Trashdome - Twilight Imperium 3rd VS Runewars

The other day, my brother and I were talking and he said "I like the hexagon units, they're strong, without becomnig uber powerful, making them the center of your army"

On the other hand, I wished they felt more like Warsuns.

I have only played RuneWars, but everything I have read about TI3 suggests that I'd like Runewars better.

RUNEWARS.

I'm so burned out on fantasy right now that I'm boycotting everything with elves in it for the rest of 2010.

Vote: TI3

I do like the order cards in Runewars more than the strategy cards in TI3, but TI3 has more satisfying combat, and is much grander in scope, IMO.

Haven't played either, though I did play a bit of TI2, so I'm going on the superficial.

The TI3 cover looks badass. The Runewars cover only retains the ass part.

VOTE: TI3

This is the toughest one for me yet. TI3 was my favorite multi-player conflict game... was. I'm not sure what is now. Runewars is awesome but RW requires using the epic variant to be conflict heavy enough for me whereas TI3 needs SE and a few tweaks to be awesome for me (particular map set-up, the removal of a couple of races, AoE variant...). Typical FFG story.. which I'm fine with. I love tweaking a game to suit my tastes and if the game is strong enough I'll do that. Both are.

But TI3 suffers from less conlifct in it's timeframe. RW on the "epic" setting can be quite heavy in combat, but too much is abstracted for me. TI3 has more unit types per race.. but they're all the same whereas RW has different types for each race.. but only four (plus some hard to obtain neutrals). The action cards are about equal, voting is better in RW and seems more important, combat is slicker, the simultaneous card play offers some new descions, but takes away the ability to screw another guy by taking his strategy card.

Give and take... everywhere I look. It seems to me that RW does a number of things better (ie: smoother) then TI3 but always at a cost. It's less immersive, your race doesn't get to progress as uniquely (no tech tree for starters).

But the neutrals are better then Distant Suns as neutral encounter to occupy empty hexes. It's a tough descion.

TI3's universe is more original whereas RW's feels like the book of fantasy cliches strung together... good thing they have undead and demon possesed barbarians because if it was Orcs, and Goblins instead I might have passed all together. TI3's flavour text is better, the races have cool backgrounds.

But that conflict thing in the epic variant has me sold I think. I've played three games now of RW using the epic variant (because we all found the normal game lacking) and have been really impressed by the epic battles we saw play out. The last game was long enough that the rewards deck was getting small and all the heroes were almost dead too... constant hero battles every summer.

I think that I have to cast my vote for Runewars. Cory K fixed TI3 by adding SE... now he's fixed it by making your 2-4 player game work... in Terrinoth.

Vote: Runewars

Runewars:
+ order cards and season cards better than strategy cards
+ shorter play time and almost no downtime
+ streamlined mechanics
+ different units for every faction (but they dont feel very different unless you draw special)
+ heroes and questing better than TI leaders
+ cities and exploration tokens better than distant suns
- don't feel epic enough
- ends when gets interesting
- no politics (bidding isn't voting)
- too random fights (your powerful hex unit could rout 3, damage 3 or do nothing)
- boring fantasy setting
- no tech
- confusing design of cards and tokens

TI:
+ 11/10 on EPIC scale
+ interesting sf setting
+ actual voting and politics (but could be like in Warrior Knights)
+ tech
+ less random fights (you can always expect 2-3 hits from Warsun)
+ factions are more interesting and have special abilities
+ every game is really different
- more downtime
- really long
- strategy cards aren't thematic
- victory conditions not so great, rune tokens better (you have to gain at least some terrain)

vote for TI3 which is better where it counts

(I'm waiting for TI4 with RW orders and WK politics)

JonJacob wrote:

But TI3 suffers from less conlifct in it's timeframe.

I think it's because they wanted it to seem like a cold war, and not an all out war.

RW on the "epic" setting can be quite heavy in combat, but too much is abstracted for me.

Lack of dice, in my opinion.

the simultaneous card play offers some new descions, but takes away the ability to screw another guy by taking his strategy card.

Actually, I've found that there ARE ways to mess with your opponents, but only if you took either conquer or mobilize. You check to see who is recruiting/harvesting/ fortifying/acquiring power and you hit them hard somewhere where it will hurt them.

your race doesn't get to progress as uniquely (no tech tree for starters).

I'm hoping that the expansion will fix this. I hope they get new units for the races, but I doubt it. I'm thinking maybe each race will get a new order card with initiative 9 or something. That's really easy to implement and it can provide more variety for the races. Or maybe we can have expansion order cards, where the order cards are different for each race.

But the neutrals are better then Distant Suns as neutral encounter to occupy empty hexes. It's a tough descion.

Agreed, the exploration tokens are cool too.




TI3 will probably win though. And I won't begrudge it, as it's an awesome game too.

You Runewars fans are on crack. Its no where near the game TI3 is right now.

Lets start with the strategy cards. The correct selection here can make a huge difference. Taking a card someone needs because you know it and can pick 1st really can mess up others play. In RW the ability to screw someone on a card pick is limited and usually happens automagically with a bad season flip (I hate this mechanic).

We move on to combat. Sure RW has more but its so stripped down it is almost meaningless. It happens all the time and for 1 round. I have not seen it turn fortunes in a game and it is like a sideshow. In TI3 however, If i attack you it is to stop you from doing something tangible, scoring a point or enabling me to score a point. Also the space battles tend to be more decisive. When my fleet shows up you need to brace for face for the slapping it is about to receive from my space faring cock. That's right people battles mean something in this game.

Also ti3 is a real multi player game. Where that 8th player on the other side of the universe can show up and wreck you plans from out of nowhere. Not this 4 player thing where you fight one of the other 3 guys for most of the game.

Runewars has potential, it is good but not great. It is too lean and stripped down at this point.

-M

OFF TOPIC:

Malloc, how does TI3 play with 4 players? I've played a lot of 3 player, 5 player and 6 player games, but never with 4. Is it any good? I heard there's something weird, what with the SC cards running out and nothing getting a bonus.

Malloc wrote:

You Runewars fans are on crack. Its no where near the game TI3 is right now.

Lets start with the strategy cards. The correct selection here can make a huge difference. Taking a card someone needs because you know it and can pick 1st really can mess up others play. In RW the ability to screw someone on a card pick is limited and usually happens automagically with a bad season flip (I hate this mechanic).

Yeah, because it's eurotard shit to be able to pick warfare and your opponent cannot. What kind of sense does this make in an empires game? "Well, I got the galactic warfare ability from the emperor, you guys can't do it now! HA!" I don't a give a fuck if it's a great decision point or whatever. It's Puerto Rico shit. I fucking loathe this mechanic and I especially loathe it here. At least in a euro it's just another one of the illogical, unthematic things in the game. In TI it sticks out like a sore thumb.

We move on to combat. Sure RW has more but its so stripped down it is almost meaningless. It happens all the time and for 1 round. I have not seen it turn fortunes in a game and it is like a sideshow. In TI3 however, If i attack you it is to stop you from doing something tangible, scoring a point or enabling me to score a point. Also the space battles tend to be more decisive. When my fleet shows up you need to brace for face for the slapping it is about to receive from my space faring cock. That's right people battles mean something in this game.

You haven't seen fortunes turned in combat in Runewars? That just hasn't been my experience. I'd probably say I've seen at least half of the other person's army die in a big Runewars battle almost every time I've had one, if not almost the whole thing once in a while. That's pretty decisive to me. Your opponent then has to recruit more to fill the gap, some very valuable rounds playing the recruit card or waiting until the next year to play it. Not to mention getting those units to the area of the board where they're needed--conquer, strategize, etc uses. More valuable orders wasted. Not to mention that your winning opponent is probably grabbing your resource areas in the meantime and your harvest counter may be reset much lower in the meantime. That means you're going to have a hard time bringing the same kind of army out that you did before you first fought it out.

Then your argument is that there is more variance in outcomes with one round of cards vs. the dice--I agree. But on the other hand that's why the combat isn't as cock slapping in Runewars and why there is a lot more of it. You aren't completely fucked for the game from fighting one of your two to three battles in the entire game like you are in TI:3. So you can have more battles. Even though the expansion substantially reduced it, there is still some WWI in space to TI:3, where especially in Epic Runewars there isn't.

Finally, battles can be a sideshow in Runewars with the base game sometimes. As I said before I agree with your 90% there comment on Runewars. In the epic game, though, I see more PvP combat and it ends up being decisive since 7 runes almost requires *at least* one or two taken from the opponent which means lots of fighting. When you're fighting for Dragon Runes, you're fighting for a point. That simple.

You Runewars guys are making a lot of sense. Seriously. And when reading about the role selection in TI3, it's really stupid. But while playing I don't mind. In my head it just becomes some abstract way of showing how the different races pursue different goals. And since there's so much thematic stuff going on, I personally don't notice the absurdity of the mechanism. But it is stupid, and order cards like in Runewars would very likely make for a better game.

But there's just stuff about Runewars I don't like. For instance: When you only move the heroes once per year, that part of the game seems awfully detached. Don't get me wrong, I think the heroes fit nicely with the rest of the game both thematically and game wise, but since lots of time can pass without them doing anything, I tend to forget about them. And that's a shame.

And the runes. Come on. I will try the epic variant sometime, but even with house rules to move more runes into common grounds, they just seem artificial. In A Game of Thrones, for instance, I care about taking the cities. Because they grant me units, because they're placed in strategically important places, simply because they're cities, and, of course, because they serve as VPs. In Runewars, the runes are only VPs. And somehow that doesn't work for me.

Ti3 plays great with 4. I usually play with 4 or 8 and find that the bonus's don't really add that much to a game.

-M

Gary Sax wrote:

Malloc wrote:
You Runewars fans are on crack. Its no where near the game TI3 is right now.

Lets start with the strategy cards. The correct selection here can make a huge difference. Taking a card someone needs because you know it and can pick 1st really can mess up others play. In RW the ability to screw someone on a card pick is limited and usually happens automagically with a bad season flip (I hate this mechanic).

Yeah, because it's eurotard shit to be able to pick warfare and your opponent cannot. What kind of sense does this make in an empires game? "Well, I got the galactic warfare ability from the emperor, you guys can't do it now! HA!" I don't a give a fuck if it's a great decision point or whatever. It's Puerto Rico shit. I fucking loathe this mechanic and I especially loathe it here. At least in a euro it's just another one of the illogical, unthematic things in the game. In TI it sticks out like a sore thumb.

You are completely discounting what makes ti3 a great game. The Fucking Meta game. If i need warfare I will not sit there and let you take it. I will either bribe you or I will make sure that I am in a position to threaten you for it. Else I just do not count on getting it. Besides none of the Strategy cards (save Bureau and the extra objective claim) keep you from doing anything. You are free to take leadership (or anything lower than warfare) and attack me before I pop the war nipple. The strat cards in ti3 supply nice to have bonus's and drive the game forward.

They do not turn the game into a Euro at all, if you play ti3 and it feels like a euro to you then go get a new game group your playing it WRONG.

Gary Sax wrote:
You haven't seen fortunes turned in combat in Runewars? That just hasn't been my experience. I'd probably say I've seen at least half of the other person's army die in a big Runewars battle almost every time I've had one, if not almost the whole thing once in a while. That's pretty decisive to me. Your opponent then has to recruit more to fill the gap, some very valuable rounds playing the recruit card or waiting until the next year to play it. Not to mention getting those units to the area of the board where they're needed--conquer, strategize, etc uses. More valuable orders wasted. Not to mention that your winning opponent is probably grabbing your resource areas in the meantime and your harvest counter may be reset much lower in the meantime. That means you're going to have a hard time bringing the same kind of army out that you did before you first fought it out.

Sounds kinda euro to me the way you claim a single battle causes all that inefficient play.

What I meant by that is that there are so many battles that they tend to all get watered down. In addition that the battles seem so far removed from actually winning the game that they are almost a sideshow. Maybe Epic fixes this, but it also by its nature removes the artificial shortening of the game that is designed int Runewars.

and then there is the no dice thing. Sorry but Top Decking to solve a battle just is not the same as laying down the smack with some dice. Again... Eurotard Mechanic tossed into an AT game. We will not mention that it's implementation is not quite right with the small sized deck supplied.

I stick by my initial statement. RW is a good game. Ti3 is a classic. No contest.

-M

Now that I've been such a fanboy about RW, let me talk about what I think sucks about it.

1) Believe it or not for FFG, not nearly enough cards. The individual decks simply aren't big enough. Season decks. Not big enough. Reward deck, a little thin. Quest deck, *very* thin. Objective deck, a little thing. Fate deck I'm about to talk about. I think here is a place that FFG cut corners. This needed at least 52 more little cards. At least. And more big cards.

2) 4 player max. At the pricepoint and the coffin box, it should be 6 players, 6 sides. That's just my opinion. It's not a ripoff with 4, still well worth it but it should have been 6.

3) The fate deck needs, IMHO, at least double the cards and a reshuffle card like Fields of Fire. It's way too thin. Why I really like the cards is very fast combat resolution without charts and multiple different results on it. Why I don't like it is the major card counting.

If I could, I'd get a 2nd fate deck, and a dummy reshuffle card. Stick the card somewhere in the middle. Keep the auto reshuffle in fall. Then when I get to the reshuffle card, that's also my trigger. That means that there's a little card counting and a lack of independent results, but there isn't the deterministic card counting you can get at the end of that deck. That is potential fun murdering stuff right there.

There's other stuff but I feel like those are the big ones. I still like it better than TI:3.