2006.10.02
Doomed Runebound
For the first time ever, I managed to win a game of Runebound this weekend.
We tried the Doom Track variant for the first time, since we were a little tired of the games being so lengthy and it seemed to be a promising way to speed things up a bit.
It certainly did speed things up – we finished in a little under two hours. In the end, we agreed it was a good addition to the game (and requires only a little extra management which can be easily taken care of by one of the players) but it seems to have curtailed things a little too much, at least in two-player runebound. There are only 24 Doom Track spots for 2-player Runebound according to the standard rules, which is only 12 each. We decided that having 28 or even 32 spots might give the game a little more breathing room without drawing it out too much, and we may try that next time. We were also playing with double market cards, cheaper levels, and with a very soft knockout rule. Even still, with all that help, I managed to get knocked out 4 or 5 times (how embarassing) and hadn’t even attempted a single blue adventure when the doom track was filled.
By contrast, Jason had succeeded at a blue adventure as well as a red adventure – he already had a dragon rune when the endgame began. We were both at level 7, but he was much better outfitted in terms of gear and allies than I was.
Nonetheless, I got lucky. In terms of player order for the end game, I was first since we were both level 7, but I had a lot of unspent money (no time to spend it at the end, at least not on anything worthwhile). I threw everything I had at the Dragon Lord I drew first in the end game, and succeeded without sustaining much damage at all thanks to some uncharacteristically high rolls on my part. So I had a dragon rune, and drew the next challenge. Which did not go well at all for me.
Then Jason drew… The Heart of Margath. Oh thank goodness for lucky breaks. Jason defeated the Heart, which doesn’t count as a Rune like most of the red cards do, and then he had to face High Lord Margath himself. Jason fought well and actually came very close to defeating him, but couldn’t quite pull it off in the end.
In the end, we tied at one Dragon Rune each, level 7, and thus it came down to money – so I won. Had Jason drawn a Dragon Lord during the end game instead, he would almost certainly have won. So even though my victory was only had by the skin of my teeth, and technically darkness covered the land and all that Jazz (since Margath wasn’t defeated and neither were the Dragon Lords), I still won. Woohoo!
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