Designed by Adrian Franks, Raidan's Runes is a light, fantasy-themed quest & conquest card game for 2-4 players. It's published by Raidan Games and art is by Alex Franks.
You control a band of warriors that are either 'Dwarvs', 'Orks', 'Elvs' or 'Oomans'. On your turn you draw an Encounter and a Quest card. Many of the Encounter cards will give you attack spells that you can direct at other players, and many of the Quest cards offer defence against specified spells. When you draw a card that permits you to do so, you can attack one of the (non-player) Elemental cards to win a Portal Key, which you need before you can attack the Draken, but even if you succeed in winning a Portal Key you don't get to use it on the turn on which you obtained it, which gives other players a chance to nab it off you by battling you for it...
Raidan's Runes is primarily a game of luck. Aside from the spell cards, combat is mostly determined by comparing d20 die rolls or by tossing a wooden coin; so pretty much everything in the game depends on the luck of the card draws and the 50:50 chance of success in a dice face-off or coin flip. That's not a criticism of the game. Not every game needs to be a game of deep strategy, there's a place too for engaging push-your-luck games of chance. And Raidan's Runes is a lot of fun, especially with four players where there's plenty of 'pass the parcel' card stealing that can be the cause of much hilarity.
Raidan's Runes is attractively presented, with chunky tarot-sized cards. We picked up our copy at UK Games Expo. If you can't find it at your local games store, click here to order it direct from the publishers.