Preview of Adventures in Hyboria for Age of Conan!

Those who have followed Fire Broadside for some time might remember my review of Age of Conan a few years back (and new followers might as well, as it's a very popular article!). It is a game I quickly grew fond of but that never really seemed to take off in terms of general popularity in the gaming community. I speculated that it might have had to do with an unfortunate release date among other things, but it seems the main contributor was probably that Nexus went under and Roberto Di Meglio, Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitello, the original designers of the game, kind of lost touch with it. There were rumours of an expansion that was designed and pretty much ready for production but since FFG didn't seem all that interested in it (Age of Conan often turned up in their sales) we all wondered if we would ever see it!

Now, on the game's five year anniversary (wooo!), Ares Games came with the very happy news of having bought the rights and the remaining stock of Age of Conan and would soon launch a small kickstarter for the expansion; Adventures in Hyboria. Of course, Ares is kind of Nexus resurrected and all of the original designers are involved. Happy days!

So let's get to the preview! Andrea from Ares contacted me after having read my original review and asked if I wanted to have a look at the beta files for the expansion and make a preview here on Fire Broadside. Thinking highly of the original and being curious about how Ares have intended to adjust the only thing that I found a little lacking in the game I naturally said yes. So what was lacking? Well, even though Age of Conan is very much a wargame taking place in the world of Conan and the legend himself is not the central focus, I still felt that his role could have been fleshed out a bit more. From a gameplay perspective it wasn't really needed, but with all the rich stories about the man I couldn't help but feel that his adventures could have been more thematic than they were.

Luckily for us Ares listened...

The main aim of Adventures in Hyboria is to expand the way Conan works from a thematic standpoint, however there are a couple of other additions that I would like to talk about first. Spies, Prisoners and Companions. So let's take a look at them all in order.

Spies

Each faction now get five spies to add to their arsenal of tricks. You get three at the start of the game and then one more at every Age Change phase. You place your spies at the beginning of your game and then again at each Age Change phase. You can't place them in friendly provinces, nor in a province where a Spy is already present. Once there they can provide the owner with an additional Contest Die if flipped from its ready side. So they're not overly strong, but I think they might help mitigating unlucky rolls, especially in the critical early game when one extra die can be the different between conquering a province or having your army decimated and lag behind the other players (like myself in our last game when I foolishly tried to pacify the Pictish Wilderness on my first turn!).

Each faction also receives five new Kingdom Cards that play off these Spies in different ways. For example, Stygian Spies can provide them with extra Strategy Cards while Hyperborea can use theirs for an extra Military Action. Although I don't think spies were needed specifically I do like what they bring to the game and I think they might help speed up things for those groups who want to get to grips with the each other earlier in the game. They are also Conan fodder as the barbarian is not overly fond of their deceitful ways. If Conan enters a province with a Spy the Conan player can try and kill it by rolling a number of Contest die equal to his current Mood (see below) and if a hit is rolled the Spy is removed and Conan gain experience.

Prisoners

While we already have the (awesomely named!) "Crom, coun the dead!" tokens in the base game

Adventures in Hyboria introduces the concept of prisoners of war. There are five Prisoner tokens for each faction and every time you eliminate an enemy Army, Emissary or Control token you get to take a Prisoner tokens corresponding to that faction. Prisoner tokens are then worth points at the end of the game, like Crom, count the dead!, but you can also use them during the Age Change phase to trade tokens with other players and if you manage to get some of your own colour they can be exchanged for Emissarys or Army units on a one for one basis.

Another addition that I think again will help speed up gameplay by giving players some extra "free" units. Not needed exactly, but nice nonetheless. Oh, and there are also a few new objective cards that involves Spies and Prisoners so they are fully integrated in the core mechanics of the game!

Companions

Now we start to get to the really juicy thematic additions to the game! With the expansion you add three extra Companion Adventure tokens to the pool and if you draw one you can immeditately trade it for a Gold or Sorcery token (yeah, right!) or you can discard it to draw from the deck of Conan Companions! There are nine in all (so it will take you a few games  before you've had them all in play) and they work like your other Play-on-the-table cards in that they give you some kind of perk that breaks the normal rules of the game. For example, Bélit can be used to place two Raider tokens in two coastal provinces and Balthus allows you to draw a new Adventure card for Conan. When used the Companion card is flipped but still provide a bonus of women, treasure or monsters at the end of the game.

I really like this addition as it brings more of Howard's tales into the game. Their game effects aren't super dramatic but they certainly can be useful and it's simply cool having all these familiar names around! Good stuff!


Now, let's take a peek at the meat and potatoes of Adventures in Hyboria:

The new Conan quest mechanic!

First off, Conan now has his own reference board where you track his experience and his moods. Experience is gained, not by reaching the destination of an Adventure card but by killing Spies and completing quests from the new Story cards I'll talk about below. Conan starts out as a Warrior, but by gaining experience grows to become a Mercenary and finally a General. Experience also has an impact on the value of women/treasure/monster tokens at the end of the game. It is no longer a flat +5/+2 but varies from +2/+0 to +6/+3. In addition to this, for anybody to crown Conan he also has to be at least half way on the experience track.

Each phase of Conans life (Warrior, Mercenary, General) provides a set of stats, Mood Wheel and a special die. The stats are Strength, Agility and Cunning and the Mood Wheel has numbers ranging from 0 to +3 and they are used when trying to complete a Story card. Each Conan die is unique and although most of the faces are beneficial, like additional hits, you can also roll Sorcery Banned (no use of Sorcery tokens for re-rolls) and Gold, which only only turns into a hit if you pay Conan one Gold. The respective Conan die now has to be rolled in all contests involving Conan which makes him potentially more powerful, but also slightly more dangerous to use.

Conan the Warrior?

Now, about the quests. As I mentioned mentioned above the slightly non-thematic, or at least bare bones, rules for Conan's questing in the base game has been overhauled. Even though Conan still plays largely the same role as before in the greater scheme of the game (marauding the lands causing havoc!) the actual quests and the character of Conan has been expanded quite a bit.

For starters there's a completely new Adventure deck. Mechanically it works the same as in the base game but thematically the deck is now more about Conan's general direction rather than a specific quest. Instead the quest part of the puzzle comes in the form of the new Story deck where each card represent an actual RE Howard story. So while the Adventure deck is drawn as normal the story cards are held in hand (one for each player) and can then be played by any non-Conan player after Conan has moved. Each card has the title of a Howard tale, some theme text and then the stat that Conan need to test to succeed and during which circumstance it can be played. Finally there's also a note of what Adventure token can be revealed (for the rest of the game) to allow you to re-roll a number of dice up to the value of the token.

Any non-Conan player can play a Story card after Conan has moved if he's then in province or area

specified by the card. When this happens Conan immediately receive the Experience points from the card (1-3) and get to try and complete the quest - if the Story card says Strenght then that is what Conan must use to do it. You roll a number of Contest dice equal to Conan's stat in question plus his current mood! You are allowed to advance the Mood wheel before rolling by paying one Gold per step, so basically pay Conan well and give him lots to drink and he'll be in a better mood and fight with more enthusiasm! You also roll the correct Conan die.

Three or more hits are considered a success and the rolling player get to take two Adventure tokens, keep one and exchange the other for Gold or Sorcery, as desired. A successful play of a Story card also triggers a round of bidding for Conan, which works as usual.

So to summarise with an example:

Anders is playing Turan and has control of Conan. At the start of his turn he moves him one step into Koth on his way to Stygia, as indicated on the Adventure card. Now Claes, who plays Hyperboria, gives a sly grin and plays the Story card "Queen of the Black Coast" that says "Play if Conan is inside or adjacent to Western Shem". "Conan joins Bélit, Queen of the Black Coast" he reads dramatically as he takes a look at the Conan reference sheet, and moves the Experience marker three steps. According to the Story card Claes has to roll using Conan's Cunning and since is still early years Conan has yet to leave his wild Warrior phase and his Cunning is a measly 1! He still has a lot to learn before he has the mind of a ruler of men. 

Fortunately the Mood wheel can help here and Claes pays one Gold to move it from +1 to +2 and ends up with a pool of three Contest dice and the Conan Warrior die. Rolling the dice Claes ends up with two hits from the Contest dice and the Gold face from the Conan die(!). Having spent his last Gold to advance the Mood wheel he mutters something nasty under his breath and he flips over one of his Women tokens, as mandated by the Story card, to re-roll two of his dice. This time Crom is with him and he scores the hits needed to succeed. "Take that, knave!" he exclaims triumphantly and reaches for the bag of Adventure tokens to claim his prize...

And that is Adventures in Hyboria in a nutshell! Except for the additional goodies that the Kickstarter is bringing in, some of which are exclusive and some of which will be in the retail box.

Initial Impressions

So what's my take on the whole thing? Well, with the Proto-Gamer demanding a lot of attention (she keeps reminding me that diapers don't change themselves!) I haven't had the time to actually print a mock-up and play a game, which I'm really looking forward to do when getting the chance! Still, I think I have a good enough grasp of the base game to have an inkling of how this expansion might impact the play experience, so here we go.

The base game is very tight and well balanced so I wasn't surprised to see that there aren't really any changes to the core mechanics, as none were needed. The addition of Spies, Prisoners and Companions are cool and flavourful and I think especially Spies will have an impact on how the game is played. Prisoners and their accompanying Objective cards are simply a cool little addition and then we get the Companions that start bringing in the theme big time!

The new Conan mechanics makes him a little bit into a collective rpg character that all(?) players like to see gain experience and go on fantastic adventures and strange journeys. I think going from a simple travel destination to a fully fledged experience system is very well done and while it really brings forth Conan as a living character I don't think it should impact play time negatively in any major way. It's integrated well enough to have you pretty much "roll on the fly".

The only thing I found a bit surprising was that you still bid on Conan using the little tokens from the base game! I would have loved to see the bidding mechanic integrated with the questing in some way, but at the same time I realize that it is very delicately balanced as it is and having a perfect marriage of theme and mechanics might be hard when it comes to this bit. Still, it was my pet peeve from the base game... what does those tokens represent in game? Perhaps I should ask Roberto. :)

All in all, I'm very happy that Age of Conan has been resurrected and with an expansion only a few months away! If you are happy with the mechanics of the core game and don't care all that much about the Conan theme (does these people exist?!) you could probably skip this expansion and wait for the big one, introducing a second map and two new factions. But if you care anything for the theme and want to see Conan's role in the game expanded, then there's simply no question of what to do - get over to the kickstarter page and kick it! And if you don't have the base game but think this sounds awesome (which it is!) there's a pledge level for you as well.

Oh, and although I've used a bunch of pics from Milnius Conan movie it's really not a good representation of the character. It's an excellent fantasy movie that seem to take place in during the Hyborian age, but it is not... Conan. Read the books for a much more interesting and nuanced character.

Now, I really need to get back to my Age of Conan painting project!

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Review of Age of Conan the Board Game

I've been lazy in this review and just nicked pictures from BGG. Sorry.

Age of Conan was one of the Nexus Games/Fantasy Flight Games joint releases that had all kinds of cool things going for it: the designers of War of the Ring, beautiful components, artwork from the comics and, of course, the Conan license itself, yet it kind of puttered out and dissappeared from the radar fairly quickly. It received generally favourable reviews but still failed to make an impact and it often shows up in FFG's holiday sales (together with Android).

I think there are a couple of reasons for this. Number one seems to have been that you don't actually get to play as Conan. The game is a strategic wargame where Conan acts as an unpredictable force of nature that you have to take into account as you plan your moves, it's not an intimate dungeon crawler or skirmish game that some people seem to have expected. They wanted to decapitate enemies and claim scantily clad princesses as their prize! Number two, it was overshadowed by two other games released by FFG just a couple of months later: Chaos in the Old World and Middle-Earth Quest. Both these games used a setting with a larger fanbase than Conan and in a way they're probably more accessible. They were also announced just as Age of Conan was hitting the streets and I imagine a lot of potential buyers decided to hold onto their money and wait for one of those instead of splurging on Conan.

The release schedule was unfortunate. As for the game format, well... it's just that playing as Conan wouldn't be much fun... except for the Conan player. Perhaps it could be made into a two player adversarial game a'la Descent with one player controlling Conan and the other a bunch evil Stygians or something, but still, I think setting the game during the Hyborian age and have Conan as an imporant component but not actually a controllable game piece (well... more on that later) was a genious move by the designers.

Speaking of the designers - Roberto Di Meglio, Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitello - they together created War of the Ring, currently ranked 2nd/4th best thematic game and 16th best game overall at board game geek. A big part of that game's popularity was it's strict adherence to the setting. Nothing felt tacked on as every mechanic was well integrated with the Tolkien theme. It was apparent that the designers knew what they were doing when it came to handling Tolkien. Naturally Nexus and FFG hoped they could do the same for the Conan setting.

With that little introduction out of the lets have a look at the actual game!

How it Looks and Feels

Age of Conan comes in one of FFG's medium+ size boxes, just like War of the Ring. It's not as huge as Runewars, Twilight Imperium or (the first edition of) Descent, but slightly larger than Arkham Horror and Fury of Dracula. It has a pretty decent insert that I've actually kept, which is rare for me, and is filled with plastic goodies! The gameboard is a map of Hyboria with extra spaces for cards, dice and the Empire (victory) point track. I think the board is beautiful! The colours are sort of muted and there are lots of small details that really brings the theme to the forefront. I'd say it's comparable in many ways to the board in Chaos in the Old World which also brings out the theme.

There are some different cards as well; Strategy cards which allow you to influcnce both military and intrigue contests, Kingdom cards which are unique to each faction and consist of dirty tricks and special events, Adventure cards which shows what Conan is up to and Objective cards that are well... objectives in the game. The cards have the same kind of muted colour scheme as the game board and use artwork from some of the classic Conan comics which is pretty cool!

Of course, what you've been waiting for is the plastic minis! You get quite a few of them: 24 per faction plus nine each of forts and towers. Each faction have unique miniatures so the Stygian soldiers and emissaries are different from Turan's or Aquilonia's. They are all great sculpts though and provide a huge amount of character to the game! In fact I liked them so much that I started painting mine. So far only the Aquilonians are done but I think I might have found the inspiration to continue with the rest. The towers and forts are the same across factions, which is a bit of a pity, but in the end they're not as important as the other miniatures. The buildings are of a nice blocky design and has a slight Egyptian or Sumerian feel to them which I think fits the theme well. They snap together to make a city which is a nice touch.

The dice come in two varieties: the purple Fate Dice that you use for determining your action during your turn and the red Contest dice that you use in military and intrigue contests. They are dice so not much to say there, however the icons again help to bring the theme to the forefront (lots of blood splatter and axes on the Contest dice!) which is nice.

Finally we have an assortment of tokens, although not as many as some other FFG games. They do their job and share the same colour palette as the rest of the game.

I was very impressed by the visual design of the game and it's still one of my favourites when it comes a strong theme. For example, Runewars look great on the table with nice looking miniatures and board, but it doesn't have the same "weight" as Age of Conan. It looks like a colourful board game whereas Age of Conan looks like something you might actually find in the sands around Zamora! I'm using hyperbole here, but I hope you understand what I mean.


Basic Gameplay

There are four factions in the game: Aquilonia, Turan, Hyberboria and Stygia. You start the game with a few soldiers and emissaries in your home kingdom as well as a couple of cards and, if you're playing Hyperboria or Stygia, some Sorcery tokens than can be used for re-rolls. The game is played in three "Ages" and in each Age there are four objectives open for grabs. They give you victory points, which you also get from conquering other provinces.

At the start of the game the first player rolls the seven Fate dice to see which actions are available. The different actions you can take in a turn are printed on the dice and when it's your turn you take one of the available Fate dice and perform its designated action. This provides an element of uncertainty to the game as you can rarely be sure if the action you want to perform will be available to you. Figuring out which of your opponents want which Fate die is also an imporant part of the meta-game as it can allow you to block or delay certain strategies. The system works the same as The War of the Ring only there are four players instead of two.

There are three actions you can take and there are several different options on how to perform each action. The Military Action allows you to move armies around, attack or (as a last resort) recruit two army units. The Intrigue Action allows you to move your emissaries around the board or use one to take over a neighbouring province using diplomatic means. Finally the Court + Conan Action allows you to draw cards, play certain of your own Kingdom Cards as well as influence Conan in some way or another (more on that later).

The main gameplay revolves around the Military and Intrigue actions. You only get victory points for conquering other provinces but it can be a relatively long and costly affair; each province has a number of terrain icons on it and each of these represents a battle. You can either try to attack one of these icons per turn, or do a 'forced march' - sacrificing one of your units to attack again immediately. This means that a military attack is quite a commitment and might very well run for two or three turns. You can mitigate this with your special Kingdom cards that might allow you to force march for free, or give you an extra military unit, but it's still a large undertaking. That you can have a maximum of five units in an army makes losses hurt badly and even though the resolution mechanic favours the attacker you really want all the insurances you can get when you go into battle. The actual battle system is a jazzed up Risk but with the ability to modify the rolls with strategy cards played from your hand, as long as the terrain icon on the card matches the one you're actually fighting on. If you win the entire campaign you remove one of your soldier units and replace it with a fort, which gives you victory points.

The obelisk is used to show Conan's current destination.

Intrigue on the other hand is a lot quicker and easier. You roll against the province's resistance and you get more dice for every neighbouring province you control or that has one of your emissaries in it. If you win the roll you immediately take control of the province by placing a tower there. You also get gold equal to the province's resistance. However, this does not give you any victory points and the tower prevents you from building a fort there (since that can only be done after a successfull conquest). It does provide you with instant gold as well as more gold in the Age change phase. So a common strategy is to take over several provinces with intrigue actions during the first Age so you get enough gold to buy a large army for use in the second and third Age.

During each Age change phase (of which there are two) you first resolve Raider tokens (see below), then check to see who claims which objective and adjust the Empire points track accordingly. Then you receive gold for each of your towers and cities and you get a troop unit at each fort or city. If you want you can forego this unit to upgrade a fort into a city, which is usually a good idea. You get to spend your gold as you wish on soldiers, emissaries and cards and then the next age begins. At the end of the third Age the game is over and you calculate your final Empire point score by adding up all your current provinces as well as getting bonus points for various things like having most gold, having won most player versus player battles etc.

The Role of Conan

"So what about Conan?!" I hear you say. He plays a pivotal role in the game and several things hinge upon his doings. I've talked about the three Ages in the game, so how long is each age? As long as it takes Conan to complete four adventures. Each Age Conan will have four adventures and before each adventure the players vye for "control" of him. This is a simple bidding mechanic and is actually one of the few elements of the game I don't like; while it works from a game perspective it doesn't have a connection to the theme. I don't get to control Conan because I offered the most money or the prettiest princess, I get to control Conan because I bid the token with the highest number. You could try to rationalise this by calling the tokens political influence or something, but in the end it comes down as gamey in an otherwise very thematic product.

Anyway, the winner of the bid gets to control Conan's movement across Hyboria. The Adventure cards tell you what adventure he's currently undertaking, ie where he wants to go and what kind of rewards are available in the form of Adventure tokens. Each adventure has three to five Adventure tokens drawn randomly and they can be monsters, treasure or women. The player controlling Conan choose where to move him at the beginning of his turn and is free to move him to any adjacent province. However if Conan moves closer to his adventure destination the controlling player get to collect one Adventure token. These tokens are then used at certain points in the game, most importantly in the third Age when you can use them to try and crown Conan as king of your realm. If you succeed in this you get some advantages during victory point calculations and if you don't Conan simply cuts your head off and you are out of the game!

So most of the time the player controlling Conan wants to move him closer to the adventure destination. Of course Conan is a cunning warrior and a brilliant general so if he's on your side in a battle there are all kinds of bonuses, so sometimes it might be worth foregoing an Adventure token to use Conan in a nearby battle or siege. The Conan player can also use the Court + Conan action to move Conan an additional step as well as placing a Raider token in a nearby province. These tokens represent Conan's presence stirring up trouble and will cost you either Empire points or soldiers to get rid of. If another player picks the Court + Conan action he simply takes the next Adventure token in line, basically allowing you to snipe high value token beore the Conan player gets them.

Conan with a few Raider tokens nearby.

At the end of the game the players with most monster, treasure and women tokens get bonus points, unless Conan has been crowned king in which case only the crowning player can get any of these points. You also use them during the Age change phase to bid for three powerful artifacts that can help you in different ways.

My Thoughts

Age of Conan is a different beast from most other warfare board games (that I've played). It plays kind of slowly and it's important to have at least the outlines of a plan for the coming Age. I like how you have to fight through an entire campaign to conquer another province and the different terrain again is a nod to the theme. The balance between military conquest to build forts, and later cities, and the easy money of erecting towers through intrigue is great as it really forces you to think ahead.

As a rule of thumb it's a good idea to try and roughly plan out how to act during the coming age to allow you to claim objectives and maximize your income during the Age change phase. However you will have to modify your plan according to the Fate dice and, of course, the actions of the other players. There is a slow buildup as you start to expand outwards and it's usually not until the second or third Age where battles between players will become common.

Then there's Conan himself to consider. He acts as a force of nature, constantly moving through Hyboria with his own goals in mind. He is not an I win-button but rather an opportunity to take advantage of, he can certainly turn the tide if used correctly. And if you're having trouble expanding your Kingdom you can instead try to gain control of Conan often and hopefully amass lots of Adventure tokens which would set you up for possible Conan coronation. There's an excellent example of this in this session report.

I haven't talked much about the Kingdom cards that are unique to each faction, but they also bring a lot of the theme into the game and serve to differentiate how the factions work. Just last week Mats as Hyperboria managed to get a whole bunch of his powerful Kingdom cards in play and they helped convey the Hyperborians as a sinister, sorcerous faction who don't even shy from necromancy!

As for the flaws of the game, there are a couple. I've already mentioned the gamey feel of simply bidding for Conan with some un-thematic tokens, and this extends, to a lesser degree, to the actual adventures. While they serve their function well I wouldn't have minded some more detailing. They are, undoubtably, the greatest source of theme for the game and I think they could have been more thematic than simply being a destination and four or five tokens drawn at random. Having Conan as a kind of wandering NPC is a great mechanic, but I do think the game would have benefited from fleshing out his role more. However this is a flaw from a thematic standpoint only, not from a gameplay standpoint.

Something else that is not necessarily a flaw, but something to keep in mind is that the game can be fairly low in player interaction in the beginning. Or rather, the player interaction comes from indirect things, like blocking a particular action or bidding higher for Conan rather than direct military conflict. I have no problem with this but it's worth mentioning.

There was an expansion waiting to get produced by Nexus Games (ie the design was done) but unfortunately they went under before it saw the light of day. Apparently it addressed the issues I mentioned above by making Conan and his adventures more detailed, even having him in his different "life phases" - thief, warrior, general, king - as well as systems rewarding earlier player versus player aggression. Although I'm sad it never got published I also think that Age of Conan is an excellent game just the way it is.

EDIT: And here we are, two years later and through deal with FFG Ares Games have acquired all the leftover stock as well as the rights to Age of Conan. Of course, the guys at Ares are the original designers so it's back in its rightfull hands one might say. And finally we have the expansion! It's called Adventures in Hyboria and features new rules for Conan as well as a bunch of other stuff. Kickstarter (already funded) currently happening right here! Oh, and it's an excellent way of getting the base game as well if you already don't own it.

Conclusion

It all boils down to this: Age of Conan is a solid wargame set in the world of Hyboria with Conan playing an important part. I love to see different games exploring the same setting, and to me this is the large scale political view of Hyboria during the age of Conan. You could play the RPG from Mongoose if you want to experience the visceral "first person" perspective which I don't think a board game could capture properly anyway. I'm a great fan of the setting and Howard's short stories and I really hope this is not the last we've seen of Conan in board game form.

If you are looking for a wargame at the lighter end of the spectrum (as in, not ASL) which rewards planning ahead and strategic thinking Age of Conan might be for you. If you also happen to be a fan of the setting then it's definitely a game for you. If you also consider the fact that you can often find it for a good price thanks to FFG's holiday sales then it's simply a no brainer, by Crom!

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Board Game Extravaganza!

Gaming wise it's been a busy couple of weeks since I got back to Sweden. I've been meeting with my old buddies playing everything from Puerto Rico to Runewars! Let's see if I can recall what we've gone through...

We started out with an evening of Puerto Rico, Race for the Galaxy and Age of Conan. It was actually the first time I had played Puerto Rico and it was a lot of fun! I managed to come in first by building up a coffee empire that made me a lot of money which I used to construct buildings which in turn netted me quite a bit of points! It was also interesting seeing the parallels with Race for the Galaxy. Two great games with similar themes and mechanics, but still different enough to scratch two different itches.

In Age of Conan I took control of the Aquilonians while Anders was Turan and Micke the sly Stygians. It started out well for both Aquilonia and Turan while Stygia had a hard time with the wild savages of the Black Kingdoms. By the Second Age I had amassed quite an Empire in central Hyboria and I felt it was fairly secure, my armies outnumbering both Turan's and Stygia's. I was planning for a couple of pre-empive strikes into Turan during the Third Age, but before I had a chance the sneaky Stygians managed to crown Conan as king and Micke actually won the game! He ended up with one point ahead of me while Turan was one point behind! Overall a fun game that really showed that Conan can have a great impact if used correctly.

I really do think Age of Conan is an underrated game. It might not be as fast and flashy as, say, Runewars, but the kind of slow more "realistic" feel to it definitely fits the original Howard stories. It made me want to finish my AoC painting project...

Then we had two games of Middle-Earth Quest. First I took the role of Sauron against Anders who controlled two heroes. Although Sauron dominated most of Middle-Earth the free peoples still managed to win in the end, which seemed kind of weird to me. I did however discover that there was a number of things I played wrong and most of them were to my disadvantage. I'll get you next time you stinky heroes!

Except, the next time I was one of the heroes, Beravor to be exact. Micke also took the role of Argalad against Anders as Sauron. This game was a little bit up and down and although Beravor grew quite strong at the start of the game I accumulated a bunch of corruption cards which really slowed me down towards the end. It looked like a clear win for Sauron, but thanks to some sneaky play from me and Micke and a fair bit of luck we actually managed to win in the end! Weee!

And then... Runewars. I was browsing through my FLGS considering if I maaaybe should get some smallish game like Endevour or Mystery Express when I suddenly was possessed by the horrible daemon Geimkollectour who made me buy Runewars instead! Granted it's a game I've been eyeing for a while now but I thought I'd hold off a bit longer.

It's a far cry from the amount of plastic you get in Twilight Imperium or Descent but what you get is really of the hightest quality! Beautiful minis and a beautiful board! I had only glanced at the rules before but after reading them through once I was quite impressed. I think FFG has really started tightening up their games as of late. Chaos in the Old World is probably the best example of this, but Runewars and Middle-Earth Quest are not far behind. It makes me really excited to try Horus Heresy!

Anyway, I played a game against Anders who (naturally) chose the undead legions of Vaiqar the Undying while I controlled the daemonic Uthuk Y'llal (you can see the board after the first turn above). Basically I had the upper hand when it came to military strength while Anders managed to get the full amount of heroes and then kill all mine! I think he could actually have pulled off a win thanks to that since questing with your heroes is the main way of getting more Dragon Runes. In the end however my daemonic horde proved too large and too fast as I managed to conquer the last couple of areas with Dragon Runes in them that I needed in order to win. Vaiqar had some trouble getting a balance of resources, having mostly Food (great for skeletons, eh?!) but lacking Wood and Ore which hampered his military campaign. Below is the penultimate turn of the game. The giant was great! Although I actually had a mission to kill 'em all...

I think Runewars was a blast and I can't wait to play it again with three or four players! The mechanics are very slick and most of them feel very natural and logical. I love how all the rules come together in an elegant way to really make an attractive whole. It's hard to choose a favourite part, but if I had to pick one it'd have to be the battle system. You don't just line up your troops and roll a fistfull of dice but instead line them up at their respective initiative and then fight rank by rank. Since all troops have different special abilites this makes for a very engaging battle where it's important to plan ahead. I also really like how battles are not about killing every single enemy unit but rather that routing units play a big role. Hmm... I could go on about stuff I like about Runewars, but it's getting late so I won't. Suffice to say I think it will hit the table in our group a lot from now on.

I also played a quick game of Firestorm: Armada. Neither me nor Anders had our models ready so we used the cutout fleets provided by Spartan Games. Not having models really makes the game... unfulfilling, but since this was mostly about getting to know the rules we persevered. We had one cruiser and three frigates each, me playing Dindrenzi and Anders Terrans. I lost my cruiser early but Dinzdrenzi ships are tough and after mowing down the opposing frigate squadron frigates outmaneuvered and ganged up on the lone Terran cruiser, blowing it out of space, netting me the victory. This was just a small taste of the full game though and I'm looking forward to playing it "for real". Oh, and speaking of which, my magnets just arrived which means I can start basing my ships. Which will lead to painting! Yay!

We've also played Race for the Galaxy quite a few times and then we began... Descent: Road to Legend! I've been wanting to try Descent for a loooong time and now I've finally done it! It was fun but extremely slow going. After our first session we realised how much we'd played wrong so we decided to start over from scratch, and so far the Overlord is only slightly ahead in points. I won't go into it much more since I'm planning to make a separate post about it later. Below was the first dungeon we entered in the now aborted campaign. A named master giant with 28 wounds and 7 armour took a long time and quite a few deaths to kill. Urgh...

That's all I think. I might have missed something. We were about to try 1960: The Making of a President, but never got around to it. Oh, and Micke made his character for WFRP; a Grey Wizard!

Well... that's all!

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The armies of Aquilonia

I just finished painting the last army unit for the Aquilonian kingdom. After this I have five emissarys to take care of, and then they all need basing of course.

It actually took quite a bit of time getting them all done as the miniatures are very well detailed (both a blessing and a curse I suppose) but I think they look nice in the end.
Hopefully the other kingdoms will be quicker to paint...

A WIP shot with just the skin and armour sections done.

And the finished result.

Fear the stomp of sandals...

I've kind of got into the painting mood and I'm eying the minis from The Fury of Dracula. It's easy to mistake them for each other so I guess painting them would also have a practical use as well as just making them look nicer.

Oh well, first we have Turan...

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And the emissary...

And here's the finished emissary, well, except for basing.


He looks ok I suppose, but I'm more happy with the soldier. I think it might be due to the white horse and that I don't like painting white (although I'm still planning to paint my ScanFed fleet white. If I ever get around to buying one that is).

Now it's time to tackle the other 17 soldier minis and I wonder if I should paint them in two batches or just man up and do them all at once. Hmm...

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New Project!

Hi... it's been a while. Since I'm finished with my Full Thrust-ships (well, almost) and the minis to the Battlestar Galactica board game, I decided to start sprucing up the Age of Conan minis! There are 24 models per kingdom for a total of 96 to paint and on top of that there are 72 towers and fortresses, but I'll leave those for later.

So, I decided to get started with the Aquilonians and the Turanians as they are the default kingdoms in a two player game. I just finished painting my first Aquilonian soldier prototype and I'm fairly happy with the result. I tried to keep it very simple and as few colours as possible so they can be painted quickly.

Here he is:



I haven't based him yet, but I'll probably just glue on some sand and paint it. Maybe add som flock patches.

Next up is a prototype emissary and I'm pondering what colour to paint the horse. I think I'll go with white since Aquilonia has the whole roman empire thing going on and I seem to remember mostly white horses appearing in my Asterix albums...

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