Runemasters Review

boardgamequest.com:

If it was my job to come up with board game titles, and I wanted to name a fantasy game while giving as little information away as possible regarding the theme, setting, mechanisms, or overall vibe, Runemasters would be an inspired choice. It’s so nebulous and nonspecific as to be functionally worthless. How does one become a runemaster? By what process do these runes come to be mastered? Does said mastery lead to any sort of dramatically ironic comeuppance?

Sadly, these and many other questions are to be left unanswered. Runemasters rushes right past its title and dives headlong into the gameplay—but is it enough to stand up on its own?

Runemasters is a cooperative tower defense dice game for 1-4 players. It takes around 30-45 minutes to play.

Players in Runemasters are tasked with defending the central Temple of Mankind against an onslaught of monsters. The temple comprises four distinct lanes (three in a 3-player game), each comprising 5 slots for monsters to occupy. Every turn, new monsters are added to these lanes, and existing monsters move towards the temple.

On your turn, you roll four dice and assign them in the order of your choice to various actions. Five of the die faces can be used to move to the matching lane, or deal damage to a monster with a matching weak point. You can only attack weak points of the closest monster, and it must be in the same lane as you. When all of a monster’s weak points are covered it is destroyed, and you gain the associated rewards for that monster.

Aside from basic move and attack actions, there is a sixth die face that lets you use your character’s specific ability. You may also spend two dice showing the same face to prevent monsters from advancing in your lane or spend any die to charge your character’s ultimate power.

When a monster reaches the end of its lane, it starts to attack whatever is in front of it. If a hero is in that lane they will take damage, and otherwise, the temple itself will take damage. If the temple