I want to offer a little background on my gaming habits for a point of reference on what I usually play. I have played TCG’s, I think close to forever, and I think I have played almost every major one to some degree. I transitioned at some point to wargaming for quite a few years. I played most Games Workshop stuff, Warmachine, some homebrew stuff, Clan Wars, Warzone…I think you get it, quite a bit of stuff has passed through my gaming table. I have lately moved into playing board games. Boy, I was surprised to find ow much thingshave changed from the old Avalon Hill games with cardboard chits and busy game boards from the 1980’2 and 90′s. While maybe these games were deep and driven to be strategic, they lacked to me and many of my next generation with lackluster visual enhancements and overly complex rules systems. So, bring on the next generation.

Of the games I have moved into lately I have a feeling that Runewars is going to be towards the top of my list for a decent amount of time. It has taken so many aspects of my past gaming and mushed them all together that it feels as if they were going after a game system that can gateway many gamer types into this new era of board gaming. It pulls wargaming, a little bit of random TCG type mechanics, and some of the best recent ideas from the modern board game era.

I have now played it twice, three if you count the solo session I usually try to get in to learn a game. While I might not have logged a lot of games the replayability appears high and I have not left either session feeling like anything was missing from the experience.

I will now move into what some of the actual details are for this gem.

(continue reading…)