by. BananaCrapshoot
Hello champions! I have a different article for you all today. I’m gonna talk about why I’m excited for a new tcg coming to Kickstarter may 17th. If you have been paying attention there’s been a ton of TCGs hitting Kickstarter recently. Sorcery TCG is one I know people are into, I personally didn’t find the gameplay satisfying so I stayed away. Another one that is up now is Kryptik tcg. I backed it for a booster box but I don’t plan on playing long term. My plan with the box is to split it up and run a draft or sealed event with some family members. The art is really good but the gameplay didn’t really offer anything new to me.
This brings me to Runeslingers. I’m very excited for it, so is KennedyHawk from Marvel Champions Monthly, we even recorded a how to play video together that will be up on their YouTube shortly. I’m gonna give a few reasons why I’m excited for runeslingers, how the gsme functions, the art, and why it’s a game I already know I’m backing.
First off, what is Runeslingers?
Runeslingers is a 1 on 1 (or 2 on 2) trading card game. You assume the role of a Runeslinger, competing in the annual Fett to see who the best runeslinger around is. Runes are imbued on stones all over the world, only noticeable to the magically attuned, these people can learn the magic of the rune stones and use their power and sling them as spells. Some runes require the us individual to complete trials to learn their secrets. Some even imbue the magical power onto objects and weapons to further enhance their abilities.
It feels fresh.
I really got into card games around 2016 with dragon ball super card game and Star Wars destiny. I played both those games a lot and Destiny at a fairly high competitive level. Since I’ve become somewhat of a tcg/ card game addict buying into and playing games like the newer Digimon tcg, flesh and blood, VS system 2PCG, Ashes, final fantasy tcg, and playing Pokémon with my 6 year old. I say all that to basically show I’ve played a bunch of games now and have experienced all kinds of cost curves, resource systems, strategies, archetypes, etc. So when a new game comes along and I check it out I want to know if it offers anything new. What’s unique about the game? Is it rehashing known and abused mechanics or is it innovating upon them?
That’s why, while I backed Kryptik for a box, I’m not really excited about the gameplay. It uses the dragon ball super energy system, which they call soul energy, you place a card upside down in your soul row and you exhaust it to generate a soul energy of the matching color to play cards. Cards will have a cost with a mix of any or specific soil energy types. It has a mix of the digimon security stack and dragon ball super life system, this is probably where it’s innovation comes, you can ping me about that I don’t want to hard on Kryptik. And it uses standard atk/def units to attack each other. All of those mechanics and stuff they do in that game, I’ve seen it a bunch to this point.
For Runeslingers, there’s a lot of stuff happening that feels fresh. You play as your runeslingers, your character and you aren’t playing other units to the field to fight for you. It’s closer to flesh and blood where it’s a 1 on 1 fight with you slinging runespells at your opponent to reduce their power to 0 to win. The resource system is unique in you place a card face down, a concentration card and you exhaust that card to play other cards, permanent type cards may play on top of one and it stays exhausted until that card is destroyed. Each character has a mix of stances and abilities that you start with that really customize your play style. Then there’s ailments, the ailment system is it’s own thing that deserves its own article at some point, and the artwork is bright clean and effective.
Multiple win cons
In runeslingers your opponent is defeated when their power is reduced from 5 to 0. The cool thing is there’s a bunch of ways to get there, stack enough ailments on your opponent and they’ll lose power at the beginning of their turn. Make them lose 20 health and they lose a power, when they deck out they reshuffle their discard pile into a new deck and lose a power for doing so. The amount of strategies, decisions and depth around deck building and game planning for your opponent is really impressive. Having multiple ways to win is really cool in my book.
Built in catch up mechanic
In runeslingers when you lose a power you gain a determination token, these are how you pay for your runeslingers ability. This is a built in catch up mechanic. If you get too far behind and lose 2 power then bam trigger your ability and you are normally right back in the thick of it. Every game I’ve played so far with the print and play 2 starter decks has been really close, within a power and a turn of each other.
The depth
With 4 runeslingers in the base set with a bunch of stances and abilities you already are starting off with a lot of depth, add onto that the 170+ unique cards to deckbuild with and you are in a deckbuilders dream. The sheer amount of play lines even in the starter decks is staggering, you have a lot of options every turn and usually none of them are bad! The runeslingers each have a class and the stances and abilities are class locked but deckbuilding isn’t! Any class can play any card in the game.
It doesn’t hold the player back and tied in with the multiple win cons and the amount of strategies in the game it really adds a lot of depth.
The artwork
The artwork reminds me something of hearthstone mixed with dauntless. The card images are of the rune stones but they are vibrant and clean with color and feel. The artists really did a good job and the game looks beautiful on the table top. There’s also a fully fictional TTS mod available to play on!
So there’s a few reasons of why I’m excited for Runeslingers: The Awakening, coming to Kickstarter may 17, if you would like to learn more and get access to 2 free print and play starter decks. Click the link below and enter your email and within a few minutes it’s in your inbox with the pdf file. Thanks for dropping by and I hope you are getting excited for runeslingers. Look for more coverage on the game from the side scheme in the future!
access to print and play decks : https://vrlps.co/aj4yb4c/cp
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