Word from Fantasy Flight Games- AGE OF CONAN news, KINGSBURG Coming Hot

Good to hear about Conan. Kingsburg is pretty lame though. All the best parts of Kiungsburg are in To Court the King...the rest just slows..it...down. I've played it thrice which is two time to many...

Steve"RKoF Snob" Avery

Just a note to the author: the ligature glyphs did not survive the cut an paste operation. "fl", "ff", "ft" and even "th" in the italicized portions--that's kind of weird, I didn't think that got ligatured.

Conan in English. ;D

Looking up Fantasy Flight's line-up I see that Middle-Earth Quest appears to have quietly dropped off Boardgame News's Gone Cardboard list. Oh well.

Maybe they'll replace with HELM'S DEEP- THE GAME for you, Walt.

Barnes, I thought Helm's Deep was already in Battles of the Third Age (the War of the Ring expansion).

Oh, you meant a game based on Knizia's Lord of the Rings game's version of Helm's Deep:

2-5 hobbits against an army of orcs, but luckily the hobbits are armed with sword and axe cards, handshake cards, and feet cards. Will the active player be able to discard 2 matching symbols to prevent the Fire of Orthanc? Will the hobbits have enough heart, sun and ring tokens to prevent the orcs from storming forward?

How could anyone pass up such a thrilling game concept?

I actually like Kingsburg, but I'm in the camp that is reasonably fond of Caylus.

Problem is, I don't like playing games with people who like Caylus. I'm not sure how to solve that one.

Doing a Gears of War board game does seem silly. Gears has gorgeous graphics, wonderful control, and a nice pop and shoot thing going for it. None of those translate to the boardgame at all. The only other good thing about Gears is that transferring that gear and skull icon to a board game makes people want it. Which is perhaps a good thing.

So now we're trying to "impress" Conan? The war is lost.

You know what's amazing? The feet cards look like feet. It's so precious.

Hmm, this is Fantasy Flight, so it's more likely that the feet would be like that pig dice game where you need them to land upright. Roll them bonestarsals!

What a scoop! Won't be able to sleep tonight.

Yeah, but Frank: an impress Conan mechanic? WTF is that? Sounds like the Age of Conan would be better suited to be a Euro than anything else.

--Mike L.

Actually I like the approach Age of Conan takes, provided 'impressing' Conan isn't like impressing Beowulf ("Here are some boat cards Be!") The idea that no one gets to play Conan but rather he influences everyone both positivly and negatively is a pretty novel approach.

But anyway I was being sarcastic - it was obvious FFG were going to be printing this game.

I think there's kind of a word-choice problem with AGE OF CONAN...if they said "hire" Conan or implied the (accurate) status of Conan as a sword-for-hire mercenary, we wouldn't be so suspicious. But they said "influence", which is a little too close to comfort to "impress"...thing is, a hiring/mercenary mechanism is a perfect wayto depict Conan. I dunno, I think I'm more disappointed that it's not a 5-6 player game.

I think it'd be cool if it came with a die or something that rarely RARELY made Conan just lose his shit and go fucking wild on his current "allies". He's got awesome sauce, so you'd want him on your side; but man, every now and then he just completely WHALES on you and slaps you back to Allentown. Conan's a mercurial dude.

Wow! seems like every week FFG has a new anouncement of new deals/games. FFG has become a Juggernaut. Do you think at some point they may sign to many deals to where it will negatively effect the quality of the games produced?

-G-

Thing is Bug, that FFG is run by smart people who actually know how to run a business...they aren't your typical fly-by-night hobby game operation staffed by some kooky ex-hippie who confuses running a business operation with taking a permanent vacation from the real world. They have a definite brand at this point and I'm sure WAY high on their list is maintaining their integrity and meeting consumer expectations.

I've been let down a couple of times by FFG, but even the stuff I've not cared for has sold well and has a following...I can't think of a total "dud" they've put out (at least since THUNDER'S EDGE), even those dodgy Silver Line games have fans.

Bug, I don't see how agreements to bring games designed in Europe to a North American market could negatively impact FFG's game quality. Nexus (War of the Ring, Marvel Heroes, and so on) are developing Age of Conan for the Italian market.

If FFG influenced Nexus's development then there might be an issue, but the people at Nexus seem intent on designing games that they would like to play. Or if FFG just started signing up random designs for the "big box" treatment.

But right now, FFG seems to be doing an excellent job.

I think there's kind of a word-choice problem with AGE OF CONAN...if they said "hire" Conan or implied the (accurate) status of Conan as a sword-for-hire mercenary, we wouldn't be so suspicious. But they said "influence", which is a little too close to comfort to "impress"...thing is, a hiring/mercenary mechanism is a perfect wayto depict Conan. I dunno, I think I'm more disappointed that it's not a 5-6 player game.

I think that our rulebook used 'hire', but I can't vouch for the final text, as it will be edited by FFG. Anyway, I think that with one of the victory conditions called 'Crom counts the dead' we're safely in AT territory.

Francesco

Thanks for the response Francesco- and don't worry about losing your AT cred, I think "Crom Counts the Dead" will satisfy your membership requirements QUITE nicely! ;)

Dude...Francesco KNOWS. He understands. HE IS ONE OF US.

"Crom Counts the Dead."

I think that sums it up rather nicely.

Thanks for the response Francesco- and don't worry about losing your AT cred, I think "Crom Counts the Dead" will satisfy your membership requirements QUITE nicely!

And I didn't mention that you can get victory points by getting the more women (or monsters, or treasure)! ;D

Francesco

But do you get VPs for hearing the lamentations of their women? ;D

When the game was described to me at GTS the first thing I thought of was the Groo card game.

When the game was described to me at GTS the first thing I thought of was the Groo card game.

Probably because it was Roberto who explained it to you, and Roberto was a fan of that game. :)
But if I remember correctly, in Groo you are trying to send the barbarian to the other players because he damages them trying to help. In Conan you want to be the Conan player, as you hire him to fight for you most of the times. It is true that sometimes you send it in enemy territory to raise rebels and raiders.

Francesco

Francesco

Exactly the way it was described to me. I should have said " . . . with Conan in an exact opposite role than Groo, since Conan -- for the player who convinces Conan to visit -- is beneficial where Groo is destructive."