He is Conan, Cimmerian, he won’t cry, so I cry for him.
Conan is finally back and adventuring like he should in Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game rules summary and reference v2.
This interesting and involving strategy game, by the creators of by War of the Ring and set in Robert E. Howard’s world of Hyboria, is very satisfying and strategic once you get to know all its little rules quirks. Eschewing a standard turn sequence, the game is divided into three Ages, each of which is further divided into four of Conan’s adventures. While Conan completes his adventures (tracked by adventure cards), the player engage in conquering neighbouring provinces via military might and ambassadorial intrigue. Additionally, a bidding round decides who gets to control Conan during each adventure, and it can be greatly advantageous to have him on your side in both war and diplomacy.
Age of Conan really is a must for War of the Ring fans. The games share a similar mechanic in the use of fate dice, with icons which allow players to choose from various actions, but they have quite a very different feel. Their main similarity is the way these game designers manage to seamlessly blend the macro actions of army movement and conquest with the micro actions of characters and their adventures—they’re quite unique in this respect.
I highly recommend another look at Age of Conan—save yourself some grief by downloading my rules summary and reference sheet and you’ll find the rules quite easy to get your head around. It’s also a stunning looking game that comes with 168 very nice plastic figures—including Conan himself of course. While you struggle to “crush your enemies and see them driven before you”, Conan adventures throughout the land, occasionally sticking his big broken nose into proceedings.
A few years back, Ares acquired the game and last year ran a Kickstarter campaign to add an expansion called Adventures in Hyboria and fix an oft-cited criticism of the game: that Conan himself doesn’t have enough to do. Of course it was a clever way to ship out a lot of stock of the original FFG print of the game too. The expansion took a while to deliver, but the game is now finally rich with Conan adventuring and development as well as military conquest. I’m really looking forward to getting this game back onto the table and checking out the new expansion rules.