Days of high adventure

Conan, by French game publisher Monolith, merges board gaming, tactical miniatures and even role playing into what is probably the best adventure game I have ever played. The game uses a "one vs. many" structure similar to Mansions of Madness First Edition, Descent, and the legendary Heroquest, with one player taking the role of Overlord to control the villains and monsters, and the rest of the players working together to accomplish the goal of the particular scenario being played.

The game uses an ingenious resource management system to govern player actions. The hero players each get an individual character with a set amount of plastic gems that are spent for actions such as attack, defense, movement, opening treasure chests, and so on. This gives the players a lot to think about tactically: spend too many gems running across the grounds of the ruined fortress and you won't have enough for an effective attack, and there's a pack of vicious hyenas right around the corner, so be sure to save some gems for defense. Players are given the choice at the start of each turn whether to stay active and only recover a few spent gems, or to rest, which recovers more gems but means you don't get any actions for the turn.

Conan hero sheet with resource gems

The Overlord, in control of the forces stacked against the heroes, has a similar system of spending gems to activate the monsters and villains at his disposal. Depending on the scenario, the Overlord is given a row (called the "river") of between 4 and 8 tiles, with each tile representing a group of minions or a single (usually more powerful) individual. The cost in gems to activate a tile depends on its position in the river, and once a tile is activated, it moves to the end making it more expensive to activate. The Overlord's strategy lies in managing the river and his gems so he'll be able to move the right adversary at the right time to prevent the heroes from succeeding at whatever their goal is.

The Overlord's control panel with tiles representing his forces

The game is entirely story-based, with the particular scenario dictating the game's setup, including the heroes' equipment, the setting (the game comes with 4 different boards) and the goals for the Overlord and the heroes. There are a great variety of different scenarios to choose from, some of which put the heroes on the defensive, charged with keeping a non-player character alive or defending a position, while others put them on the attack, requiring them to rescue a princess or defeat an evil sorcerer (or often both).

The relatively simple mechanics make it an easy game to learn and teach (despite an often confusing rule book that suffered from numerous errors when translated from its original French language), and unlike the first edition of Mansions of Madness, the Overlord's game play is just as simple and fast paced as the heroes. The game does favor action and combat over story, but that just makes it true to the original Conan stories by Robert E. Howard.

Conan has had a somewhat troubled release, with a confusing and over complicated Kickstarter campaign, limited retail availability, and incomplete rules for integrating the game's large number of add-on components. But the core game design and quality of the miniatures and other components is so solid that I'm willing to forgive all that, as none of it really interferes with my ability to enjoy this fantastic game.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) a great tactical action game that puts you right into the middle of Conan's adventures.

• Conan official website
• Conan on BoardGameGeek

Yes, but who gets to play Conan?

Most collectible card games follow the basic model established by Magic: the Gathering, with players cast as unseen masterminds doing battle by controlling armies of characters and support cards. The designers of the Conan Collectible Card Game, perhaps concerned about the question of who gets to play Conan, decided on something a bit different.

Rather than controlling a hoard of Elves or a crew of Starfleet officers, Conan players each control their own version of Conan when it's their turn, and attack Conan with Foes drawn from a separate deck when it's their opponent's turn. But that's not even the most interesting part of the game.

The game itself is broken down into a series of fights between Conan and his Foes. Most of the cards played are moves in the fight: the cards have different symbols representing strikes, blocks, dodges and the like spaced out along either long edge of the card. The Foe player plays his moves face down, then the Conan player plays his moves along side them. The Foe moves are flipped over, and the combat is resolved based on where the different symbols line up. Conan can even play between two Foe cards in hopes of deflecting both attacks with one move.

It's a very clever game mechanic, and it suits the Conan property well, but in the end the game is still just a series of brawls, without the sense of epic empire building that makes other CCGs so compelling.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) Not a bad game by any means, but lacking in the complexity and substance that would make us want to spend a lot of time playing it.

• Conan CCG on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: December 22, 2013

Entering the Age of Conan

I often describe Age of Conan as "Risk on steroids." Players control the kingdoms of Hyboria, using their armies and emissaries to take control of provinces, gaining money and victory points. Ultimately, as a player your goal is to (all together now):

• Crush your enemies
• See them driven before you
• Hear the lamentation of their women

I should point out that Katherine almost always wins at this game, so I'm usually the one lamenting.

The game addresses the question of "who gets to play Conan" in an interesting way. The game is divided into three Ages, with each age consisting of four of Conan's adventures. Each adventure is represented by a card that sets Conan's destination for that adventure; as each new adventure starts, players bid for control of Conan for the duration of the adventure. Controlling Conan is a huge tactical advantage, but at the same time the game requires Conan's controller to make some interesting and sometimes agonizing decisions.

At any point during the final Age of the game, a player may attempt to make Conan the ruler of their kingdom. This doesn't guarantee victory, but if successful it gives the crowning player a major leg up in the final scoring. During our game, Katherine conquered a lot more territory than I did, but I managed to sneak a very narrow victory by crowning Conan.

The game accommodates 2-4 players, and it scales up or down based on the number of players so it plays really well with a full group or with just 2.

Even at $80, we've gotten our money's worth out of Age of Conan. We love this game and we play it a lot, which may be why so many of our other games don't see the light of day very often.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) We could play this game all day, and often do.

• Age of Conan official website
• Age of Conan on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: November 28, 2013