Runewars: Is it played in your area?

[onlyonepinman 18053xp 0]

At Salute last year, we picked up a copy of the 2 player starter set for something like £20 with the intention of just using the miniatures for RPGs. It was being sold off by Troll Trader or someone like that. Element Games currently have 14 copies of it in stock and are selling it for £54, down from £90 so I don’t think it’s been particularly successful.

I think, looking at it, it was always doomed to fail because it’s fairly expensive, but the quality of the models isn’t particularly high. Quality wise Runewars stuff is on a par with Mantic, but price wise they’re on a par with Games Workshop. Medium quality miniatures at premium prices, not a great business model. I know quality can be subjective but I am referring purely to detail and cast quality, not the aesthetics of the models themselves.

Games Workshop can blow you away with the sheer quality of their models and it’s a big range so there’s probably going to be something that catches your eye. Mantic impresses with the volume of models you can pick up for lower prices and the sizes of the armies you can field. Runewars impresses you with… the jigsaw movement trays? Honestly I can’t see a real future for Runewars, not in its current format anyway and kind of lacks any real WOW factor.

[mageParticipant 20595xp 1]

Runewars was always going to have an uphill battle with its generic nature and the size of the market and options we have.

[onlyonepinman 18053xp 0]

Totally agree although I suspect it was only ever intended to test the waters of miniature Wargaming.

[mageParticipant 20595xp 0]

Possibly. Or they thought they’d try make it successful, then saw the profits Legion made and made a business decision.

[torros 23802xp 0]

There  seemed to much extraneous crap with dials and cards and tokens to be interesting for me. Not sure if it’s all necessary really. I was kinda interested in Legion until I saw the same thing although in Legion there is slightly  less

[tonysilvey 7974xp 0]

Well FF have withdrawn organised play for Runewars. The way this article is written I doubt we will be seeing anything more planned for the game.

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2019/1/11/the-land-endures/

[mageParticipant 20595xp 0]

@tonysilvey Yeah that was posted on the bottom of the first topic page earlier today, it does not bode well at all for the future of it. Seems to be a sad inevitability with the company admitting to ‘low numbers’

[collins 16344xp 1]

To be fair it got replaced by Legion and even that with all its ‘Star Wars buy me now’ requirements seems to be doing a bit poorly, and i play it a lot. I’m not sure that FFG’s foray into the TTWargames world has been a complete success, not when they’re competing with other amazing game systems. IMO Legion needs to do away with so many of the tokens but sadly the number 1 rule of any FFG game is to have 4 billion tokens from the get go.

At my FLGS they got a few copies of runewars in and had a few preorders  etc but when the main instigator of that refused to buy his preorder (a dick move imo) it was all left on the shelf and eventually got a 60% reduction just to get rid of it. I have never seen anyone playing it locally and of course the store owner is less than enthusiastic about stocking it now, cant say i blame him.

[mecha82Participant 10037xp 0]

I haven’t seen anyone in here play Runewars in any of LGSs that I go to but to be honest I can’t say for sure if it’s not played in here at all. After all just because I haven’t seen it being played doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be some people playing it around here. But I do assume that if there is then there really isn’t that many who do play it.

I do think that some kind of league would help to bring interest to Runewars. After all having regular chance to play game does tend to help and it also gives chance for people to see game being played just by visiting LGS.

[mageParticipant 20595xp 1]

Well, official Leagues won’t be happening based on the twice posted links above regarding organised play

 

its up to the community now

[collins 16344xp 0]

doesn’t seem like it will be a thing then after all, this isn’t mordheim we’re talking about!

[onlyonepinman 18053xp 0]

@collins I was going to make a comment about Legion but decided not to because I don’t play it.  However I know Element Games has relatively little shelf space devoted to it unless they’re constantly restocking, it looks like the same stuff is there every time I go.  I love Star Wars (except the new saga films, hate those)  but for some reason I just don’t really fancy Legion.  Which is weird because I have gone a bit OTT with Imperial Assault lol.  I guess maybe I just prefer adventures in Star Wars than Battles.  But that said I honestly think Star Wars Legion can recover in a way that Runewars can’t.  But it’s going to have a massive job competing with GW because as games they tick more boxes

[onlyonepinman 18053xp 1]

I’m with @torros in that for a large (ish) battle wargame, the FFG offerings just have too many counters and other tosh that in my opinion detracts from the visual aspects of wargames.  That beautiful table,  carefully crafted scenery and lovingly painted miniatures and… Handfuls of tokens and counters.

[collins 16344xp 0]

@onlyonepinman there is no such thing as OTT when it comes to IA. That game is excellent.

[blipvertus 12218xp 1]

Yep, real shame as it’s the only fantasy game or rank & file game I’ve ever played. I really liked it.

Saga: Age of Magic will have to serve. (I’m already a huge Saga fan.)

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