Rune Age is an epic-scale deck-building game.
Here be Dragons.
An age of innovation and discovery is at hand. With war on the horizon and whisperings of a prophetic storm approaching, now is the time to gather all your strength and set out to forge your place in Terrinoth’s book of legends!
Rune Age Game Overview
Quick Rules Summary
There are scenarios you can play. We played one that had player elimination as we played a 2-player game, basically destroying your opponent’s Home Realm. I’m not sure how big the rule changes are in other scenarios.
Each player has a deck of cards, I played as the Elves. Players play cards to gain gold to buy new units from their own supply, influence to gain neutral units from a common supply and strength to take strongholds from a neutral supply.
Units and Strongholds stay in play until removed.
At the end of each round, an event card is revealed causing an event to occur or changing a rule for the next round.
You can siege the opponent. When this happens players take turns playing units from their hand activating any of their abilities. When both players have passed, the player with the highest strength in units wins. If attacking, they deal damage to the defenders’ Home Realm equal to the difference in strength.
How do you win?
In this scenario, when a player’s Home Realm is destroyed they are eliminated. The last player left wins.
Main Mechanisms
Deck building! It is a deck-building combat game.
USP
I’m sure in 2011 when this game was released it was very unique. Looking back at it from 2024, it’s mostly been done 100’s of times.
I do like that players have their own selection of cards to buy from, that’s pretty unique still.
Theme
It’s set in FFG’s Terrinoth which includes other games I like including Runebound, Legacy of Dragonholt and Heroes of Terrinoth.
Setup
So I didn’t set this up. It involved looking through several bags of cards to get what was needed for the scenario, occasionally removing cards from expansions.
Components & Artwork
Very Fantasy Flight games, all their games look the same, especially from this period and setting.
Ease of Teaching
Like most deck-building games, it’s easy to teach if people know how these types of games work.
The game itself is pretty straightforward too.
Similar Games
Our game felt like a cross between Hero Realms and Magic the Gathering with the prior game the most similar game I know to Rune Age.
Rune Age Review
Positives
A familiar system made learning the game easy.
Having your own pool of cards to buy from makes each player play in a different way.
Each of the factions plays differently.
Events at the end of the round change things up and provide a threat you can’t always prepare for which is fun.
I’m not sure how much variation is in the scenarios, the shared pool of available cards changes for sure…
Negatives
…but it would have to be very different to have a huge effect on replayability.
It’s look average.
Summary
A game that would have fit my group perfectly in 2011 but could use a 2024 refresh.
Jesta ThaRogue