The other thing I wanted to do with the concept of the Day Of Universal Gaming (DOUG) is to write a synopsis or review of the session the day afterward. Since yesterday, 1/31/2010, is going to be the official start to DUG (new name too) I'll write a quick synopsis/review of what we did.
Game: Runewars
Style: Board Game
Genre: Fantasy
GM: Dave Olson (moderator)
Players (Factions/PCs): Alice (Elf), Matthew (Uthuk), Trenton (Undead), Harris/Luke (Human)
I love Runewars, even when I'm just moderating instead of playing. It's like Twilight Imperium in a fantasy setting. The scope is a little smaller but the game runs a lot quicker in general, with smooth components and intelligent design. Really, this game represents everything great I've come to expect from Fantasy Flight Games.
To get things going quickly I setup the board knowing that I would be moderating, so I endeavored to set it up so that no one player had a distinct advantage over another. The map was laid out and I explained the rules a total of 3 1/2 times as various people showed up. Luckily the game concepts in Runewars are pretty easy to grasp and make sense once you start playing.
The point of Runewars is to capture 6 Dragon Runes, and each player starts with 2 to begin with. These tokens are placed on the individual map tiles of the configurable board, one each, and each player also had a false rune token. This meant that each of the three areas of a players' home realm had a Dragon Rune, but only two were real - one was a decoy.
The game is played out over the course of years, with each year divided into four turns represented by the seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter). Each player chooses one of eight strategy cards to play during each season dictating their action, and then the strategy cards are returned to your hand at the beginning of each year.
In the game itself I was actually pretty surprised at the lack of player-to-player hostility. Sure, it started off with Alice leveling Matthew's city but it didn't really escalate from there. Most players kept themselves engaged by dealing with the neutral factions surrounding them and sending their heroes on quests to retrieve Dragon Runes. After about the third year Harris had to leave and Luke graciously stepped up to fill the player void, but Harris had made some questionable tactical decisions that left the human faction in a very very tight bind.
The end of the game came when Matthew claimed 6 Dragon Runes in the winter of the fourth year. It seemed like everyone had a good time and the mechanics of Runewars kept the game flowing very quickly even for four people who had never played it before. Verdict? Definitely worth playing again.
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