Runaljod: The Sound of the Runes Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Game Summary
• Goal of the Game
• Components
  • Hero Board
• Setup
  • Adventure Mode (Single Session)
• Game Play
  • Game Overview
  • Victory or Defeat
• Heroes Turn
  • 1. Preparation Phase
  • 2. Destiny Phase
  • 3. Condition Phase
  • 4. Actions Phase
    • Basic Actions
    • Movement
    • Interaction
    • Activate a Skill
    • Activate the God's Rune
    • The Gods Are Capricious
    • Perform Checks
    • Attack
    • Damage, Wounds and Life Points
• Enemies Turn
• Enemy Actions
  • Attack
  • Movement
  • Sight
  • Clarifications
  • Special Enemies
• Basic Rules
  • The Dice
  • Equipment
  • God's Gear
  • Destiny
  • Keywords
  • Terrain
• Game Modes
  • Adventure Mode
  • Campaign Mode
  • Epic Campaigns
  • 2 Player Game
  • Single-Player Game
  • Steel Rules
• Iconography
• God's Powers

Introduction

Brief narrative introduction. (WIP)

Game Summary

"Runaljod: The sound of the runes" is a board game for one to four players, with an innovative rune-based mechanic to manage the actions: the position of the runes when they fall on the board shows the options available each turn, such as activating the character's own abilities, exploring new territories or even harnessing the power of the gods.

For the enemies' activation, the game includes an intelligent deck system that will show which actions the enemies perform in their turn.

The goal in Runaljod is to eliminate the mythological creatures that, moved by forces beyond your comprehension, have managed to enter your world, and only the most courageous heroes will be chosen by the gods for such a difficult task.

Embrace the blessing of the gods, trust in the power of runes, and make a glorious entrance into the halls of Valhalla.

Goal of the Game

In the adventure and campaign modes, the players' goal is to find their way over several scenarios, under a limited time, to defeat the creature trying to seize the power to control your world.

The adventure mode represents a short trip, played in one session, culminating in an epic battle against one of the final enemies, while the campaign mode is played in several sessions, allowing your heroes to improve their skills throughout the story to be prepared for the final battle.

Components

• Exploration cards.
• Enemy AI cards.
• Enemy cards.
• Reference cards.
• Search deck.
• Equipment deck (Level 1).
• Equipment deck (Level 2).
• Skill decks and ability and initial equipment.
• Special enemies AI cards.
• Event deck.
• Black, white and special dice.
• Wound, Stun, and Frozen tokens.
• Bonfire tokens.
• Damage tokens.
• Trance tokens.
• Start and finish tokens.
• Red cubes.
• Blue cubes.
• Double-sided tiles 20.5 x 20.5 cm (printed as "20,5 * 20,50 cm").
• Double-sided tiles 24 x 11 cm.
• Double-sided tiles 30 x 30 cm.
• Altar of the gods' tile.
• Heroes' runes.
• Runes of gods.
• Miniatures:
  • Hero miniatures (X).
  • Clan Warriors miniatures (X).
  • Clan Hunters miniatures (X).
  • Northern Wolfs miniatures (X).

Hero Board

The hero board is numbered as follows:

1. Hero defense icons.
2. Basic attack spaces.
3. Basic movement spaces.
4. Interact space.
5. Space for physical and spiritual testing.
6. Initial runes.
7. Spaces for placing equipment: body, feet and torso.
8. Weapon spaces.
9. Destiny pool.
10. Skill points track.
11. Glory points track.
12. Hero skill you have while the multicolored spaces of your health counter are available.
13. Hero skill always available.
14. Hero icon.
15. Hero's life track.
16. Various item spaces.

Setup

Adventure Mode (Single Session)

Follow these steps to prepare a game in adventure mode. However, if you want to play a game in campaign mode, go to the Campaign section of this rulebook (page XX).

1. Altar of the gods. Place the altar's tile in a visible area at the table, take 4 random gods' runes and display them on the altar face up; there can never be more than 4 on the altar. Then, put the start marker on the starting box, and the end marker on the third snake clockwise.

2. Prepare the exploration deck. Randomly select one of the initial cards (marked with an "I" at the lower right corner of the card) and place it on the active tile of the altar. Next, shuffle the basic exploration cards (marked with an "S" at the lower right corner) and randomly take 2 of these cards, then pick a random stage card (marked with a "C" at the lower right corner) and put it under the 2 exploration cards; place this new deck face down to the right of the altar of the gods, without looking at the cards. Finally, leave any remaining cards back in the box, without looking at them.

3. Initial tile. Place at the center of the table the terrain tile shown by the active exploration card (the one in the active exploration area of the altar) and place any tokens and/or enemies indicated there. The number of enemies and certain elements on the board depend on the number of heroes playing the game.

   Fig. 1: In this example, for a 3-player game, place 2 Northern Wolves and 2 Clan Warriors. The yellow circle indicates the heroes' starting position.

4. Choose heroes. Each player chooses a hero to play the game, taking that character's board and the runes indicated at the top right corner. The skill deck of the chosen hero and the initial equipment should be placed in the appropriate areas on the hero's board, according to the equipment icons. The players place their miniature on one of the indicated starting spaces of the exploration tile, according to the number of players (see Fig. 1).

   Then, each hero has 2 skill points to buy skill cards of their choice (this cost is shown at the upper right corner of the skill cards) and place them next to their hero's board.

5. Search deck. Shuffle the search deck and place it by the game board.

Game Play

Game Overview

A game of "Runaljod: The sound of runes" is played in rounds. Each game round is divided in two turns: the Heroes turn and the Enemies turn. During the Heroes turn, they perform their actions one at a time; the heroes can freely coordinate their actions in any order they wish, there is no preset hero turn order, but they must always perform an action completely before anybody else can perform another action. In the Enemies turn, the players perform several steps to know what the enemies will do during their turn. After the Enemies turn the round ends, and a new Heroes turn starts.

Victory or Defeat

The heroes become victorious if all the requirements of the final scenario card are fulfilled.

The heroes lose the game when the time counter overlaps the "END" counter or if any of the defeat conditions are met.

Heroes Turn

Each Heroes turn consists of 4 phases that must be performed in strict order:

1. Preparation phase: recover used cards; spend skill points to acquire new skill cards.
2. Destiny phase: throw any runes that are not located on the destiny pool of their hero boards, that is, any used runes.
3. Condition phase: check if your heroes have any condition tokens on their hero boards, and if so, they can try to remove them or apply their effects.
4. Actions phase: the heroes can now spend any runes available in the destiny area of their hero boards to perform actions. They may perform their actions in any order, but a hero must completely finish an action before anybody else can perform another action.

As long as your hero has runes available, you can do one of the following actions:

• Move: Move as many spaces as your current movement value according to the space where you left the rune, or as indicated by an effect.
• Attack: Perform an attack against an enemy.
• Interact: Interact with the environment to explore new tiles, trade items, collect search tokens, etc.
• Activate skill: Activate one of your hero's skill cards.
• Assist a hero: Assist an adjacent fallen hero.
• Activate the power of a God: Activate the effect of a God's rune.

There are other actions that do not require runes for their activation, like triggering a card's effect, performing heroes' ability, etc.

Once the heroes have passed or used all their runes, they leave any unused runes on the destiny pool of their hero boards and perform the Heroes' final phase.

5. Heroes' final phase: the heroes flip face up any runes in the destiny pool of their hero board (the unused runes) to show their rune's icon.

Once the Heroes turn is over, proceed with the Enemies turn.

1. Preparation Phase

Perform the following steps in order:

• Recover all the cards: some game effects will require you to turn one or more cards sideways to activate them. These cards remain turned until this phase, where you must recover them.
• Spend skill points: now is the time to spend your hard-earned skill points to buy new skill cards. Spend as many skill points as indicated at the top right of a skill card to buy it. You may acquire more than one skill card in this phase if you have enough skill points. Place your newly acquired skill cards next to your hero board.

2. Destiny Phase

During this phase, you perform a destiny throw. First, take the runes that are not in the destiny pool of your hero board (those used on the previous turn), shake the runes between both hands and throw them on your hero board. Note: in the first turn, throw all your initial runes.

After this, each rune falls in one of 3 possible orientations:

• Face down rune: this rune shows no icon.
• Face up rune: this rune shows its icon.
• Sideways rune: this rune is standing on its side, which means that it shows both the icon and the back side. This rune is also considered a face up rune.

If any of the heroes has a skill that allows them to repeat the destiny throw or indicates that it is activated after the destiny throw, now is the time to do it.

Once the players have done the destiny throw, they must put the runes on the destiny pool of their hero board (lower right corner) with the same orientation in which the runes landed (face up, face down, etc.).

3. Condition Phase

Check if you have any condition tokens on your hero board and apply their effects. The condition tokens are:

• Wound token: the hero loses 2 life points. To remove this token, place a face up rune either on a basic movement or an attack space of your character board. Otherwise, keep the token on your board.
• Stunned token: place 2 of your hero's runes on the interact box of your hero board, regardless of the side they are showing. Then, discard this token.
• Frozen token: the hero loses 1 life point. To remove this token, you must succeed a physical test (see Perform checks below). Otherwise, keep the token on your board.

Note: a single hero can have 1 token of each different condition on their hero board at the same time. If an effect forces you to take a second condition token of any type, lose 1 life point instead.

The effect of condition tokens for the enemies is explained in the Enemies turn, since they work differently.

4. Actions Phase

In this phase the heroes freely perform actions in any order they decide, one player and action at a time. To start an action, the previous one must be completely finished. There are two types of actions: actions that need runes to be activated and actions that don't need runes.

If a rune is required to activate an action, there will be a box indicating where the rune should be placed on the board, or card, and the orientation of that rune. If an action doesn't indicate in which position the rune should be placed, or what rune type is required, you may use any rune at any orientation. On the contrary, if the action demands a face up rune, you can only place a face up or a sideways rune. Most skills require specific runes; in this case, only a rune showing the required icon can be placed on the activation space, either face up or sideways. The runes used for these actions are picked from your destiny area and, once placed on a space of the board, they are considered used and may not be used again until your next destiny throw.

Basic Actions

The basic actions are found at the top left of the hero boards, and are common to all the heroes. In the attack and movement sections you will find two spaces available to place your runes, meaning that these actions may be performed twice, as explained below. The value inside the movement spaces indicates how many spaces your hero can move, depending on where you place the rune (see Movement below). The attack spaces indicate that you can make a standard or a reduced attack with one less die. The interact action can be performed an unlimited number of times; you may use as many runes as you want there (infinity). Since none of these five spaces indicate a specific type of rune or orientation, any rune can be used on any of these actions.

Movement

Whenever an effect or action indicates movement, your hero receives as many movement points as the uncovered value (not covered by a rune) on your hero board; if more than one number is displayed, choose one of them. With the basic action, your hero receives as many movement points as the value in the space where the rune is placed. Moving to an adjacent space costs 1 movement point (except when leaving or entering certain types of terrain; see Terrain below). You don't have to use all your movement points.

Your hero may not enter, move through or finish their movement on spaces occupied by other characters; these spaces are considered blocked (certain terrain spaces are also considered blocked). However, you may move through allied characters, and you can also move diagonally if at least one of the two spaces that you move through is not blocked. The heroes are all considered allies, and the enemies' miniatures are also considered allies among them.

If you interrupt your movement action to perform a different action, your hero cannot continue moving after the interruption; that is, first you must end the action, losing any movement points remaining, and then you can perform another action.

Example: the clan warrior can perform a movement action since he will move through an allied miniature.

Example: the Berserk cannot take the shortest path because to do so, it would have to move through two blocked spaces: a terrain and an enemy.

Interaction

With this interact action, usually represented by the interact icon (two hands), you can perform any of the following options for each interaction.

• Search: if you are on a space containing a search token, or adjacent to it, you may perform an interact action to discard the token and draw the top card from the search deck.

• Explore: if you are located on a space adjacent to the exit of the last tile which has been placed and the following conditions are met, you may perform an interact action to draw the first card from the exploration deck and place it on the active exploration area. For this to happen:

  • There cannot be any characters on the previous tile, if any.
  • There is no card on the active exploration area. There cannot be an active exploration card.

  Once the exploration card is placed on the active exploration area, the players must follow these steps in order:

  1. Move the time token backwards until the token is over a snake icon. If it was already on one, it remains still. The time token can never pass over the starting position by doing this.
  2. Attach the new tile shown in the new exploration card to the last explored tile. To place the new tile, you must attach the entrance area with the exit area of the previous one so both tiles are aligned.
  3. Discard the oldest tile, as well as any counter and token that is on it, leaving only two tiles in play. Ignore this step if there was only one tile in play.
  4. Place on the new tile all the elements shown in the exploration card, putting them on the space indicated by the card, taking into account the number of players. If something doesn't indicate the number of players, place it on the tile unless the exploration card indicates otherwise.
  5. Finally, read aloud any rules for the new scenario as shown in the new exploration card; these remain active until you discard that card.

  Note: the specific rules of the active exploration cards affect the entire board.

Activate a Skill

When you perform an action to activate a skill card, follow these steps in order:

1. Check if you have the rune or runes in your destiny pool of your hero board (face up or sideways) that the skill card you want to activate asks for, and if so, you must place the rune(s) on the card's rune image.
2. Spending destiny: some skill cards have destiny icons printed on the left side of the card. As an additional cost you have to flip face down as many runes from YOUR destiny pool as the destiny icons shown, before you can place your runes to activate the skill. If you don't have enough extra face up runes for this, or you just don't have enough runes, you cannot perform that action.
3. Activate the effect described on the card.

Note: some skill cards have a second effect at the bottom, separated by a symbol. This secondary effect does not require runes to be activated; these are permanent effects which can be activated by other means, as described in each card.

Activate the God's Rune

In this section you will find an explanation of the 2 possible actions that you can perform with the runes on the altar of the Gods:

Activate the effect of a rune. You can perform this action by placing a sideways rune on the interaction space of your hero board, and then choosing a face up (visible) rune from the altar of the Gods to perform the effect of that rune. Then, take all the runes on the altar of the Gods and throw them again; for each sideways rune in this throw, all the heroes recover 1 life point. It could happen that all the Gods' runes land face down, or that the current skills are not useful to the heroes at a given time, so you can also use a sideways rune to re-throw the Gods' runes.

Note: whenever you activate the effect of a God's rune for any reason, throw all runes on the altar of the Gods again.

Buy a rune. If you have two sideways runes on your destiny pool, perform an action to flip those 2 sideways runes face down on your destiny pool and select a face up God's rune. Then, place this rune on the interaction space of your hero board, and you will have access to that God's rune on subsequent turns. Don't forget that the two face down runes will still be available, since they are on your destiny pool.

This action cannot be performed if you already have a God's rune on your hero board. (See "The gods are capricious" below.)

In subsequent turns the acquired God's rune works like any other rune, but with a few exceptions:

• During the Heroes action phase, you may perform a special action with this rune if it is face up in your destiny pool, that is, showing its rune icon. This action allows you to perform the power of the God associated with the rune. Once the power is activated, return the God's rune to the altar of the Gods and then re-throw all runes there. Remember that whenever the power of a God is activated by any effect, all runes on the altar must be thrown again.

  Note: if you return a rune to the altar but there are already 4 runes there, discard the returned rune and put it back in the game's box.

• God's runes on a hero board are considered blank to all effects and purposes, i.e., without showing any kind of rune. This applies even if the rune falls sideways. Only the orientation of that rune is taken into account to perform the effects described in the previous section.

  Note: a God's rune cannot be used to activate the effects of other Gods.

The Gods Are Capricious

If at any time during the game you have a God's rune on your hero board and at least two sideways runes (including the God's rune), you must immediately return the God's rune back to the altar of the Gods.

There can never be more than 4 runes on the altar at any given time. If any effect places another rune there, that rune is returned to the game's box.

Perform Checks

Through the game you will find situations where you have to check heroes' qualities. All heroes have two printed qualities on their hero board, physical and spiritual. (See "Hero board", page XX.) To perform a check you put one of your available face up runes from your destiny pool in the space provided for this check, as indicated by the check icon (physical or spiritual). Then you roll the dice shown at the check space. You have to get at least one upgrade icon to pass the check; otherwise, you have failed. The text of the card or condition that demands the check details the consequences of both results (success or failure).

You can do this action as many times as you wish.

If a hero doesn't want to or can't perform the test, it is considered a failure.

Attack

Whenever an effect or action allows an attack, your hero can use one of its equipped weapons to perform an attack on an enemy-occupied space. The equipped weapon determines which spaces you may choose as the target for your attack. Unless stated otherwise, you may only attack adjacent spaces. Weapons with "Range" allow you to select any target within your line of sight (see "Line of sight" below).

The enemies' attacks follow the same attack rules as the heroes. Each enemy's card indicates their attack type, as well as the dice they must roll to resolve it.

To resolve a battle, follow these steps:

1. Declare weapon and target.
2. Roll the dice.
3. Spend improvements / upgrades.
4. Damage dealt.
5. Glory points.

1. Declare weapon and target. The attacker declares an attack on a target space occupied by an enemy. When attacking large enemies (those who occupy more than one space of the board) it is important that you specify the target space of the attack because of potential "area" effects. You can only target spaces within your line of sight (see "Line of sight" below). If you perform a melee attack, you may only target adjacent spaces. When performing a ranged attack, you can select any space within your line of sight (including the adjacent ones) as your target.

You must also declare the weapon that your hero will use for the attack. You can only use the values and skills of the chosen weapon; if you have two equipped weapons, ignore the values and skills of the one you are not using, but you must still benefit from its defence icons. If you want to perform a ranged attack, you must do it with an equipped weapon that has the "Range" skill.

In the case of enemies, their enemy card indicates their type of attack and the dice rolled to resolve it (see "Enemies turn" below).

Counting spaces: some skills require you to count the spaces separating the attacker from its target. When counting spaces, ignore any terrain elements in those spaces unless it is an obstacle (see "Terrain" below). You only need to check whether the target is within the range of the ability. If a skill allows you to target characters located at a specific distance in spaces, you don't need to check the line of sight, unless stated otherwise.

Line of sight (LoS): a character has line of sight if you can draw an uninterrupted straight line from their miniature to the target space. If this imaginary line passes through a blocked space (i.e., occupied by another miniature or an obstacle), the target space is not within LoS. Also, if the line passes through 2 adjacent spaces and both spaces are blocked, the target space is not within your LoS. However, if the line passes through 2 spaces and only one of them is blocked, the target space is within your LoS.

All spaces adjacent to a character are always within his/her line of sight, except diagonals blocked by any element of the board and/or miniatures that block the LoS.

Example: in this example, Volva would only see the enemy located at the bottom of the image with her Range-tagged weapon, since she has a clear LoS to it. The enemy at the top cannot be seen, as the line of sight crosses two blocked spaces, one by another enemy and the other by a terrain element on the board. The enemy in the middle cannot be seen since the LoS is blocked by the rocks on the board.

Example: in this case Volva would have a clear LoS towards all 3 enemies if she carried a weapon with the keyword Range, or Long. In the case of the Berserk, he could only attack two of the three adjacent enemies, because the enemy at the right is in an adjacent space but placed between 2 blocked spaces, one by another enemy and the other by a terrain element.

2. Roll the dice. The attacker creates the attack pool by picking up all the dice shown on the equipped weapon's card, and then rolls them all to perform an attack roll. If your hero has a skill that allows you to add more dice to the pool, you must do so before the roll.

The offensive player counts all the damage icons rolled to determine the damage inflicted with the attack. Each possible result of the die deals a different amount of damage:

• Dagger: 1 damage.
• Axe: 2 damage.
• Double axe: 3 damage.

The defender may have skills that show icons that protect them from specific results on the attack roll. In this case, ignore those results when counting the damage dealt.

3. Spend improvements / upgrades. If you obtain upgrade results on the attack roll, you can spend them to trigger different special effects found on many weapons, skills and items. If the attacker is an enemy, they can use them to activate the skills described on their enemy card (see "Enemy activation" below). The most common case will be spending these upgrades to activate the capacities described on their enemy card (see "Activation of enemies" below), and frequently this will mean spending the upgrade icon to apply +X to the roll, where X equals additional damage.

Each upgrade obtained on the attack roll can only be spent once to activate skills, and each skill can only be activated once in each attack. However, if the attacker has two different skills with the same effect, they can activate both if enough upgrades were rolled.

Note: a hero with two weapons can use both weapons' skills, regardless of which weapon is used for the attack.

Note: upgrade skills can only be activated once per attack unless stated otherwise.

4. Damage dealt. The target of an attack may block all or part of the damage suffered. The defender adds all the defence icons printed on their hero board or enemy card, and adds them to the ones obtained by special effects, if any. Some skills may show icons that cancel certain results of the roll, as shown above; in this case, ignore those results when counting damage. Each defence icon cancels 1 damage point from the attack roll. Any remaining damage points make the miniature lose life points.

The defender must take as many red damage cubes (heroes) and place them on their hero board, or damage tokens (enemies) next to that enemy's miniature. When a character receives a number of damage points equal to or higher than that character's life value, that character is defeated. When the amount of wounds is equal to or higher than the character's life, the character falls in battle (see "Fallen heroes" below). When a character is defeated, any excess damage received is ignored.

Note: the defence icons are only used to avoid damage during an attack. If an effect causes you to lose life points for reasons other than an attack, you may not benefit from those defence icons to cancel the damage.

A hero may not lose their last life point intentionally during the heroes phase, i.e. the heroes cannot take any action involving the loss of his/her last life point or un-equip any item that grants extra life points if this makes the hero fall.

Damage, Wounds and Life Points

Skills and special effects can inflict damage on heroes and enemies. The total quantity of damage that a character can suffer is equal to their life points, and it is indicated on your hero board or enemy card. When a hero or enemy suffers as many wounds as their life points, they are immediately defeated (see "Defeated characters" below). All damage that exceeds the life points of a character is ignored.

Heroes' life track. When the heroes receive damage points, place damage cubes filling their life tracks from left to right, so that you first cover the green/red spaces, before covering the red ones. Once those boxes are covered, the skill at the left side of a hero board is no longer available; however, the skill located on the right side is always available for use.

Remember that a hero may not lose their last life point intentionally during the heroes phase, i.e. the heroes cannot take any action involving the loss of his/her last life point or un-equip any item that grants extra life points if this makes the hero fall.

Defeated Characters

When a character receives as many damage points as their life points or more, the character falls to the ground and is defeated. Unless the rules indicate otherwise, remove any fallen enemies from the board, since they are no longer in play. When a hero is defeated, it falls to the ground.

Fallen Heroes

When your hero falls, they receive as many damage points as their total life value (in case the hero was defeated by another game effect and not an attack). Then, knock your hero's miniature down on the same space where it was defeated. Discard any condition tokens that your hero has. You can't use skills or actions while your hero has fallen to the ground, unless a rule allows it specifically.

You may not suffer more damage than your total life value, even when your hero has fallen. A fallen hero cannot receive condition tokens and is immune to all enemy attacks and skills. The space occupied by a fallen hero is considered empty for all miniatures in movement actions, so everyone can move through, but they still cannot end their movement on that space. Fallen heroes do not block the line of sight.

If the fallen hero doesn't receive help from another hero to recover, the fallen hero cannot perform an action on the next hero's turn. A fallen hero can't recover life points, except with the recovering / helping a hero action (see below).

Whenever your hero recovers or stands up by any means, move the time end token to the start.

If your hero is defeated at any time during the heroes' phase, you can no longer perform any more actions and you will have to place outside of your hero board any unused runes in your destiny pool. A hero cannot recover the same turn they are defeated.

Recovering / Helping a Hero

A fallen hero can recover in 2 ways: on its own, at the beginning of the destiny phase, or with the help of another hero.

• Recovering on your own: at the start of the destiny phase you may decide to recover your hero and stand back up. When doing so, roll all your runes (both used, and the ones in your destiny area) and recover 2 life points for each face up rune and 3 life points for each sideways rune. Then, flip all your runes face down and place them on your destiny area before recovering your hero's miniature to stand back up.

  Note: make this throw simultaneously with the destiny throw of the other heroes, although it is not considered a destiny throw.

• Helping a hero: you can perform this action to help an adjacent fallen hero recover. Perform a physical check (see Perform checks above); then the fallen hero must throw all their runes (both used, and the ones in the destiny area) and recovers 2 life points for each face up rune and 3 life points for each sideways rune; additionally, the fallen hero also recovers an additional 1 life point for each upgrade you rolled during the check. The fallen hero's miniature recovers and stands back up before placing the runes obtained on their destiny area, without changing their orientation.

Whenever a hero recovers, the finish token advances one space against clockwise on the timer track. (Printed as "against clockwise"; the source's wording is kept.)

Win Glory Points

If you defeat an enemy with an attack, your hero receives glory points; to represent this, a blue cube is placed on the far left box of the glory points track.

Glory Points and Skill Points

Whenever an enemy miniature loses its last life point, the hero who caused this loss gets a glory point. But combat is not the only source of glory points; it is also possible to earn glory points due to some skill cards or by other effects. Place a blue cube on the leftmost empty space of your hero's glory points track to mark this. When your hero collects their fifth glory point, remove all the cubes on the track and place a blue cube on the leftmost empty space of your skill points track; if you still have some glory points to assign, continue placing them in the glory points track normally.

The skill points track has only three spaces available; if you already have 3 skill points and you complete your glory points track, do not discard any cubes from your board. You will remain with 5 glory points and 3 skill points until some of them are spent. You can only spend 3 skill points per preparation phase, so in the previous case you would have to wait until the preparation phase is finished to finally discard the glory points on your track to gain a new skill point.

5. Heroes' Final Phase

Once all players have decided to pass, unused runes still on the destiny pool of their hero boards are flipped face up, displaying their rune icons. Sideways runes remain in the same orientation (since they are also considered face up runes).

Enemies Turn

The Enemies turn has 3 phases that must be performed in order.

1. Time phase: advance the time token one space forward. This could trigger one of these two effects:
   • When advancing the time counter, if it ends up over a snake symbol, it triggers effects in some exploration cards. Most of the time this means that the active exploration card will be discarded, indicated by an arrow icon. Each exploration card describes what happens in this case.
   • If the time token advances and overlaps the end counter, the game ends and the players lose the game.
2. Event phase: check if there is an active exploration card next to the altar of the Gods. If not, reveal the first card from the events deck and apply the effects described on that card.
   • Some event cards are divided into 2 sections, the top and the bottom, separated by the word "or". The top section only applies if there is at least one enemy in play; otherwise, apply the effects from the bottom section of the card.
   • In most cases the event cards are discarded after applying their effect, but some remain active until the effect has been resolved once per each circle shown at the bottom of the card. Place a marker of any kind on the circles to keep track of the event.
3. Enemies' activation phase: if there are enemies on the board, draw 1 card from the Enemy AI deck and follow these steps:

   1. Determine the activation order. The activation order of enemy groups is determined by the Enemy AI card. From top to bottom (lowest to highest number), activate each group of enemies in order until all the enemies have played once.

   2. Choose an enemy. Choose any enemy that hasn't been activated yet within the active enemy group.

   3. If the target miniature has a condition token, you must apply its effects:

If an action cannot be performed or has no effect, the enemies skip it. For example, if an action says "attack an adjacent hero" and there are no adjacent heroes to an enemy, then that enemy tries to attack the closest hero that is within its weapon's range.

If the AI deck runs out of cards, grab the discarded AI cards and reshuffle them to create a new AI deck.

After the activation phase, the Enemies turn ends and a new Heroes turn begins.

Enemy Actions

This section details the most common actions that enemies perform and how you should perform them.

When performing enemy actions, you need to determine their target. These icons represent who will be the target of the enemy for any specific action. Always choose the hero associated with the first icon (e.g., Hunter, Volva, Warrior, Berserk); if that is not a valid target, pick the next target icon to the right, and so on.

Attack

When an enemy performs an attack, one of the players has to roll the dice for the enemy attack. The target of the attack is indicated next to the attack icon. If the indicated target is not a valid target, the next target is the closest hero.

Upgrades. Enemies generate one or more upgrades during the attack. If an enemy has some upgrades to spend, do it by following the instructions from the enemy's card, from left to right and then from top to bottom. If any effect provides an enemy with a skill that is not shown on the enemy's card, apply these trigger skills before the ones indicated on its enemy card. Any excess results rolled are ignored.

Movement

When an enemy moves, one of the players has to perform the enemy's movement. The miniature moves as many spaces as the shown movement value toward its target, which is indicated next to the movement icon. If the target of the enemy's movement is not a valid target, the next one is the closest hero from the activated enemy.

When a miniature moves toward a target, it must be moved until it enters the target space where the hero is. If this is not possible, the enemy must end its move on the nearest possible space, following the usual movement rules to enter the target space where the hero is. If that is not possible, the miniature must end its movement in the nearest possible space, following the usual movement rules. Enemies always take the shortest possible route towards the space adjacent to the largest number of heroes. If there is more than one space that meets this condition, the players decide to which of those spaces to move the miniature. If the enemy is already adjacent to the heroes, or if it cannot move, it doesn't perform the action. When moving the enemy's miniatures, you cannot move the enemies through spaces that could deal them damage.

Large and giant enemies are those whose base occupies more than one space of the board. They can move diagonally, but they must stop in two orthogonally adjacent spaces. When you have to determine the movement of a large or giant enemy, choose any of the spaces occupied by this miniature and count the movement as if the enemy only occupies a single space. When a large or giant enemy has to move towards a target, start counting from the space occupied by the enemy that is closer to its target. When moving a large or giant enemy, always try to move as close or as far as possible, according to the AI card's instructions. Apart from this, large and giant enemies move following the usual rules.

Sight

When an effect indicates that an enemy needs to sight a target, represented by the sight icon, move the miniature to the nearest space from which it can draw a line of sight to the specified target, and stop as soon as the miniature enters that space. If there is more than one space that meets this criterion, the players decide to which of those spaces to move the miniature. If an enemy already has a target within its LoS, it does not perform this action, unless stated otherwise. If there is no space on the board from which the enemy can draw LoS towards another miniature hero, skip that enemy's miniature. If the enemy can't draw LoS towards the target hero, it tries to sight the closest one.

When an action requires an enemy to see a target, this action is considered a movement action.

Clarifications

• If the players need to decide between several possible spaces for an enemy move to, keep in mind that the enemies must always move as close as possible to the heroes' miniatures, and they always try to end their movement as close as possible to the largest possible number of heroes.
• If multiple miniatures have the same hero as a target, try to organise the enemies around it in a way so that the largest possible number of enemies can surround it, as far as their movement points allow.

Important: in case of any doubt or discrepancy with any of these rules, remember that the enemies always perform the best possible action for them, the one that offers the most beneficial outcome for the enemies.

Special Enemies

In Runaljod: The sound of runes, some enemies have their own activation deck showing the icon of the corresponding enemy. Once you have resolved the common Enemy AI card, reveal any special activation card for larger enemies and follow the steps indicated on the card. The effects of these cards, and how to resolve them, are described in that enemy's section of the campaign.

Basic Rules

The Dice

Many situations in the game, such as combat or tests, are resolved through dice rolls. The symbols you can obtain are:

• Dagger: 1 damage for an attack.
• Axe: 2 damage for an attack.
• Double axe: 3 damage for an attack.
• Upgrade: this symbol is called an upgrade, and allows the players to activate special abilities or count as successes in checks (see "Perform checks" above).

Equipment

Each hero has a certain amount of space for equipment cards on their hero board. These spaces are indicated with a printed icon to remind the players where to place each item according to its type:

• Hands: one space for each hand, or one space only if they use a card that needs both hands.
• Torso: a hero can only equip one card in the torso.
• Head: a hero can only equip one card on the head.
• Feet: a hero can only equip one card on the feet.
• Miscellaneous: a hero has a maximum of 3 spaces for miscellaneous equipment. In these spaces the hero may also place any equipment card of any type, but these cards are not considered equipped.

God's Gear

Throughout a campaign, you may obtain gear provided by the Gods. These God's gear items are equipment cards with their own rules. Each God's gear card is associated with a specific God and allows you to take that God's rune, by flipping a single sideways rune face down instead of the usual two. Each card contains a space to place that God's rune and activate the special power described on the card. Note that this is different from using the power of the God, since you use the power from that God's gear card, and, as happens when the power of a God is activated, you must return the rune to the altar afterwards.

Destiny

Some skills, weapons, or other abilities require you to spend destiny, usually represented by the destiny icon. To do this, you flip face down as many runes from your destiny pool as destiny icons shown (remember that all runes outside your destiny pool are considered used). If you can't flip the number of runes needed, either because you don't have enough runes available or they are already face down, you cannot activate the associated effect.

Sometimes you will be allowed to recover destiny. This causes the opposite effect, that is, you flip as many runes face up as the recover icons shown.

Keywords

Some abilities on the hero board use keywords, as explained below.

Range. The range ability allows you to perform ranged attacks.

Large. This ability allows you to perform a melee attack and target a miniature up to 2 spaces away, rather than only the adjacent spaces. The target still needs to be within LoS.

Area. An area attack also affects all spaces adjacent to the target space. The attacker rolls the attack dice once and applies the result to each miniature, which are affected individually and apply their own defence against this attack. The target space is the only one that needs to be within the line of sight of the attacker. "Area" attacks affect only enemy miniatures, and once per enemy.

Howl. All the heroes at 3 spaces or less lose 1 life point.

Trance. Some heroes can perform trance throws. To do this, you need to throw 4 God's runes on the altar of the Gods. If there are fewer than 4 runes, take random God's runes from the game box until you have 4. Once you throw them on the altar, you get trance tokens depending on the orientation of the runes after the throw:

• Each face up rune: 1 trance token.
• Each sideways rune: 2 trance tokens. In the same way as God's runes, all heroes heal 1 life point for each sideways rune obtained, as usual.

These tokens are placed on the hero board and allow you to activate skills that demand you own or spend some of these tokens. Some skill cards have the word "trance" (before the effect), which means that you must spend a trance token to trigger that effect.

Mark. Each hero can have a maximum of one mark token in the game, which can be used only once per turn, unless stated otherwise. You may return a placed mark token to re-roll all the dice from an attack roll, but the hero must keep the result of the second roll.

Hold. A character with this skill takes the target miniature of the attack and places it next to their own miniature, in the same space. Both miniatures are considered to be sharing the same space. A targeted hero automatically loses all their destiny, if any. The target hero is only considered adjacent to the enemy captor doing the hold, it loses LoS to any other space on the board, and can only perform attacks against its captor. If you are trapped by "hold", you cannot move on your own under any circumstances; you only move along with your captor, if your captor moves.

The captured miniature, before performing any action, must choose between: lose 2 life points and 1 [icon not legible in source: printed as "1" followed by a missing glyph; read as destiny here, unverified], and then perform the selected action; or perform a physical test. If the test is failed, the hero loses 2 life points and 1 [same unverified glyph]. Whether you pass or fail the check, perform the selected action. You need two actions: one for the physical check and a second one for the chosen action. If you are defeated, place your hero's miniature on any space adjacent to the enemy.

If the target is an enemy, it can only perform attacks against its captor.

If the character performing the Hold is defeated, place the captured miniature in a space adjacent to the defeated captor. If you are already performing a Hold on someone, you cannot perform another Hold action. In the case of enemies, replace the word "Hold" with the corresponding icon on the AI card.

Quick. A "Quick" character can move through spaces occupied by enemy creatures as if they were empty.

Jump. A character with this skill ignores movement restrictions caused by terrain or by other miniatures.

Obstruction. Leaving an adjacent space from this miniature costs one extra movement point.

Wound. This ability allows you to place a wound token on the target of the attack. This can only happen if the target has received damage due to this attack.

Freeze. This ability allows you to place a frozen token on the target of the attack.

Stun. This ability allows you to place a stun token on the target of the attack.

Terrain

Some spaces contain terrain elements, identified by the colour of these spaces. These spaces of the board have different effects, as described below. All coloured spaces are ruled by their associated type of terrain. Many pieces of the board also have other illustrations that do not directly affect the mechanics of the game. All uncoloured spaces of a tile are considered normal spaces, regardless of any illustrations they may contain.

Obstacles. The spaces that contain obstacles have a red dot inside. These spaces are considered blocked, and they block movement and LoS.

Difficult terrain. The spaces with a green dot inside are considered difficult terrain. Moving out of a difficult terrain space costs 2 movement points (instead of the usual cost of 1 point). All characters that move out of a difficult terrain space must spend 2 movement points to get out of it, otherwise they may not move. Large and giant enemies are not affected by difficult terrain, unless the entire base of the miniature is on difficult terrain spaces.

Bonfire. Bonfires are represented by bonfire tokens placed on spaces of the map. These spaces have all the effects of the bonfire, as well as any other effects from the space where they are placed. When a character moves through a space adjacent to a bonfire, remove any frozen condition tokens from their hero board or enemy card, if any. If you move through a space containing a bonfire, your hero loses 1 life point. You cannot end your movement on a space with a bonfire.

Ice. These spaces contain a white point inside and have the following rules:

• If a hero moves only into or out of one ice space, nothing happens.
• If you move through a second space with ice, you must perform a physical check. If you succeed, you may continue moving as usual; but if you fail, you must return to your previous space, end your movement action and take a frozen token.

A hero can perform additional movement actions on ice in later turns, applying the above rules.

Game Modes

Adventure Mode

The Adventure mode consists of a single play session, following the setup as indicated at the start of this manual. This game mode allows shorter games and/or serves as practice for less experienced players.

Level 2 adventures. There is the possibility of creating a level 2 adventure for players who prefer to use higher level skill cards and equipment, without having to play a full campaign. Set up the game following the same setup rules, but with the following changes:

1. Choose the hero. Proceed as usual, but you start with 3 skill points, instead of 2, for your starting skill cards.
2. Level 2 equipment deck. Swap the level 1 equipment deck with the level 2 deck.
3. Starting equipment. Draw 2 cards from the top of the level 2 equipment deck and decide between the players who will equip these 2 cards at the start of the game. The heroes that equip these cards must replace their starting cards if they are from the same type, and return the starting ones to the box.

Campaign Mode

This rulebook includes a fully replayable campaign, where you face multiple dangers in several game sessions, upgrading your heroes with the acquired glory and with the goal of saving Midgard from the creatures threatening it.

Rules and setup of each campaign are indicated in their corresponding sections. (Note: the campaign sections are not contained in this document; see the Table of Contents note.)

Epic Campaigns

This campaign preparation mode allows you to play with the full content of the game, giving you freedom to create new, entirely random campaigns and scenarios.

2 Player Game

For a 2-player game add the 2-player card and apply the standard rules. Once per turn, flip this card to apply one of the effects. Any hero can benefit from that effect.

Single-Player Game

For single-player games, the game works with the same rules as for two players, but a single player makes the decisions for both heroes.

Steel Rules

There are some important rules that must always be present at any Runaljod game.

• Some rules described in the campaign or in the cards can contradict the rules of this rulebook; in this case, apply those rules.
• Since the actions of the players do not obey a strict order, it is possible that more than one player wishes to act at the same time. In this case, the players preferably should take the decision that most benefits the group. In the rare case that no agreement is reached between them, the player who has fewer cubes between their glory points and gift points acts first. If there is a tie, choose the player randomly. The same happens during the enemies phase. Players should keep in mind that enemies act in the most optimal way for them according to the rules described in the manual.
• All components included in this game are unlimited; if you run out of any component, you can use any other instead, except the miniatures. In that case, you substitute them following this order: Enemy Tipe B by Tipe D, Tipe D by Tipe C, Tipe C by Tipe A and Tipe A by Tipe C.

Iconography

The source's icon key, transcribed as words.

• Face up rune: represents a face up rune.
• Dagger: 1 damage. Axe: 2 damage. Double axe: 3 damage. Upgrade.
• Destiny. Life point. Physical check. Spiritual check.
• Interaction (two hands). Any colour dice. White dice. Black dice.
• Glory points. Skill points. Defence icon: counters a defence icon.
• Perform an attack. Perform a movement action. See the target. Target of the enemy movement.
• Miscellaneous (bag). Head. Feet.

God's Powers

• Tyr: roll the red dice at your next attack.
  • Cheru: roll the red dice on your next melee attack this phase. You also may change all blank faces on this attack to double axe. Return this rune to the altar of the Gods after the attack.
• Freyja: choose any deck in the game and look at the top card; you can leave it at the same position or place it at the bottom. If you choose the exploration deck you cannot put it at the bottom.
  • Brisingamen: raise all fallen heroes as if you had passed a spiritual check with 1 [upgrade; glyph inferred from the page image]. Face down runes also heal 1 extra life point.
• Thor: choose: target one enemy miniature on your tile to lose 2 life points, or every enemy on your tile loses 1 life point.
  • Jarngreipr: target enemy loses 3 life points.
• Odin's Crows: look at the next exploration card, and decide if you want to put it in play or not. You don't need to be at the exit of the tile to play it, but you have to fulfil all the other requirements to play an exploration card.
  • Draupnir: another player may flip one rune sideways in his/her destiny pool.
• Vali: add a white die to your next range attack with this weapon; it can target an enemy anywhere on the board, regardless of LoS. Return this rune to the altar of the Gods after the attack, with the same effects.