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(More customer reviews)Age of Conan is a strategic board game in which four kingdoms from the Hyborean age battle it out for dominance over the setting of arguably the first commercial fantasy hero. For Conan fans like myself this is too good a premise to pass up. The imperial conquest portion of the game is well designed and features interesting mechanics. Player actions are dictated by Fate dice that are rolled at the beginning of a round - the players then take turns in clock wise order, choosing which rolled action that would like to perform and removing that die from the pool. Players have their own deck of Kingdom cards which work not unlike those of a Collectible Card Game; the player pays the gold cost of a card to play it on the table and "taps" it (turns the card sideways) to use it. Tapped cards cannot be used until the player pays the gold cost again to "untap" it.
The goal of the game is to achieve more empire points than your opponents by the end of three phases, or "ages," of play. Empire points are earned in a number of ways: subjugating a neutral province, sieging an opponent's strong hold, or controlling Conan. This last method is where the game falls apart for me, and here's why; controlling Conan isn't based on player skill but on luck, it's also worth the most empire points in the game, and it is easy for a lucky player to monopolize Conan.
So here's how controlling Conan works - the players bid on Conan by placing a Strategy card face down along with a Conan bid token. Strategy cards are drawn from a shared deck of cards and give players bonuses on dice rolls during battles. Each player has their own private stash of Conan bid tokens. Once all players have chosen a Strategy card and a Conan bid token, they are revealed and the number on the token is added to the number on the card; the player with the highest number takes control of Conan. Here is where the trouble begins. In my experience, taking control of Conan is so valuable that players will almost always spend their highest bid token, so control over Conan is effectively granted to the player who's lucky enough to have the highest value Strategy card in his hand during a bid phase. Unfortunately, the value on the tokens and the cards is more-or-less equal, so even if you devise a strategy to bid low early in the game so you have the necessary tokens to bid high later, you can still be unlucky enough to have a low value strategy card when it comes time to bid and a player who's luck has held out can play a high value card and out bid you.
Compounding this problem is the fact that all players must discard the Strategy cards and Conan bid tokens used during the bidding phase, not just the winner. And holding on to Strategy cards is difficult; you really need them during battles if you hope to win contests with other players, and the only way to get more cards is to take a Fate action allowing you to do so - meaning of course that you don't perform any other action during that turn.
Once a player has control of Conan, a random adventure is drawn from the Adventure deck. The adventure card gives a location on the game board where the "objective marker" must be placed. At the start of his turn, before taking any other actions, the Conan player can move Conan one space on the game board. If he moves Conan closer to the objective marker, he draws one Adventure token. If he doesn't move Conan closer to the marker, the adventure token is discarded. It may sometimes be in the players best interest to not move Conan toward the marker because if Conan fights with your armies you get a bonus to your dice rolls.
Each adventure has a set number of Adventure tokens that may be drawn or discarded. Once that token pile is empty the adventure ends. If at this point Conan is on the same space as the objective marker, the player controlling Conan draws a free Adventure token from the main pile. If not, Conan is moved to the objective marker and a new Adventure is drawn. Each time a new Adventure is draw, players bid on Conan once more.
Adventure tokens are what this game revolves around. During final scoring at the end of the game, having the most of each token type is worth +5 empire points (there are three types: monsters, treasure, and women). Having the most of other tokens, such as gold, is only worth +3. Now, some simple math will reveal that a lucky player who has controlled Conan for most of the game will have the most of all three token types and therefore earn +15 empire points. This creates an unfortunate situation where the empire building and army conquests are supplementary to moving Conan towards his adventure destination when in fact it's suppose to be the other way around. Nothing is more frustrating than ending the game after dominating the board with your armies, only to find that none of it mattered because the ultimate victory is whoever was lucky enough to have the most Adventure tokens.
Adventure tokens also allow the player who has them to gain certain advantages to prevent other players from over taking his lead. First, the Adventure tokens can be traded in for their value in gold or sorcery (sorcery tokens can be used to re-roll your dice during a battle), and having more gold means more armies can be bought and more Kingdom cards can be played and used.
Secondly, there are three powerful artifact cards in the game. Each artifact has a relatively unbalanced special ability that gives the player who has it a special ability that will change the entire game. How do players gain these artifact cards? They bid on them with Adventure tokens. Each artifact has corresponding token type - monsters, treasures, or women. During an age change phase (remember, there are three ages and a new age starts after four Adventures have completed) players can reveal as many tokens as they like of a single type only. These tokens are not spent, only revealed. The player who reveals the most tokens of a certain type gain the corresponding artifact card. Once again the game rewards luck instead of skill; the player lucky enough to have controlled Conan the most and/or to have chosen an artifact no one else happened to bid on will gain a powerful card granting him the ability to dominate the game board. Artifact cards not bid on are simply discarded into the game box, meaning it is very likely that only on or two players will have an artifact.
If all this wasn't enough, the numerical value of the Adventure tokens is too diverse. Once again, luck plays too big a role in the game. I've seen players who had a comparable amount of Adventure tokens to another player have a total value that wasn't anywhere in the vicinity of that player because the value on their tokens was either too low, and/or not of the right token type to compete with the player.
I also neglected to mention that the Conan player has the ability to drop Raider tokens on enemy provinces. These raiders make it more difficult to conquer a province and during an age change phase each one will cause the player to lose an empire point unless he happens to have an army in the same province as the raider and removes a unit from said army.
Before I finish this review I also want to mention that the four kingdoms in the game aren't very balanced. Specifically, the kingdom of Stygia has a much less efficient Kingdom deck than the other three kingdoms. To counter this, their home province (home provinces cannot be invaded) stretches their Northern border, giving them the entire South to romp in; only Turan or a kingdom that wants to march through Turan's territory can get to Stygia. However, in a three player game this is of no benefit because Turan isn't completely surrounded by other kingdoms and has easy access to Stygia, and the armies just don't move fast enough for the Stygia player to stop Turan from invading their territory. Furthering the problem is the fact that Turan has more powerful Kingdom cards than other kingdoms but is balanced by a small territory that is completely surrounded (in many ways, they are the exact opposite of Stygia), so if the Stygia and Turan players clash, the Turan player will often come out on top.
Unfortunately, the game manual recommends that in a three player game the kingdoms of Aquilonia, Turan, and Stygia are played. This is terrible advice, in a three player game you want to play Aquilonia, Turan, and Hyperboria - just by looking at the board you can tell these three nations were meant to clash with one another.
So in short, Age of Conan rewards player luck over player skill. The game advertises itself as a strategic game of conquest and empire building with Conans adventures playing a supplementary role. In truth, it is a game entirely based around luck during the highly abstract process of bidding for Conan and completing his adventures; the strategic conquest portion of the game hardly matters. An unbalanced three player game worsens these issues. This is a game only for the hardcore Conan fans out there.
One last thing. The dice this game comes with are cheaply made. After several games the edges are beaten and worn so badly that they won't roll properly or fairly. Also, the paint will start to peel/fade on the sides, causing the dice to lose their color. You can't replace these dice with any other kind because they have special symbols, so you'll have to buy a new game or hope FFG will send you a replacement set.
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Thief, barbarian, pirate, king. Robert E. Howard's tales of the exploits and adventures of Conan have inspired generations. The Age of Conan strategy board game allows players to each control one of the four major kingdoms of Hyboria. Command armies, wield dark sorcery, or weave cunning intrigue - all are needed in order to conquer your enemies and make your kingdom the most powerful in the world. Yet, even the most powerful of rulers ignores one man at his great peril. Only one kingdom will harness the volatile alliance of the mightiest hero of all - Conan the Cimmerian! Age of Conan is a strategy board game for 2-4 players, ages 12+, playable in 90+ minutes. Age of Conan includes: 1 Rulebook, 1 Game Board, 2 Punchboards of cardboard counters and tokens, 7 Fate Dice, 6 Contest Dice, 168 Plastic figures in 4 sets, 1 Conan Figure, 1 Conan Destination Marker and 165 Playing Cards.
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