Rune Rite 💎 | Solo Board Game PaRTy!!! 🎉
Transcript
Welcome and welcome back everybody. Tabletop Yogi here and in today's video we'll be doing a solo play through of Rune and Write. During the course of the play through I'll give a tutorial about how the game is played and be sure you stick around for the end of the video where I share my thoughts about the game in general. Before we jump in, a huge shout out to Seahorse and Hummingbird for sending us a preview copy to check out here today. That will be coming to Kickstarter next month in October of 2026. And since it is a preview copy, all components, rules, etc. are subject to change for the final release. But without further ado, let's get started. So here we have a solo game of Rune and Write set up and ready to play. Over the course of the game players will be witches trying to draft runes in order to create glyphs and fill out their board to maximize scoring for the end of the game. For setup we'll start by giving each player a sheet and a writing utensil. You'll then shuffle up the rune card deck discarding three from the game and placing two out. You'll take an additional two cards and place them into the altar overlapping them like so so that you have a 3 by 3 grid filled with runes and glyphs. On your turn you're going to draft one of the two cards available rotating it however you'd want and placing it into the altar to overlap pre-existing cards. This will create what are called glyphs or connected groups of runes. In a solo game we'll be drawing two of these glyphs onto our board each turn. You can't draw the same glyph twice and the glyphs that you draw in the solo game cannot be touching one another. Glyphs can always be placed on one of the four corners of the board or extend out as long as they orthogonally
touch previously drawn glyphs. But again in a solo game you can't touch the two glyphs that you draw in a round together. We also have wild runes which will always be added to a group of matching runes in order to create a glyph when drawing them on your board. The four highlighted areas on the top, bottom, and the two sides are potions which you can mark up at the top. Utilizing a potion on your turn allows you to break the normal rules of the game. In a solo game, you can drink a potion in order to draw two glyphs in a round, even drawing the same glyph twice. Utilizing that potion will also allow you to break the rules and place your two glyphs that you draw from the altar that turn next to each other if you so choose. The game will end once you can't place one or two of the glyphs shown in your altar, or if you run out of cards. At that point, you'll look at each of your nine grids and score two points per unique symbol in each of those completely filled grids. You'll also score each rune looking for your largest perfect square on the board. A two by two of any of these runes will get you four points, a three by three will be 10 points, and a four by four will get you 18 points. Any unused potions will also be worth five points each. And that's all we need to know to get started. So, looking at our runes here, I think I would like to start building off of potentially some of our orange runes, and we can utilize this wild rune as well. So, I'm going to take this card and overlap it, rotating it 90° that way, and we're going to first draw our triangle runes. I'll go ahead and start in this top left corner, and
this is already a two by two grid, which would be four points. So, we're going to see if we can max out triangles. And then I also have this group of three of these squiggly runes, which we're going to put in the opposite corner. All right, and then we'll replenish our cards here and see what we want to do next. It looks like I could continue to draw more of these orange runes. The problem is that every time you take a card, it's going to overlap and cover up some of the symbols. So, you need to be really strategic about how that looks. We could do another square, which might help me, especially because it would then be half of our four by four. So, I'm inclined to do that, but it does cover up all of our other symbols, which it might not be great. But, we're going to go ahead and try it. So, I have another square. Again, you always have to add wild runes, so I have another square of these triangle pieces. We'll put them over here on the left.
Three and four. And these shapes can be rotated, mirrored, etc. And then I think we want to take the straw rune here, which again connects with those wild runes. We're going to throw that up in the top right corner, and we'll see how that works out for us. Uh we can rotate it, flip it. I kind of want to put it so that it takes up the corner perfectly that way. Okay. Flip our next card, and we have um one more corner that we can start building out of. And then we're going to have to kind of uh work with what we have here and build out from the previously placed runes. So, we could continue with placing these square shapes for our orange room if I was to overlap this way. And that could get us started on green as well. Or if we wanted to do something a little different, I could potentially place this here and get more blue, but that leaves us pretty limited on orange.
So, I think we're going to continue with orange and see if that will help us get that square filled in. So, we're going to do one, two, three, four since we have all those wilds. And then we can either do a two green, that's the same, or one of these um blue runes. We'll go ahead and start on green. I'm going to start in this corner. So, now that we've utilized all four corners, we're going to have to build out uh by placing adjacent to runes that have already been placed. We do need more orange.
So, that would be good. And if I place this here to build off orange, we would have a nice little corner, and we would also get two blue with that wild rune. So, let's do that. And we're going to have let's 1 2 3 just rotating that shape around so that we leave the open corner down here.
Then we have our three blue, so let's do 1 2 3. Maybe we can get like a line of blue here later. All right, flipping our next card. Speaking of getting a line of blue, maybe. Um, but we do want this single orange for here ideally as well. So, what are our options? Think we need to start going for blue and worry about Oh, and then we would still get the single orange. Perfect. So, we have one here.
And then we're going to do this Oh, it's two because of the wild room. So, we'll do one and then just extend it downward. Sure, why not? And then we have our three blue, so we'll do one two three. Again, rotating ever so slightly. And now we have some choices to make. We do have three plus um, signs which we could get that in the bottom corner in order to focus on that, but that only leaves us with one blue, which isn't the worst. I think we'll start prioritizing those greens. Not sure if I want to extend up and try to go for the bigger 4x4 right away. I think we have enough time to pot- potentially accomplish that. So, we're going to go um, 1 2 3 4 to make that L shape just again, mirrored, rotated a little bit, and hopefully we can fill all these spaces in. I have a single blue because that triangle doesn't necessarily help me right now, so we're going to put the single blue here and lock in the 3x3. Maybe we'll get a 4x4.
We could again take that green shape if we overlay this exactly, and we could also get some pink stars if we do that, or we could do this shape in order to do the same thing, but I think we'll take this one like so. So, we're going to do 1 2 3 4 and then our two pink maybe going out this way 1 2, so we have a 2 by 2. So far, it's looking pretty good. I notice we've stacked a lot on this side of the altar. We'll see if that changes, but I really like having all these greens at my disposal. So, at this point, we could get a set of three pink like so and still get two green. So, we're going to overlap that on top. For our three pink, let's do 1 2 3. And since we filled in the three highlighted sections up here, we're going to go ahead and circle this potion, which again in a solo game will allow us to take two glyphs, even the same glyph twice, or we can place our two glyphs that we draw in a row next to each other instead of having to work off different areas. Let's go ahead and see if we can place these two plus signs as well then. Let's do 1 2.
Okay. Next card, we're starting to get to an area where we're not going to be able to place because again, they can't touch even on a diagonal in solo game when the you place your two rings. So, we're running out of options as far as maybe where those can go. We definitely need to start getting some lines of blue here in order to accomplish our largest blue square and notice I haven't even touched purple yet. So, that might be kind of tricky to see where we're going to put that. Maybe I can do like a little purple 2 by 2 down here or something. Unfortunately, our only purple right now is in the center, so that doesn't help us a whole lot, but I think that if I put this here, it'll give us some purple and blue to build off later. I'm going to go ahead and put my two blue uh maybe here and here.
We could get an L-shaped corner piece later, perhaps. And then I have my two purple, which I think I want to place, or do I want to place another star? Hmm, tricky. Let's go ahead and place another star here. All right. And then Ugh, these are not quite the shapes that I was hoping for. Let's see. If we were to do something like this, we could get an L-shape in stars, and then a two blue. I think that's probably our best bet. So, we're not an alpha and we're like a Z-shape in stars. Which would allow us to go uh 1 2 3 4 or 1 2 3 4, but that really encroaches on that middle space that I was hoping to save for swirls. Let's do this. 1 2 3 and 4. So, we just need one more star there. And then let's take the two blue to fill in. 1 2. Okay.
I forgot that we were also working on pluses down here. This would give us a three in a row for plus signs, which is pretty necessary. I'm going to go ahead and do that without thinking too hard about it. And we'll do 1 2 3 4. And then I can do a Oh, I can't do a single blue because it would touch the shape or the glyph that we just placed. So, I'd have to use my potion if I wanted to do that. Or, I can just place these two triangles. I'm inclined to place the two triangles just to get the two points scoring for different runes in a filled-in section. So, let's put them here. Ooh, do I want to put it above or to the side for this shape or straight away for pink?
Maybe we'll put it here to give us another potion. Okay. And now this is tricky because I need a single green ideally.
And then I need a two blue. I can't place Oh, I can't place single green and two blue. So, if we take this two blue, do I want this one or this one though? I think this one will be better. I'm going to place my single green here to fill in that 4 by 4. I'm going to place the two blue here to fill in this 4 by 4. And then we'll just need another star or two over there. Hmm, two stars at a time. And I need some purples to place somewhere, so this pink shape doesn't fit super well, but maybe we can cover it up later. Let's do this.
We'll just place it here till we leave some single shapes for later. So, for our stars, we have a three. Ah, that's really not great, but we can fill them in here or Oh, but we don't even want to do that because we can only get a 3 by 3 because we put that triangle there. Oh, no, this would have gone perfectly here. Well, mistakes were made. Let's take this card instead. Let's break these up a little bit. Um
[clears throat]
like so, and we'll leave that single green in case we need it. Um I'm going to place the two stars here in order to lock in this 3 by 3. We're so close to the 4 by 4 for that, but that's okay. Then we have a plus sign that we can place somewhere. I'm inclined to put it here to try to get different symbols up in that top section. Oh, man, these are large groups of runes, which is not great for us right now. If we take this one, we could get our two purple and then a single blue or green. Seems like it might be the most advantageous. So, let's take our single blue since we don't have a blue rune up here yet or we could do purple up here.
I think our best bet for purple unfortunately is to do this 4 by 4. So, that means that we're going to have to place our purple runes here and here which means we can't place our single blue here. Instead, let's throw it over here since we don't have any blue in this section. Hopefully, we'll be able to fill that in with a two 1 by 2 shape. And then a two pink would look great here and if we do that, we would be able to keep our two purple. So, let's place this here. We have two purple which we can place here. And here for our two by two. We have our two pink which we can go boom boom. That finishes out that square and now we're just trying to maximize different point scoring and get a rune for down here ideally so we can finish that potion which is five points if we don't use it or could give us some flexibility for placing these last few runes. Again, we have big groups which is not great. A single pink down here would be awesome. We could also have some purples over here. So, what I'm thinking is if we break these up these purples aren't together to form a glyph, we'll have enough flexibility. So, we'll do single pink which gets us our last potion and then we can do two purple over here which gets us two more points for variety in this square and finishes it
off and let's see if we can make these last two spots happen. Okay, so we need a single ideally a single blue which will not happen. And then we need maybe pinks here, two pink. This card has two pink. If we do that, is there a way we can put a single purple? Yes. Okay. So, I'm going to put this here like this. We'll take the two pink and place it here. A variety bonus and not touching that glyph, we're going to place this single rune up here for variety. All right. We are not going to be able to place any more runes, so at this point, we've completely filled out our grid and now we'll move on to scoring. So, for this top corner, we have all the same shape, which is just two points. And it's two for each unique shape within a completely filled square. Here we have triangles, squiggles, stars, and plus signs, which is 4 * 2 is 8.
Down here, we have just pluses. Okay, moving to the next section or next column. At the top, we have stars, triangles, pluses, and swirls, which is eight. And we have swirls, triangles, pluses, stars, and squiggles, which is 10. Down here, we have our squiggles, 1 2 3, so that's six points. And our last column, we have just stars, which is two. We have stars, two, three, four, which is eight points, and just the one, which is two points. Now, we're going to look at our largest perfect square of each different rune. For our purple runes, we have a 2x2, which is four points. Our green runes, we did accomplish that 4x4. Very ambitious to start, but it paid off, so that's going to be 18 points.
We then have our triangles, which again, we got that 4x4 for 18 points. Our stars, which we were super close to, but that 3x3 will be 10 points still. And our blue runes, which is 18 points down here with a 4x4. We also have four unused potions, which is 20 points. So, we add up our entire bottom section for a total of 136 points, which puts us right under the top scoring condition of matriarch, which is 140 plus points for solo. Instead, we have achieved the rank of coven leader, scoring between 120 to 139 points. So, there you have it. That is a solo play through of Rune Realm. As you all might know, I am personally a big fan of flip and fill roll and write X and X style games. And I do love shape polyomino spatial reasoning games, but I do feel that it is a genre and mechanic that sometimes gets a little tired.
Receive a shape, draw it onto your board. The fact that in Rune and Write, you are utilizing cards and overlapping them to craft specific areas to form glyphs, I think it's really fresh and interesting. In a solo game, the fact that you're trying to create two glyphs per round that you can utilize on your board provides just enough of a fun thinking challenge versus the multiplayer rules where the lead player is creating a glyph of their choice and other players are drafting other glyphs from the center. So, I think that between solo and multiplayer, there's a lot of replayability and variability with strategy from play to play. I also like that the variety of scoring doesn't necessarily feel overwhelming, but again, lends itself to what types of strategies you're going to employ. Are you going to try to utilize potions effectively to have big turns? Are you going to go for variety bonuses or go big with risky points in trying to make those large 4 by 4 shapes? And as you all saw in the play through, this game fits very well into that niche of easy to learn, quick to set up, fast and fun to play with some thinking decisions to make along the way. I will say that one small consideration that does come to mind for me is the fact that the altar, while it does very nicely keep the cards in place, can be difficult to see over the edges of depending on what your table setup looks like and if you're playing with multiple players. This is of course a prototype copy, so I'll be interested to see what the final design looks like, but I would also say take
that personal consideration with a huge grain of salt because I'm also a person who doesn't like using dice trays because I think they obstruct the visibility of the components too greatly to warrant having a nice contained space. I would say that if you're like me and that is something that you are struggling with in a larger player game, it's very easy to just overlap the cards and keep them pretty nice and tidy without the outer piece as well. So, that is easily fixable if that's a personal preference of yours like it is mine. That being said, again, if you're looking for an easy-to-learn game that's quick to set up and put away, nice and compact, can play solo or multiplayer with a lot of variety and different strategies you can employ from play to play, I would definitely recommend checking out Rune Right. And that's about all the time we have for today. If you enjoyed this video or found it helpful, please feel free to give it a thumbs up. It really helps out the channel and if you want to subscribe for more solo and other board game content, we would love to have you as part of the community. I'll link the Kickstarter campaign as well as details about how you can get Rune and Right down in the description. Be sure to check that out.
Again, a huge shout out to Seahorse and Hummingbird for sending us a preview copy. Thanks as always for joining me and we'll see you next time. Bye. Y'all don't know how hard it is to do math live. So, yes, I am using a calculator.