Jeremy’s Gaming Gratons: RUSE: DEN OF INSTINCTS

This week, Jeremy’s Gaming Gratons focuses on a game designed by Guime, with art by Guime, and published by Rune.Games — RUNE!

A den of instincts! RUNE is a dice worker placement game, where you roll a die to determine how much ‘power’ it has, lower value gets more initial benefits, but can perform less actions on a turn, whereas a higher die gets next to no benefit, and can do many actions in a space.

Use as many die pips as you’d like for actions available to you on your turn, supplementing growth points to do more when you’ve depleted the die.

However, at the end of each round you’ll spend excess growth points to grow your fox kits and when they’ve left the den, also develop their instincts, which present in special permanent abilities that increase your efficacy in doing other actions or gaining resources and growth points, among others.

You can also choose not to use all the pips of a die to gain VP at the end of the round equal to whatever is left on them.

You also have public and private objectives you can achieve during the rounds, the latter of which give you instant boosts, but if you fail to complete any you have active by the end of the game, they are worth negative VP.

There’s tracks to move up when you worker place in the different vital territories and spend die pips, but be careful because there may be a hunter/photographer or other obstacles that prevent you from hunting or marking in a territory.

You can also go to the mountain territory to gain new private objectives, or discard completed ones for powerful one time bonuses.

There’s quite a bit more to explore here, with two mini expansions, and it plays up to five players, so I’m definitely interested in what it has to offer. I’m just not sure that RUNE is a great two player game, as we never got in each other’s way. Once someone was out front, it seemed almost impossible to catch them despite there being a catch-up mechanism a la QUACKS where the number of orange VP spaces between you and the leader gained you additional growth points to use next round.

Just a little something to chew on — Jeremy

Jeremy is an omni-gamer from Lafayette, Louisiana, who games at home with his wife and young son, but also can be frequently hosting or visiting game nights with friends all over Acadiana. Jeremy loves games about nature, IP games involving turtles and batmen, and games appropriate to play with his young son, but expect lots of different games discussed here each time. All photos by Jeremy Dobler.