SNAP Review – Runemasters

Tower defense games are super popular. From Castle Panic to Under Falling Skies, we’ve talked about this style of gameplay lots of times.

It can be super fun! But in most tower defense games that are suitable for families, everyone is another cog in the machine.

This week we’re going to look at a game where each player gets their own unique abilities and different ways to help out the team.

This is a SNAP review for Runemasters.

Game

Runemasters is a cooperative tower defense game for up to four players. It was designed by Antoine Prono and published by Funforge. It takes about 30 minutes to play.

Art

Let’s talk about the art in Runemasters. There’s a lot packed into this box, starting with the FIVE pieces you unfold to make the main board.

This art is fun. You’ve got these four Guardian characters, Kyreas the crusher, Neltai the tornado, rock girl Ismoros, and Kulak protector of life. Each one definitely has their own personality. Their player boards have nice cutouts for HP and MP

Then, you’ve got the cards. Monster cards come in 7 types: Shadow, Archer, Troll, Warrior, Wizard, Werewolf, and Dragon. Each one comes in four different colors, and each color brings some subtle differences to the monster type.

Except the dragons. They’re all very different from each other, and very cool.

The Event cards bring their own art, and it’s very clear which ones are positive and which ones are negative.

Lastly, there’s the dice. They’re pretty, and each one pictures the six runes. In some light, the colors can look similar, so it’s really good that the symbols are very different.

Mechanics

So, let’s talk about mechanics. How do we play Runemasters?

Start by assigning each player a Guardian character, and give them 4 health and 4 mana on their board. Each character also has an ultimate power, which is not yet charged up – so place a token on the beginning of the Ultimate Power track.

Set up the main temple board: 3 lanes if you have 3 guardians, or 4 lanes if you have either 2 or 4 guardians. Then place each guardian standee on the temple path of their choice.

Prepare the Monster deck. Remove cards not applicable at your player count, then remove a few more at random. You’ll always have at least one dragon card. Then shuffle the Dawn card into the bottom three cards of the deck.

You’ll also need to prepare a 5-card Event deck. Depending on the difficulty, this could be mostly good events or mostly bad events.

Draw the FIRST three cards of the Monster deck, and put them on the first, second, and third spaces in their respective colors. You’re ready to start playing!

The first player in the round flips over the next Event card – this will apply for the whole round.

On each player’s turn, they start by drawing a new monster off the deck, and placing it in space 3 of its corresponding color track – or farther back if that space is taken.

Then it’s time for the guardian player to roll four dice and resolve them. You may resolve actions in any order, and re-roll unused dice between actions – but each re-roll costs 1 mana point. Each die can only be used for a single action.

With a given die, you might:

• strike a matching weak point on the monster in front of you on your path. Place an injury marker to show where it’s been hit.
• move to a different path, matching the rune on the die (the purple rune lets you move to any path) – when you move to an occupied path, the guardian there swaps places with you.
• If you roll the white rune, you can use your guardian’s ability.
• You can spend any two identical runes to put a blocking marker on your path, which will stop the monsters from moving this round.
• If none of these options work for you, you can spend a die to advance your Ultimate Power token. Once the token reaches space 4 on its track, your Ultimate Power is fully charged and ready for use. When you use it, flip the token over and return it to space 0 on the track.

If you’re desperate to get rid of monsters, you can “release your mana”. Spend all 4 mana points to destroy the monster that is IN CONTACT WITH your guardian – that means right on space 1 of your path.

Whenever you destroy a monster – whether through hitting all its weak points or releasing your mana – you immediately get the bonus shown in the upper right corner of its card. In addition, the monster that was behind it immediately becomes accessible to attack.

After you’ve completed your dice related actions, it’s time for the monsters to move. Every monster moves 1 space toward the temple, if possible. If the monster is already at space 1, it engages in combat, hitting the guardian for 1 HP, or the temple if there’s no guardian present.

Once all the monsters have moved, it’s the next player’s turn. Don’t forget to turn over a new Event card every time you get around to the first player again!

The game ends either when the Dawn card is revealed from the Monster deck – the defenders immediately win! – or when the temple is destroyed, and all guardians are defeated.

Expectations

So, what did we expect from Runemasters?

I don’t know, it’s a tower defense game, so I expected something like Castle Panic, but with a little more agency, since each player is controlling a specific fighter.

For me, on the surface, I was excited for this. You’re defending a temple, you’re cool fantasy classes, everyone has their own unique powers.

Surprises

But we were surprised by the game in some ways, too. What surprised you, Anitra?

The difficulty for this game is incredibly hard to predict. Both the monster deck and the event deck are set up with some randomness involved. So sometimes you get events that aren’t a big deal and monsters that are easy to defeat, and sometimes everything bad seems to hit you all at the same time.

It does seem to be hardest at four players, because each player has to sit through three turns of possibly getting hit before they have a chance to hit back.

For me, although I thought I was going to be excited by this game with all the boxes it ticked off, it just kind of fell flat for me. There are a lot of fantasy games out there, all trying to spin up their own new world. Truthfully, this could have been a X-Men game, or a Lord of the Rings game, or a Star Wars game or something like that. The theme is definitely pasted on, and that doesn’t help, at the end of the day.

Plus, because your goal here is just to survive, this game reminded me of The Grizzled. But in that game, the characters are incredibly relatable, and as a result of that, the lack of uniqueness in Runemasters felt even more stark to me. Does that make sense?

Yeah, but I think it’s also because in The Grizzled, your survival is not about defeating monsters, but instead about keeping your spirits up against despair. And that’s – this game is just going to make you despair, because there are too many monsters.

Yeah, it didn’t resonate with me in the same way.

Recommended?

If you and your family really like fantasy themes and you want a difficult tower defense co-op, you can definitely give Runemasters a try.

I think it’s best at two players. You get more flexibility in where to move, and fewer turns getting hit before you can hit back.

We’re going to give Runemasters three towers out of five.

And that’s Runemasters, in a SNAP!

Find it on Amazon or at your local game store.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Runemasters from Funforge for this review.

This post contains affiliate links, which do not change your price, but help support The Family Gamers.

SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?