New Conan game

I have information on a future Conan board game which will be kickstarted later this year.

As I am not familiar with this website cou you tell me if people here would be interested to learn about it ? If so, where should I post it ?

Seemed sketchy, looks legit.

www.conan.com/invboard/?showtopic=10709

www.lesmaitresdujeu.fr/jeux-de-plateau-a...m-conan-is-back.html

boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/29377/new-gam...lack-fleet-conans-re

Please post more info right here in this thread.

I guess a good start would be to repost the previews I posted in the comments of the bgg news article you put in your links (where they aren't very visible).

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I made a small preview. While waiting for the game page to be approved, I guess I'll just post it here:

Conan

I was able to playtest the future Conan game prototype. This is a scenario based semi cooperative game. One player will be playing the Evil Forces, and the others will play Conan and his allies.

About the theme

The art and theme is based on the original Conan from Howard's novels. So it will not include the changes, evolutions and additions brought by later authors, the comics and the movies. Patrice Louinet, a renowned Howard literary specialist, has been hired to ensure its authenticity.

In the scenario I played, there were 3 players playing the heroes: Conan, Shevatas , the thief from the novel “Black Colossus”, and Hadrathus the Asura priest from “The hour of the dragon”.

A caravan was attacked by savage Picts, they took all the valuables and killed everyone except a travelling princess, which they captured.
During the night, most of the hunters are gone from the Pict village, and the heroes are going to try to steal back the princess. The village is not completely unguarded, though. Pict warriors, dogs, and the very strong Pict chief are still there.
And their time is limited: they must find her in 10 turns before the hunters return!

The turn structure

Well, first, one of the heroes will take his turn which can include moving, attacking, casting spells, picking locks…
Then the evil player will have the opportunity to activate up to two units, each one composed of one or several miniatures.

Playing the heroes

The heroes each have a character board indicating their abilities. And they also have equipment cards which can give them additional abilities.
Using these abilities will usually require them to spend energy.

Their energy (represented in this prototype by red gems) is first in the available (green) area is and when they use it, they’ll move as much as they need to the spent area (red).

Their abilities and the number of energy spent will define how many dice they will roll and which ones.
There are 3 types of dice, yellow, orange, and red, each giving a better probability of success.
As an example, yellow dice have 3 blank faces, 2 “1 success” faces, and 1 “2 successes face”.

Each character has a free number of moves every turn, if they want to move more, they’ll need to spend energy.

To hit someone, they need to have more successes than his level of armor. Spending energy can allow them to reroll some of their dice.
Their opponent then has the opportunity to spend energy to defend against it by rolling a number of dice, and have their successes add to their armor.
If they are hit, their wounds remove some of their energy, which go into the wound area.

As said above, only one hero acts each turn. The others regain some (2 or 3) energy. The hero players can choose freely each turn who will be active (it can be the same hero 2 or more consecutive turns), but as long as one stays active he won’t be able to regain energy.

Now, what about the evil player?

The player playing the evil forces will have a board in which he can put 8 tiles. Each tile will correspond to a unit, and will have on it all the abilities of the miniatures of this unit.
Their position corresponds to number on the board from 1 to 8.

The evil player has a global pool of energy, and he regains 5 energy every turn.
So if he wants to activate the first unit, he must spend 1 energy, the second, 2 energy until the last one which costs 8 energy.

Whatever tile the player chooses to activate, he’ll spend the energy and then take it out and put it back at the end of the track, sliding the others to the left. So this tile will now cost 8, and every other tile will have its cost reduced by one.
Every miniature of this unit will then get to move and attack, the same way the heroes did, and energy can also be spent from the evil player energy pool to move farther, to reroll dice, to defend, etc…

So what were my impressions?

As far as the mechanisms go, and based on half a game on that first scenario, I really liked this game. The rules were relatively easy to grasp, but the game still felt deep and thematic. And there were many strategic decisions to take.
As the evil player, I knew quickly that I probably won’t be able to kill the heroes, but I tried to make them spend their energy every turn.
Try to block Conan piling him up with enemies, keeping Picts in strategic places to jump on Shevatas if he passes nearby (because of his uncanny agility, he can evade any blocking), sending dogs to pin the mage in place (sure he can use spells to shield himseld or teleport, but that will make him spend his energy).
From what I could see from the hero side, the three heroes played very differently, each one in his speciality.



The final game will include at least 8 scenarii (could be more with stretch goals), at least 5 possible heroes (Conan, Shevatas, Hadratus, Belit and Valeria) and about 130 miniatures with at least 30 different models (and it could be more depending of the success of the kickstarter).
Add to this the equipment cards and this game feels as it will be quite replayable.

I was shown several pictures of art and miniatures and, without being a specialist, I was very impressed with their quality and their details. It is a very adult style, though, with a lot of skin showing, so some people could have problems with that.

The kickstarter is planned for september 2014 and the game should be available 6 months later.

Since I enjoyed that game quite a bit, I’ll see if I can have other opportunities of playing it, to be able to finish a game and play the hero side. If I do, I’ll come back and tell you more about it.

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I was able to play a second time on the same scenario. This time I played on the heroes side, Hadrathus the mage.
I tried to be bold, but ended up being reckless. I entered a hut and cast lightning bolts on everybody inside, including me. Everybody inside was killed, but even though I was protected by the halo of Mitra, I was wounded. But then it got worse.
I teleported later to another empty hut, where I ended up without any energy. But I didn't notice that there were picts in the other room, who could very cheaply be sent to attack me in the following round. I was defenseless, and they killed me easily.

Killing me was a mistake, since it enabled my companions to gather more energy to avenge me. In game terms, when a hero dies, the others are able to regain more energy every turn. So it is more beneficial for the evil player to wound the heroes without finishing them.
But still it meant I was out of the game.

At the end of the game, when the player playing the opponents had to leave, I replaced him. But by this time, there wasn't much left to do. The heroes already found the princess, the pict forces were decimated and all they had to do was kill the pict chief to win the game. They won, but at the 8th round. Two rounds more and they would have lost.

There were a few changes in the rules. More than one hero is now allowed to play in the round, as long as at least one of them is resting.
Also the opponent player can respawn his lost base troops using a separate energy pool.
And Thak, the gigantic man-ape from Rogues in the House is now fighting on the picts side.

Also some more playing characters have been revealed. We knew so far of Conan, Shevatas, Hadrathus, Belit and Valeria. But it will also be possible to play a (so far unnamed) Bossonian archer and Zelata, the witch from the Hour of the Dragon, accompanied by her wolf.

A picture has also been released yesterday. Originally it was two pictures. But it was quickly discovered that one of them (a beautiful picture of Shevatas) was very close to an existing picture of a character from a famous tv series. So when they realised that, the designer and publisher decided to remove it and ask the artist to redo it.

But I can still share with you the picture of Belit.



And the name of the artist of the game has also been revealed: it is Adrian Smith, known for his work on Games Workshop games.

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Things are moving fast: Since yesterday events, Adrian Smith already redid Shevatas picture, which was immediately released.

Here it is:

Now if you have questions, I'll do my best to answer them (and if I can't I'll ask the author).

AUTOBUY.

I want this.

This sounds CROMulent!

There is now an official Facebook page for the game (and for his publisher): www.facebook.com/monolithedition

Also the base number of miniatures for the game has been announced: 101 !

Keep it up, you have my interest. Probably not to back up the KS campaign, but who knows.

Dude! Frederic Henry is involved. This is a former (current?) AEG guy who did Adventurers, and designed Rush N' Crush.

This shit is going to be DOPE AS HELL.

I'm in.

Yes, Frederic Henry (Rush n Crush, Adventurers, Timeline, The Builders) is the designer and also the copublisher along with Erwan and Loig from Bombyx (Takenoko)

And 2 new pictures from the facebook page

Some more information about the miniatures from the Facebook page.

So far Belit, the Bossonian archer and Zogar Sag, and a lot of 3D elements including doors, chests, tables, etc. are done.
The pirate, Shevatas (almost done) and Zelata with her wolf are under making.
The list of sculptors includes so far Stéphane Simon (sculpting Zogar Sag), Yannick Hennebo (sculpting Belit), Grégory Clavilier, Jacques-Alexandre Gillois and Stéphane Nguyen. They are also under negociation to hire other talented sculptors.
The next update should include pictures.

Also it was confirmed that Fréderic Henry will be at GenCon with a playable prototype.

Wow. Looks pretty freakin cool. I am definitely interested. . .

A new update with two new pictures.



First here is the prototype character sheet for Shevatas (of course the layout, the illustrations and the miniature will be quite different in the final game)

Here's a detailed description of what is on it:

On the left we have of course the name and the picture of the character. On the 6 small squares in the top you have:
Melee attack: orange dice
Range attack: orange dice
Sleight of hand (including lock-picking): red dice
Movement: base of 3 sectors by turn (more is possible by paying energy)
Parry/Dodge: orange dice
Reroll
On the bottom we have on the left the available energy (10 at the beginning of the game), and on the right spent energy. Above with the skull, we have the wounds (energy permanently lost, unless you can heal yourself)



And here, you have Belit miniature under construction.

Sorry for not updating this thread lately.
Though there is now a BGG page for the game with lots of new information.
Or if you prefer, there is also an official Facebook page for the publisher and this game, with regular updates.

In the meantime, I have a question for you.

There has been some suggestions from some people, that, given the quality of the miniatures would be ready to pay more to have deluxe miniatures in resin or metal, which enable to have more details than plastic (even a good quality one such as the one in zombicide).

After some inquiries it appears that it is in theory possible to offer a deluxe add-on pack including resin versions of the heroes and unique monsters. This of course would require for those interested to pay an additional cost, and though being more detailed these miniatures will also be more fragile.

The base game would still contain, as planned, all the miniatures in zombicide quality plastic.

However the condition for this add-on to be implemented is for enough people to be interested to make this economically possible.

The publisher is considering putting out a poll in the KS project page when it will be one. But in the meantime don't hesitate to give your opinion on this offer, to give the publisher an idea of how many people would be interested.

The estimated price of such a pack is not known at the moment, but I'll update this information in here, as soon as it is.

MY GOD SHE HAS SNAKES FOR HANDS! That is full bore AT right there!

Why do I feel like quests for "high quality" miniatures in these games is code for "jerk-off level of detail"?