On Saturday some of the collective turned up at DK’s for his birthday games day - Present were Snake-Eyes, myself and DK obviously, those with notes from there mum’s Sylon (jet lag - returned from Canada the day before), Steedo (been away all week with work and wanted to spend some time with Mrs Steedo (might also been too soon after the Essen trip)), Tiger-King (apparently “sick” again). I was only available for the afternoon session 1pm to 6pm ish (more of that later). So after about an hour’s discussion about Essen and the adventures they had were were ready to start the rule’s explanation.
Due to the excuses DK decided that we would play Runebound (a game that he has had for a while, but due to the ridiculous number of games, has never got to a table) , which is a sort of RPG lite board game hybrid. We chose a character each - DK the “noble“ knight, Snake-eyes a Wizard and myself an Elf Ranger. The game is basically explore the board doing various events, to obtain money, equipment, weapons so that you can defeat the big bad at the end of the game. The game is semi cooperative in that if the big bad get to the middle of the board, you all lose - but if you defeat the big bad you win!
The starting point of the game - each character has three actions. Movement costs 1 action and you role 3 dice and then can move on the terrain types rolled (unless on road). Training - getting more skills cards, Healing and something else cost one action. To activate an encounter (the gems on the board) costs 2 actions. There are 3 types of encounters; Yellow combat; Green exploration/quest; Purple social interaction. Each successful encounter would gain, you money, lore and the encounter token - which could be collected up and spent to improve stats or gain skills , from the skills cards.
The game moves along quite nicely - the combat was fun (in the early part of the game) - involving casting (throwing/dropping) 2 sided counters which could be then used to activate abilities or attack you opponent. This worked well in the first half of the game, but as we gained more skills and weapons we gained more counters and the combat slowed things down quite a lot (although this was probably because I was running rather late by the end of game and wanted things to end …).
The boss monster is revealed - it’s a dragon - run for the hills. He only needs to move 5 or 6 hexes to the city (picture on the right) in the centre to win the game and for us to be losers. It this point i was running about trying to get money to buy some armour to take into the boss fight, but virtually every encounter was a bloody quest (l think that I had about 5/6 active quests) on the other side of the board! About 5 turns was spent trying to get the money together to be in with a chance in the boss fight. Snake-eyes did roughly the same - but trying to get lore. DK was trying to buff himself and we were fortunate that for three turns the big bad didn’t move, then he did. At this point DK’s noble knight stepped up - I say noble, but on three occasions during encounters DK had the opportunity to do the right thing and … on the first DK’s character punched an old woman in the face and stole her money. Then he encountered a refugee camp and could have helped them, but chose to loot the place instead … I can’t recall what the final “Murder Hobo” act he perpetrated, but Snake-eyes and I were thinking that the population of the world were probably safer with a dragon overlord.
The final boss fight between DK and the Dragon King - Snake-eyes and I were ready to step up, when DK was defeated … but after two combats DK prevailed and won the game! The combat was close and we suggested that he retreated from the first combat, which I think he was about to lose. We were luck that the Dragon didn’t move after this as well - well DK was as I was rooting for the Dragon at this point. In the second combat if the dragon king wasn’t killed DK would have been - a damn close run thing. The combat in the boss fight was a bit protracted in the boss fight - the token flipping things loses something with lots of tokens and isn’t as much fun.
Well done DK on a Birthday win of Runebound (and thanks for the Somerset Cider Pork Casserole) - I enjoyed the game and would play again, even though it took 7 hours with 3 players - apparently it should be 3 hours with 3 players according to BBG! I thought we were playing fairly quickly - obviously we had some AP issues (again).
Morts
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