Steve-O said:

Yeah I'm done with you.  Sig makes an effort to actually read what I have posted even if we don't always understand or agree with each other.  You on the other hand seem to go out of your way to ignore counter points I posted, misrepresent what I post and arrive at your own interpretation which suites how you want to respond.  Anyways I'm going on vacation so have fun rewording this into something else.

Kirenx said:

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. =)

Next time you'd like to quarrel with each other, please, do it somewhere else. Two pages of constant nagging at each other is more than enough.

MeisterH said:

That was one of my main points when I started in on the debate between Kirenx and Sigma.  I apologize to the community at large for letting it get out of hand beyond my first post, but it's done now.

So, any other ideas for what could be added in an expansion besides what's been brought up before?

Have been thinking about the captain-unit suggestion. I'm not really that big of a fan of the idea, but. If the captains could function similarly to the leaders in AGOT. Maybe give some kind of combat bonus (which could differ between the races) and make it much easier to take runes and forts. But, if you lost a fight in which your captain was participating he would be taken hostage. And every player would only have one captain per game. To get your captain back you would have to trade him back for something, maybe another captain, a fort or maybe even a rune!!

Speaking of the captain-unit suggestion, what about the possibility of being able to promote heroes to captains? I mean it happens plenty of times in fiction, the hero rising from being a wandering adventurer to the commander of a mighty army (Aragorn, Conan, etc).

Of course, there would be restrictions on this: It would require a specific Order card. The hero would have to be the same alignment as the rest of your faction. The hero would have to be in the same space as one of your strongholds at the time. Each player could only have one captain-hero at a time and could not ‘demote’ them back to hero.

A captain-hero would count as an army unit from that point on for all purposes (movement, battles, casualties, maximum number of units per space etc). The captain-hero would no longer be able to undertake quests (no poking around ancient tombs while you have an army to lead), but would still be able to use quest rewards (can you transfer quest rewards between heroes you control?) and would still count towards the player’s 3 hero limit. A captain-hero would no longer fight duels against other heroes, (unless taking part in a battle against an army lead by another captain-hero).

This is just an idea off the top of my head, any thoughts on it?

skunkstrype said:

I like it, at first glance anyway.  Gives a little more hero interaction with armies for people who wanted that, but doesn't completely violate the whole hero/army dynamic in general.

Heroes definitely can trade rewards between one another in the game as is (at least heroes of your faction - not sure why you'd want to trade with enemy heroes anyway).  There might be a few reward items that break if the hero becomes an army unit, though, if they were worded on the assumption that the only combat they'd be involved in was dueling.  Can't think of any off the top of my head, but they could well be in there.

I wouldn't support the idea of dueling captains on opposing sides, though.  Mixing duel combat and regular army combat might get messy.  Better to treat both heroes as straight up army units and keep going with that combat model, I think.  The more interesting question in my mind would be how to determine the initiative of a captain unit?

If the captain had to be paired with an existing army unit that he begins leading, then he could just use that initiative.  Perhaps he always uses the best initiative of any army unit on his side of the ensuing battle.  I suppose the easiest way would be to say "heroes promoted to captains always fight at initiative 1."  Lastly, you could choose the initiative value of your hero before each battle.  Adds a little more tactical flexibility (maybe you want your hero to go at step 5 sometimes) but it could also lead to analysis paralysis for some players...

 Personally, I think if you do have heroes attack in a battle, the initiative should be related to their Agility value; perhaps a 5-[Agility] formula, so the faster they are, the earlier they fight (and any hero with agility 5 or more gets initiative 0 and always attacks first).

• 2 new races (e.g. dwarfes)
• Better integration of heroes. I always play without heroes.
• More Season cards
• Faction abilities OR faction specific action cards
• Ocean tiles
• Strongholds and Cities in 3D, like the mountains
• New units
• Scenarios, similar to "Tide of Iron"

Luxis said:

I cannot even imagine playing this game without Heroes.  It would be a completely different game, since although the Heroes and Armies don't interact directly, Heroes are a key way to getting more runes, be it directly with Shards of Timmoran or with the Captain of the Heroes League card.  Plus, without them, 1/8 of the Season Cards (2 each in Spring and Fall) become pointless, as do several Action Cards.  

I think for those who don't get the interaction, they need to play with them more.  At first, I didn't feel the connection.  The more I play, the more vital hero management becomes to winning.  Sure, you occasionally CAN win without them, but generally, the person who wins will be one who used his Heroes well (among other things).

Of course, you don't have to play with them if you don't want, and I can see some merit in having Heroes lead armies and such as another option, but I think the Hero game integrates very well into the game already - it just isn't obvious on the surface.

sigmazero13 said:

In my first few games, I felt that Heroes somehow were not enough. I kept wanting them to participate in battles. However, game after game, it often ended that Heroes ended up deciding the winner. Questing for rewards, dueling, various tactic cards and even spotting rune tokens on the board so as to direct your forces for that final attack to get #6. I think Heroes are a very critical, yet subtley integrated part of the game.

As it is the game plays relatively fast (relative to other big box games) Adding more actions just seems like adding more time. I enjoy the interactions as it stands now.

Things I would like to see in any future expansions....More board pieces and quest cards. More tactics cards. I think that you could introduce a specialized style of play in the game by a campaign pack. The pack would include things like

- Requiring specific board pieces to be taken. Say a board were all the mountain pieces had to be taken.

- Tactics cards added or removed to support that kind of board.

- using the extra board pieces and quest cards to support that set up.

- A special objective for the campaign.

Other than that, the only thing that I think you can reasonably add to the game easily are things like Heroes, Season cards (and other cards like tactics for instance) and races. I can't see adding new units without having to re do the starting race cards. Either that or adding little excerpts like that of the neutrals. Blech.

Ok, at this point the one thing I want to see in an expansion is  an announcment from FFG that there will be one.

Ken on Cape said:

My guess is that if they are coming out with one any time soon, that it will be announced at the Realms of Terrinoth event.

Psyco said:

I'm personally doubtful that an expansion for RW will be announced at Realms.  Particularly because of the part where they talk about unveiling an entirely new Terrinoth game designed by Corey.  If he's been working on a new game (a new Terrinoth game, even) then I doubt he's been working too much on an RW expansion.  Add that to the fact that Corey's games are generally lucky to get one expansion and things begin to look grim.

On the plus side, nothing can stop fans from creating their own material for RW, and I think we've got a number of good ideas floating around here to work with.

RW is a solid, tight game as it is.  Even without an expansion I don't think it's missing anything.

Steve-O said:

I didn't hear that it would be an entirely new game.  That makes me a little sad that an expansion won't be announced there.

I think it would be sad and a waste of potential to limit this game to only fan created material outside of the base game.  Look at the number of expansions, large and small, for Runebound and Descent.  This game, in my opinion has the same exact potential for expansion.

Although I agree that the game is tight, I think it is missing something; more player potential.  I think that Twilight Imperium 3E had it right for its expansion, Shattered Empire.  That expansion had yet more factions and allowed the game to go from 6 to up to 8 players.  Making Runewars playable for 6 players, in and of itself wouldn't make a good expansion in my mind.  If a Runewars expansion followed the TI3 example there would be more map tiles, more cards (probably more of just about all of them), a new set of Order cards, more heroes, exploration tokens, and the obligatory new "thing we didn't have before".  I could easily see that being a new type of terrain, a new kind of recruitable neutral unit, and possibly a whole new take on playing the game (and those are just things I've thought up, which aren't at all fleshed out).  Finally, taking the comparison further, talk to any fan of the game and know that what is now considered a "standard" game of Twilight Imperium 3E includes many elements from that expansion.

In the end I just get frustrated that FFG has an established pattern of releasing expansions for games that sell well (of which I assume Runewars did).  And I see a game like Battles of Westeros, a game which came into existence after Runewars, that has two expansions already out and one more on the way.  They are very similiar in terms of game components, so I don't understand why an expansion for Runewars isn't already out/near completion.