Sean Doubt
Canada
Vancouver
British Columbia
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I am hoping to play Runewars with the expansion this Friday and I have a question about the Rise of the Free Cities variant. In our previous games cities are used tactically but we rarely if ever use order #6 "Rally Support" - maybe its just a group-think thing with our group. As I understand it this new variant is designed to increase the value and use of Cities. So, I have a few questions:
1. Do you use Rise of the Free Cities variant at all?
2. If you do use it, do you play as it is written to "The alternate city tokens replace the original city tokens from the base game."?
3. Would it be of any value to simply mix in the new City tokens with the original city tokens and really randomize them - thus having some players with access to old 'weaker' cities and some with access to new 'powerful' cites?
The randomness of the map already gives some players an advantage for resources. (Just thinking as I type here) What about having the player who placed his/her home realm last randomly draw (face down) from a pool of all the cities - old and new - and place them wherever they chose to?
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Mikkel Øberg
Denmark
Virum
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I find the difference between the new and old cities is too significant to mix them, we play with either set separately.
I still al not convinced that I enjoy this variant, as the cities are already pretty powerful. It might be because I mostly play two player games though.
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I mix them and lay them out face down after building the board. That way players know if the city is powerful or not prior to setting up starting positions.
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Paul Beakley
United States
Tempe
AZ
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Mr Skeletor wrote: I mix them and lay them out face down after building the board. That way players know if the city is powerful or not prior to setting up starting positions.
That's interesting! So like, in two obvious piles? This is the free cities pile, that's the original cities pile, choose wisely? How do you choose which players place which city? Or is this all on the First Player's shoulders?
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Sean Doubt
Canada
Vancouver
British Columbia
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Mikkel Ok, I play mostly 4 player games, so that might affect our experiences. I got the expansion for Christmas but I haven't had a chance to play it yet. I was just wondering what, if any impact it has on the game, and how to maximize its 'fun' factor.
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PBeakley wrote: Mr Skeletor wrote: I mix them and lay them out face down after building the board. That way players know if the city is powerful or not prior to setting up starting positions. That's interesting! So like, in two obvious piles? This is the free cities pile, that's the original cities pile, choose wisely? How do you choose which players place which city? Or is this all on the First Player's shoulders?
Err no, though there may be a good variant idea in what you just suggested...
Basically I mix them all together and place them face down in the city squares. The backs are different so you can tell if it's an expansion city or not. I do this before selecting starting areas so the starting areas guy can take the estimated city strength into account when setting up starting locations.
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Paul Beakley
United States
Tempe
AZ
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A HA!
Forgot about the backs. Excellent.
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Peter Cox
Bosnia & Herzegovina
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The variation in power is absurd, especially in terms of influence collection. it completely obscures the point of the 'gain influence by resources' card, wtf that's called. Esp the 4 influence count cities.
dumb fuckin' idea. should never have made it into the game. surely it was obvious.
well at least it's optional.
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Scott Lewis
United States
Castle Rock
Colorado
Dread Our Coming, Suffer Our Presence, Embrace Our Glory (Solonavi War Cry)
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petercox1001 wrote: The variation in power is absurd, especially in terms of influence collection. it completely obscures the point of the 'gain influence by resources' card, wtf that's called. Esp the 4 influence count cities.
Completely? How are you gaining the Title cards with Rally Support?
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Sean Doubt
Canada
Vancouver
British Columbia
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petercox1001 wrote: The variation in power is absurd, especially in terms of influence collection. it completely obscures the point of the 'gain influence by resources' card, wtf that's called. Esp the 4 influence count cities.
dumb fuckin' idea. should never have made it into the game. surely it was obvious.
well at least it's optional.
plus it got the expansion cheap, so fine.
OK, Peter, so what is the best way to use the new more powerful cities? Leave them out completely?
We played last night using just the new cities. One player had 4 cities at one point and 3 cities for most of the game. He was able to get more influence and tactics cards than the other 3 players combined. He did attract a lot of attention whenever something bad came up in the event cards we always targeted him and openly talked about how we 'should' all be attacking him. He did end up winning, but it wasn't by a huge majority. If other players had attacked him more (instead attacking me a lot - who was no threat  ) then they could have had a chance in winning.
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Hector131 wrote:
OK, Peter, so what is the best way to use the new more powerful cities? Leave them out completely?
What about some sort of variant where you can 'upgrade' a city?
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Peter Cox
Bosnia & Herzegovina
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Quote: We played last night using just the new cities. One player had 4 cities at one point and 3 cities for most of the game. He was able to get more influence and tactics cards than the other 3 players combined. He did attract a lot of attention whenever something bad came up in the event cards we always targeted him and openly talked about how we 'should' all be attacking him. He did end up winning, but it wasn't by a huge majority. If other players had attacked him more (instead attacking me a lot - who was no threat ) then they could have had a chance in winning.
I guess what I don't like is that the game ends up being primarily about the cities rather than the rest of the board. I can see others liking it more, perhaps. I wrote that last post slightly very drunk, so I may have exaggerated my feelings somewhat 
Quote: What about some sort of variant where you can 'upgrade' a city?
Interesting idea!
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Scott Lewis
United States
Castle Rock
Colorado
Dread Our Coming, Suffer Our Presence, Embrace Our Glory (Solonavi War Cry)
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petercox1001 wrote: Mr Skeletor wrote: What about some sort of variant where you can 'upgrade' a city? Interesting idea!
I was thinking about something like that the other day as well. Haven't come up with a good fair way to do it, but a general thought was that with a Rally Support, instead of collecting resources from a city, you can "upgrade" it. Start with only the base-game cities, but when you upgrade you randomly pull a Free City.
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uzix uzikas
United Kingdom
New York
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sigmazero13 wrote: petercox1001 wrote: Mr Skeletor wrote: What about some sort of variant where you can 'upgrade' a city? Interesting idea! I was thinking about something like that the other day as well. Haven't come up with a good fair way to do it, but a general thought was that with a Rally Support, instead of collecting resources from a city, you can "upgrade" it. Start with only the base-game cities, but when you upgrade you randomly pull a Free City.
Lets say maybe using Fortify you have to spend as much of resources as indicated on hex where city is to upgrade it.
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My group found cities really powerful in the base game already. The free cities variant is kind of overkill.
I like the expansion but some of the changes were trying to fix things that weren't broken.
commanders and free cities in particular tried to fix non-issues.
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Scott Lewis
United States
Castle Rock
Colorado
Dread Our Coming, Suffer Our Presence, Embrace Our Glory (Solonavi War Cry)
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blarknob wrote: My group found cities really powerful in the base game already. The free cities variant is kind of overkill.
Depends on the city and how many you have. If you have one crappy city and your opponent has multiple good cities, you're going to be at a significant disadvantage on that front. With the Free Cities, it doesn't completely eliminate the problem, but by boosting the "crappy" cities, it mitigates it a bit.
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True, we have also found that to be the case. Having just one city is perfectly fine with free cities.
previously you wanted multiple cities to justify rally.
What I do like is the additional options the free cities give you for pre-built maps.
I'm exploring some interesting setups utilizing the rune cities at conflict points, might post the maps if they work out well.
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