Runebounding, Part II: Small Changes with Impact

There are multiple card expansions to Runebound. As mentioned in...

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Great write-up. I wonder how many folks just mixed all those cards together for a massive bizarre experience!

Thanks. That's... something I confess to never even considering, but doesn't sound like a bad idea.

These are good! The giants city mechanic sounds super creative.

Thanks! Scepter was definitely more involved than I expected. It was released in the first wave of expansions with Crown and I expected it to be more like the base game ("Final boss, but giants instead of dragons!") and instead it kind of carved out its own ground. You can imagine the designers' meeting: "We have this huge deck of loot for the players. Why don't we leverage it into something more than just that?"

Ah, memories! Cataclysm was probably the most game-changing, but our group enjoyed the Cult of the Rune the most, as it gave us much more of a "living world" feel and preferred the emphasis on scenario Challenges.

Yep. I was fond of Cult for those reasons, too. I enjoyed the fact that there was a constant presence on the map that you had to be aware of when cruising around. As you said, it gave the impression that things were happening in the world, whether you and your rivals were around to poke the bushes or not.

Scepter and Cataclysm are the best, most varied ones. I miss my Runebound stuff (I had collected everything but the character decks, and then promptly sold it all off). Runebound might have been my most-played large-format game after tournament-based games.

Hey! Good to see you posting again. If ever you're in town again, we can probably grab Steve and some other victim and sit down to an all-day Runebound session...

And I agree with that assessment. I think Scepter, Cataclysm, and Cult are the upper tier in the small expansions, which is part of what was so cool about them, since they were pretty cheap when they were published and they provided what was essentially a whole new adventure without shelling out for the big boxes (which will be part III.)