• Game: Rune Age
• Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
• Designer: Corey Koniesczka
• Genre: Deckbuilding
• Players: 1-4
• Playtime: 30-60 minutes



• What's Hot: Reasonably priced at $30; Runewars scenario offers a compelling PVP experience in a deckbuilding context; some innovative concepts



• What's Not: Stitched together design, replay somewhat limited; feels underdeveloped; material and content wasted on needless scenarios; card base too small to support multiple play modes; Terrinoth

by: Michael Barnes

Set in the dreadfully boring Terrinoth fantasy world, Fantasy Flight Games’ Rune Age stakes out on a different path than most deckbuilders not only in its promise of providing a more narrative, thematic context for its draft-and-shuffle routine but also in its more LCG-like concept of each player representing a unique faction each with a specific, player-only set of purchasable cards.

In addition to the Dominion-like gold cards that can be purchased to increase spending power, there are also a small number of faction-neutral cards that can be purchased from the central display with Influence points. Influence can be generated in a couple of ways including through neutral city cards that interestingly impart a very abstract sense of geography. Strength, the third currency of the game’s tripartite economic system is spent to claim these and they can be attacked and conquered by other players.

Although gameplay process closely mirrors the cyclical nature of previous deckbuilders, four sets of scenario cards change the context. They’re hardly narrative at all, however. Fantasy Flight Games often conflates flavor text with theme, and this is the case in Rune Age. The game is no more narrative or thematic than any of the other deckbuilders on the market. But what is different is that Rune Age offers four different “modes” of play, with each apparently geared toward appeasing a different kind of gamer. One scenario has players racing to generate enough strength in a single hand (with on-the-table bonuses) to beat a Dragon. It can be played competitively or solitaire. The Cataclysm scenario is more or less a survive-the-deck experience for the solo or co-op gamer. For those who prefer a non-interactive economic churn (and don’t have access to a copy of Dominion), a monument-building game type is available.

The fourth scenario is more significant. It’s more or less a Runewars card game, and it’s very telling that it’s the only scenario out of the four where all of the cards in the game actually work. It feels as if the other three content-wasting scenarios were tacked on to the core Runewars setup, and the fact that many of the cards in the game—including always-in-play faction cards—don’t really function right in some scenarios. The Runewars scenario is strictly a player-versus-player elimination contest that brings in some interesting elements of diplomacy, threat assessment, and direct conflict over resources. It almost feels like a card game version of a “dudes on a map” game driven by a card drafting mechanic.

Combat is more or less in line with other Fantasy Flight Games that utilize card-driven resolution. There are a couple of different types of contests. Players attacking on-the-table enemies from the event deck have to play cards from hand which may have “when played” abilities such as drawing further cards or increasing strength values. Once the player is done, an attrition die may be rolled that sends units back to their origin points to be repurchased later. Some event cards have a flat attack strength, requiring the player to reduce the damage by playing unit cards. Player conflict is resolved by playing cards one at a time until a pass or neither side has cards left to play. Each player also has a stronghold with 20 hit points that must be defended.

Battles between players can be fun because there’s a nice bluffing element coupled with a risk mitigation component. Knowing what cards other players have purchased or what is in their discard piles is important, and planning attacks to hit players when they’re at their weakest is a key strategy. Strangely, this is a game where extremely small decks (I’m talking ten cards or less) of very powerful units are more advantageous than combinations or special abilities.

Over my games I’ve found that Rune Age is surprisingly unsatisfying as a deckbuilding game, largely due to the very small range of available cards and the hard-coded combinations dictated by each faction’s core cards. The “eureka” moments of working out a great combination of effects or abilities that many players of games like Dominion enjoy simply isn’t present, and the neutral cards never really seem to be all that interesting to play with. Worse, the limited options undermine the feeling of variety and replayability that made games like Thunderstone so popular. The game also lacks the smoothness and flow of the better deckbuilders, perhaps owing to the game’s kitchen sink design ethos.

Rune Age is another Corey Koniesczka design and I’ve generally had high praise for his work in the past, but this game seems to bring out the worst in him creatively speaking. It doesn’t feel like a game that Mr. Koniesczka was very invested in. Instead, it feels incredibly studious and calculated, drawing in and stitching together many ideas from other deckbuilding games. I can almost imagine a FFG board meeting where it was decided that the firm needed a deckbuilding game and fast, and the firm’s superstar design lead was sent on his way to put one together. There is definitely a Frankenstein air about the game