area are routed defending units.

Rudy502 said:

After the battle, if the attacker still has defending units, but not enough strength to win the battle, the defending stronghold is damaged (flipped to it's weaker side). The attacking units then retreat. The attacking units in this case participated in the battle; you don't leave them in the hex area.

Rudy502 said:

The defender can only leave routed units on the hex; all standing units must participate in the battle.

Rudy502 said:

Though not as common, there are other ways that activation tokens can be placed on the board, such as the "Horrific Rumors" Tactics card, or by playing Mobilize a second time with the "Favor of the Spies Guild" Tactics card.

Rudy502 said:

You move into the area and start a battle. This *DOES* count as a battle, even if no enemy units are there, and the defending player could even play Tactics Cards (Summon Lightning is a personal favorite in this situation, as it lets you zap some attacking units, and since you don't have any in the area, you don't get affected by it). Strictly speaking, the attacker would also draw cards for all his units. For most units, this wouldn't have any effect other than burning through cards (and thus, some people choose to skip those units), but for units like Knights, Necromancers, and Seige Towers, the Orb effects could be useful (for drawing Tactics cards, spawning new Reanimates, and increasing Strength against the stronghold, respectively).

Note that since this IS a battle, you cannot start a second battle with Mobilize, even against another enemy area with no units.

Rudy502 said:

No, Home Realm areas are always considered to be "enemy controlled" and not empty, even if there are no units there. Thus, you cannot use Strategize to move into them, but would have to use a Mobilize or Conquer order. Also, as with no-unit Strongholds, this does count as a battle.

I hope this helps! Feel free to ask if you have other questions, this is a great game

Thank you so much for your answers. This will help us play the right way. If I have any more interrogations, I will post again. I think I will be getting the expansion set soon enough

There are other confusing situation that i would like to ask of.

1) In the rulebook, under the Activation Token section, it says that "A player can recruit into an area containing one of his Activation Token"

then into the Recruit Order is says "he places all of these recruited units in any areas containing friendly strongholds".

Could the first sentece regard only recruiting Neutral Unit?

2) Think of 3 hex areas in a straight line, i control the second while my enemy controls the last one. I use the tatics card that let me place one of his Activation Token in my areas. That means i'm preventing him from using the First Order (cause no empty or friendly areas are next to him) and both the Second and Third Order cause he can't Re-Active my area. Is that right? Also he can't use those order card to "Skip" my area and Active the one before mine?

3) When in a season the game calls for an Influence Bid we need to read all the text into that card so we all know the victory condition or we just need to do the Bid and,only after that, reading the rest of the card? (that would ad to much randomness into the game so it seams very unlikely, but it's not specified)

Flesh said:

You must recruit into a hex that contains a friendly stronghold, period. That hex may be activated or not activated. The first sentence is just letting you know that it doesn't matter if you've already activated the hex.

Flesh said:

Correct.

Flesh said:

You read the entire card aloud and then vote.

Flesh said:

*wonder* How would that even work? The person doing the turning would either not be allowed to read the entire card (so you'd have to shield it from him, only allowing him to read one sentence at a time), or that person would have knowledge on the bid that the other players would not have.