Doubts About Age of Conan

I picked up my copy of Age of Conan on Wednesday. I'm kind of glad F:AT was down because I had time to solo the game to learn the rule prior to teaching next week. I think Age of Conan is going to be hitting the table quite a bit this year. Here is my run down so far:

Game length: With 4 players, I'm estimating the game length to be 3-4 hours. Hopefully, with some experience players we can get the time down to 3 hours. With 3 players the game length should drop by about 1 hour.

Number of players: The game should play well with 3 - 4 players. With 2 players I think I'd play War of the Ring.

Components No problems with the plastic, card stock, map, blah, blah, blah. The maps size seem perfect. There are some provinces that will be pretty tight with 5 armies + 1 fort.

Theme: Some but weaker than WoR

Scale: Epic, civilization scale. The game is played in 3 Ages. The first age you start with 1 small Kingdom and 4-5 armies. In the 2nd Age your small kingdom will grow to maybe 10 armies and 3 - 5 provinces. In the 3 Age the 4 large empires will start fighting each other for provinces.

Interaction: Unless you have real aggressive player, the first half of the game the interaction will probably be more indirect. Bidding on Conan, sending raider, etc. During the last age players will be trying to attack each other most turns.

Complexity Medium. The game is simpler than many Ameritrash games WoR,Warrior Knights, StarCraft, Ti3, Arkham. It's probably closer in complexity to BSG. The rule book was pretty well written and it was only 20 pages with lots of pictures and examples.

What's cool Conan Probably my favorite mechanism is the Fate dice. Anyone who is familar with WoR will know how fate dice work. In AoC players share 7 fate dice. The actions on the fate dice include Military, Intrigue, Conan + Court, Military / Intrigue or Wild. There will be times in the game when most players will want to use the Military action but only 2 Military dice are available so there will be a run on using the Military dice.

When I first read the rules I thought the Conan adventure was pretty lame. It seemed like the most Euro-like part of the game. Conan moves you collect chits with different color backs that you turn into resources or save for victory points. And in some ways I still think it's lame. But the cool part of Conan is using him in battles. As a player if you control Conan you move him into a territory your attacking and he can give you a huge advantage.

Crowning Conan could be pretty interesting in some games. If you think you have the most monsters, treasure or women adventure points and you control Conan in the 3rd Age, you can move Conan to your Kingdom and crown him. At that point you show everyone that you have the most women if you do the games over and you gain 3 + 5 extra victory points (in most games this should swing the victory to you). If somebody else had more women than you, Conan will get pissed and you chop your head off and you automatically lose the game. Now that is some good Ameritrash.

Who will like Conan? War of the Ring fans who want to play with 3-4 players. People who want a medium weight, medium length, multiplayer conflict game. If your looking for Conan the adventure game, you won't find it here.

I do like the idea of routing Conan through the enemy's territory, during which he will wreak havoc during any combats there. Great idea.

We are so playing htis shit when i get done with dragonlords and back from dallas.

-M

I'd hoped to get a game in this weekend, but we had five and ended up breaking in my copy of A Game of Thrones "first," and that ate away what time we had, with the rules explanation and my slow-but-winning play.

I don't often do this, but some solo turns seem like a good idea here prior to trying to teach this one. I was initially puzzled by the rulebook, but then it started to click. Still, there are quite a few variables, so getting them sort of down first would probably facilitate teaching.

Played a 3 player game last night.

It has some nice things about it, feeling a bit like a beefed up Nexus Ops. The Conan stuff actually DETRACTS from the game and feels seriously tacked on.

The nice things are that it has a pretty severe attacker advantage. There is no turtling. The downside is that you cannot even hope to defend anything you hold. If someone wants to, they can quickly remove you.

The downside is that the impetus for attacking other people is kind of lessened. When you conquer a player-owned region it just goes neutral. Then you have to conquer the neutral region to claim it. More work than just taking a neutral region.

Given the small number of turns you get (and we were playing 3 player--it'd be worse with 4 players..... there is rather a lot of world that will remain unconquered by the end of the game. Which means the ONLY reason to hit someone is for Crom tokens, and to savage to keep someone from a bonus.

Of course the criminal offense is Empire Points. You muck around for a couple of hours, and points pop out. yay.

Would play it again. Maybe.

Nice report, Frank.

Which means the ONLY reason to hit someone is for Crom tokens, and to savage to keep someone from a bonus.

And of course if you're Steve Avery

Steve"Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women"Avery

As to the actual game report: Dan's dice sucked. Aaron went after Dan, forgetting rule #3, which meant that Frank won.

moofrank wrote:

As to the actual game report: Dan's dice sucked. Aaron went after Dan, forgetting rule #3, which meant that Frank won.

Frank did you just refer to yourself in the third-person? Anthony totally hates that.

Thanks for the mini-review, I've not been fired up about this game, I'd play it but I doubt I'd buy it (I'm saving all my Trash coppers for Cosmic Encounter).

drmabuse00 wrote:

(I'm saving all my Trash coppers for Cosmic Encounter).

Duke approves!

The third person thing is annoying...but it seemed to be required because Rule #3 is "Whenever possible, screw Frank."

You you want a good game that recreates the action of the Conan stories...you'll have to go design your own. If you want a vanilla strategy game pick up Age of Conan.

http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=8a2505951bc80ed4011c2f6abe670461

All I will say on the matter.

Planning to review this in a couple of weeks. I'll hold fire on presenting my opinion until then, but it'll be a pretty comprehensive dissection.

I didn't buy it when it first came out because I had some nagging doubts. Sure I love War of the Ring but it seemed that the "scale" was off with Conan. When I think of Conan and the stories I've read, I think about Conan himself or a small band of adventurers. I'm not thinking about empires clashing. That stuff was in the backgorund. So for a Conan game I'm thiking less about WotR and more about a game with the same "scale" as Magic Realm or Warlord of Mars.

-Will