i think the game is going to be great i have read the rules a few times and no one can change my opinion

and i agree with everything dam has said

I actually bought the game last week, and at £60 it wasn't cheap!

I've only played 2 player so far, and while I don't think the game is terrible, I do agree with some of the points b_Sol Invictus raised.

I should point out that we did have fun with the game, but none of us are master strategists by any stretch, we're mostly into roleplaying games with the odd boardgame as a break. As such, I guess I'm not considered a serious strategy gamer, so bear that in mind when reading my comments below.

Taking the first game as an example, I played Stygia, the other player was Aquilonia. I know the rules recommend Aquilonia vs Turan for a 2 Player game, but I always liked the Stygians, so we chose to ignore that, and that may have had an adverse effect on game balance. I started out with the Cobra Crown, the Aquilonia player had the Heart of Tamuz. He also won the bidding for control of Conan at the start of the game.

Now, a word about Conan. Throughout our game, he didn't have a very great effect on proceedings. That might be just because we were both a bit rubbish and didn't use him properly, but he basically served one of two purposes - a means to grab Adventure Tokens, or a means to drop Raider Tokens. The randomness that Sol mentioned was definately a problem here, cos the first adventure we drew was The Frost Giant's Daughter, which kept Conan pretty much out of the way of both of us initially, and later draws sent him into Turan, similarly out of the way. I know we could have moved him towards our own realms, but that would have meant sacrificing Adventure Tokens which are needed later.

Some odd rolls of the Fate Dice kept the military actions very limited, with Court+Conan and Intrigue being the majority of our moves. This led to a lot of cards being drawn and a couple of towers being built. The proliferation of Court+Conan dice (which happened more than once) also meant that the adventures were being completed pretty quickly, again a nod to Sol's complaints about the random nature of the game.

Kingdom Cards are a definite must in this game. I had a couple of Play On The Table ones, Personal Guard Of The Ivory Throne and Holy Soldiers of Khemi were pretty heavy deciding factors in battles and campaigns respectively. Sorcery Tokens, too, are a must. I started with two, and the advantage gained by having a complete re-roll was a decent one.

We actually found we weren't really coming into conflict with each other an awful lot though, I think we only contested Western Shem and Argos during the entire game - again though, that may be an artefact of the 2 player game itself.

Suffice to say, the game ended with myself as the winner, even though the Aquilonian player successfully crowned Conan as King. This leads me to a final grumble - the crowning of Conan doesn't have much of an effect on the final outcome unless both players are very close in Empire points. An extra 3 points and the removal of the ability to win points by having the most treasure tokens didn't make up for the fairly large gap that had opened between us.

Finally, yep, the game was fun, the Kingdom Cards have the Conan flavour to them, even if some of the other elements don't, and it might be a bit simplistic for the more tactically minded folks out there, but we kinda liked it.

Finally Conan hits stores...and now after reading the above play experiences I'm not so sure I want to invest in this game. Maybe I need to play this once before making a blind purchase.

Ruvion said:

hmmm.. I'm not some hardcore strategy fan, so it still seems intriguing enough.

I'll get it as soon as I get the chance.

@bSol:

Thanks for your posts. I am still hoping this game is good for me but not you. Just to help me gauge your opinion, do you like other luck/strategy games of conquest such as Titan, Risk 2210, Axis & Allies, Cosmic Encounter, Shogun, History of the World, etc? I've never played WotR

Thanks again!

-Luke

crimhead said:

Blasphamy