Hi everybody,

When you play with Road to victory when you have 7 runes are you obliged to reveal them as soon as you gain the seventh ? If not you can just wait the end of the games and then you say "I have 7 runes and win the games !".

And even it's is obligatory: if you reach your secret objective (for example build your Capital with 2 developments) and you can then gain your seventh runes... what prevents you wait for the final round to announce that you have reached your objective and gain your seventh rune ?

Road to Victory (by itself) only requires a player to have 6 runes. Perhaps you were using another optional rule that boosted it to 7?

Anyway, no you are not obliged to reveal that you have 6 runes as soon as you have them. However, in order to claim victory by this rule, you must reveal 6 runes to prove you control them and then wait one full year . If you still have 6 runes after that year, you win.

Now, you could of course wait until you had 7 or 8 runes before declaring that you controlled 6. You would only be required to reveal 6 of the runes you controlled, but you'd still have to survive a full year and keep at least 6 runes before you actually win.

If you reach the end of the winter of the seventh year, the game ends immediately and whoever has the most runes wins . So in order to claim victory by Road to Victory , you would have to declare that you control 6 runes by winter of year six, at the very latest.

OK but then what is the interest to claim victory by the rule Road to Victory ?

You become a target for all other players during one year ! It really more secure to wait wisely the last turn in order to reveal your SO and win the game.

By "SO cards" I assume you're referring to the Good and Evil Objective cards. Revealing your objective gives you an extra rune, but doing so at the end of the game only helps you if you have the most runes.

Say you have 6 runes and you have completed your objective. You wait until the end of the last turn to reveal that you have completed your objective and gain the 7th rune. Fine. If another player has 8 runes, you still lose.

Besides which, waiting to reveal the objective also leaves open the possibility that the condition will be undone. For example, an enemy might attack your capital and force one of the two developments to be removed. Now you have to rebuild the development before you can claim your objective, whereas if you had claimed it immediately, you would have gotten the rune right away. If you wait until the end of the last turn, a tactical strike by an opponent in the last year might ruin your objective without giving you enough time to rebuild.

Road to Victory allows you to "call it", whether you have the most runes or not. As long as you have at least 6, and can hold them for one year, it doesn't matter if your opponent has 7 runes or 20. You win, one year later, if you still have your 6 runes. It allows you to win "early," cutting short your opponent's time frame, but you do have to fight for it. Nothing is free, after all.

As to whether it's wise or not, that all depends on how well fortified your runes are. =P

Good answer. Thanks !

Before the rules revision AS SOON as a player had 7 runes the game ended. Nothing could be done after that. Some claimed the ending was to abrupt, which was true. With the expansion they included the Road to Victory variant to remove that and let players play one more turn before the game ends.

They insluded this variant in the offircial rules now.

Best game ever made imo! Enjoy it!