Review of Monolith's Conan Skirmish Game

Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to use jewels as both stamina and health, furrowed his troubled brow.  It is I, a random blogger, who alone *cough* along with many other better reviewers *cough*, can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!

The game Conan, by Monolith, has been out almost two years and the next Kickstarter is months, if not a full year out, from when I'm typing this ultra late to the party review.  With the Kickstarter version, came a full box of stretch goals, and optional purchases of three big box expansions (I discussed them here), an art/campaign book, and a lot of other add-ons miniatures.

Robert E. Howard's character of Conan was written far more intellectual than he's often portrayed in later books, comics, and movies.  In the opening paragraph of his first story, The Phoenix on the Sword, he's described as "black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth."  That emotion breadth of the character (sullen, melancholy, and mirthful) is often dismissed right along with his intelligence.  There's more to Conan and Robert E. Howard than many people pause to take note of.

To help ensure they captured Howard's essence correctly, Monolith hired Patrice Louinet, a notable Robert E. Howard scholar.

And, much like the titular character, the game could just as easily been toss aside as another 'dudes on a map Ameritrash game'.  There are some hidden gems of systems in this game (pun fully intended) and that adds to the experience and makes the game more than just another skirmish game.

Gameplay

Conan is a one-vs-many skirmish game that utilizes eruo-style resource management along with dice based combat.  The game has a great table presence featuring stunning boards and quality miniatures.

Without a full rules explanation, here's the basics that set Conan (and soon Batman) apart and above their competition:

1. Stamina system - Each character has a certain number of energy crystals, stamina, or gems they can use to move extra spaces, attack, defend, re-roll dice, manipulate objects, throw objects to each other, etc.  On the bottom of each character board there are three boxes: Reserve, Fatigue, and Wounds.  Spent crystals go from reserve to fatigue.  Wounds taken during combat go from either reserve or fatigue to the wounds box.  Each round, each player decides to be active or inactive and gets 2 or 5 of these crystals (out of usually 10) back (these numbers go up as allies are killed by the Overlord).  This resource management drives the action and can have you questioning if you go for the big round now and wait next turn, or to play cautiously.  The players can see what's happening on the Overlord's board and can try and predict their next move. 
2. Player turn order - Characters can alternate their actions as they see fit.  For example, this allows Conan to pare down some enemies so Shevetas can more easily open a chest (since enemies make many tasks harder).  Conan then breaks through a wall to engage more picts near Belit who has checked a nearby hut for the merchant's daughter.  Shevetas then tosses the big battle ax he found to Conan.  Belit commands her troops to move between the picts and Conan.  Conan then, moving the last 4 of his crystals from reserve to fatigue, grins and swings at the picts.  Being able to creatively intertwine your actions makes the game flow like the action scene of a movie and provides more strategy.
3. Overlord system - the overlord has their own crystals to manage, getting a set number back each turn, as well as tiles representing enemies to activate.  Each turn up to two tiles (including the same one twice) can be selected, each with a corresponding cost of one to eight, depending on their location on the river.  The unit goes to the end of the river, making everything else move up, becoming less expensive to activate.  The Overlord can move and attack with each unit in that group while also choosing to spend stamina gems on defense, re-rolls, and extra movement (at one gem moves one figure one space - spendy for group of troops!).  They have a lot of freedom to play cheap minions and then say crystals for moves, re-rolls, and defense or they can make some big moves.  While the Overlord can eliminate players, its often better to just wound them to the point of being ineffective.

Almost every action is attempted with dice rolls and meeting a certain minimum number of successes.  This, while giving randomness, also gives the game tension.  Many characters have re-rolls available and if you rolled three dice and have two re-rolls, you can pick which of the two you'd like to re-roll.

Digital prototype dice

There are three colors of six-sided dice with the following number of successes (axes) per die face: Yellow (0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2), orange (0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 2), and red, (0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3).  These dice also each have symbols to help color blind people identify which color is which.

Conan, chased by enemies, runs up to the roof a building, and with his mighty thews throws an ancient tome towards the sea that will cancel the curse cast upon the heroes.  Instead of the satisfying splash and cheers of success around the table the book just gently wafts in the Stygian port breeze and thumps down near the edge of the dock, safe, dry, and now completely out of your grasp.  Stuff like that can be funny and the game often has have these types of moments.

The movement system is simple with large zones, each taking 1 point of movement, unless there's a token or other modifier.  A point in each zone designates a point to use for line of sight for ranged attacks and spells.  If you can draw a straight line between two zones, without intersecting an obstruction, you have line of sight.

In a way, this game plays much like how Howard wrote: fast and evocative making it a perfect thematic match.  Howard could somehow capture more action and excitement in 30 pages than many authors in 300.

Components

The large boards are just beautiful.  The artwork is stunning and the little details throughout are worth the time spent just enjoying the the backdrop.  From blood stained ship decks and sharks in the water, to dingy taverns with a worn bar, to a ruined castle with crumbling walls and rotting timbers, these set the stage for the on-coming battle.



The energy crystals and overlord's dashboard (named the Book of Skelos) are nice with the later being very sturdy injection molded plastic.  The dice are nice with rounded corners so as to not damage the boards (according to Jamie Johnson during the original campaign).

The art was primarily done by Adrian Smith with Guillem H. Pongiluppi, Georges Cl4renko, Brom, Xavier Collette, and Paolo Parente also contributing pieces.  It is excellent, evocative, and captures the feeling of Conan's world full of monsters, warring countries, and dark sorcery.

A minor nitpick is the cover art showing Conan fighting hordes of skeletons who don't show up except in the stretch goals.  I always thought that was a questionable choice that may have been rectified later if the game did better at retail.  Or maybe in 2019?

The miniatures, one of the big draws for many to this game, were also generally excellent.  Conan's lion (a stretch goal), the Vanir Valkyrie (not Red Sonja) add on, and the Sabretooth Tiger add-on were commonly cited as disappointments with less detail than the rest of the figures.  Some of the standouts were Conan the Wanderer (stretch goal), The Black Dragon soldiers (add on), and the giant snake.  Honestly, most of the miniatures are incredible and even more so when you see some of them painted by professionals like Remy Tremblay and Martin Grandbarbe.

Monolith made the hero figures a lighter gray color than the enemies to make it easier to differentiate for those not painting the figures.  This gave the optical illusion that the heroes were not as detailed (they seem to be).  The links in the paragraph above should help debunk that theory.

The game also comes with a lot of tokens, item cards, and spells that can be used by creative fans to make new scenarios and may be used by Monolith in the future.  Despite the generosity in volume of components, the core game only comes with four heroes to play (Conan, Hadrathus, Shevatas, and Belit).

Rules

The rule book was heavily panned by some fans.  The basic concept of the game is fairly easy.  All the little subtleties that make up a skirmish game caused some headaches.  Monolith revised the rules and sent backers free copies and they're available online.

Overall, they're not great but they're not hideous.  Tom Vasel noted in his and Sam Healey's Miami Dice review that he didn't like that the rules were split between the player and overlord rule books instead of there being a single rule book and scenario book.  That may have helped streamlined the rules.

This may be an artifact of the original rules being written in French and translated to English, some of the looseness in the rules gives you more flexibility to make it the game you want on your table.  For example characters and equipment are "suggestions" despite there not being a method for swapping them out.

For those that say "I want a full a game; I don't want to be making up rules for a game I just bought!" this may not be a great game for you.  The biggest areas of uncertainty in the games I've played have dealt with line of sight, doors (do I have to pay extra movement the second time I go through a doorway?), and movement through "difficult" terrain.   

Setup and Tear down

Set up and tear down can take a while, especially if you've split the components across multiple boxes.  This time goes up as expansion content is added.  A good portion of the time is just getting through the large volume of stuff to find what you need.

You have to grab a board, the miniatures, attach the plastic bases to the minis (for groups of mobs to differentiate them), populate the board, pull the cards for the Book of Skelos, build the item deck, add any tokens or minis (like doors and chests, if you have them) to the map, and then get the items to the characters, get the wound token markers and place them on the time track, and then pass out the crystals.  Now you're ready to battle, right after you take a short rest.

Tear down is similarly time consuming but usually a little faster.

Setting up and tearing down a game of Conan is probably about 20 minutes each.  This isn't good or bad, it's just something to factor in.  To me, it's worth it for the table presence the game brings to the table.

The Elephants in the Game

No, not Yag Kosha, who was depicted as a healthy warrior-elephant from the planet Yag instead of the blind cripple being Conan encountered in the story "Tower of the Elephant".  Robert E. Howard's Yag Kosha would essentially be a prop or furniture which isn't a great character to play in a skirmish game.

Please see this link for a discussion or racism and sexism in the game and Robert E. Howard's works.

If you'd like to jump past the social commentary sections, please skip the link.  This game garnered some criticism about these topics and I'm choosing to discuss my thoughts on the topics, as it pertains to the game and the original stories.  I hope to add some context and history which may be useful for someone deciding if they want this game on their table.

No disrespect intended to anyone who disagrees with this and I believe it's okay to have a difference of opinion as long as that opinion doesn't impinge on anyone's civil rights.

There's two, coupled, issues I have with this "true to Robert E. Howard" game are...

Conan's Companions 

The first being - Conan, mostly, traveled alone.  He joined up with Belit and her pirates for the better part of a story, was antagonizing Valeria in the beginning of Red Nails (Conan is actually a bit of a stalking jerk to Valeria as this story begins), and worked briefly with Taurus during the first portion of the Tower of the Elephant as three examples.  People rarely appeared in multiple stories.

Let's rundown his career with the base game companions:

• Traveled with Belit through one story when he was young, although there's some time open for adventures unwritten.
• He met and talked with Hadrathus during Hour of the Dragon when he was older and King of Aquilonia.  
• He actually never met Shevetas alive in any story.

So much for Conan and his merry band of adventurers.

Now, as a game, it's understandable that it's Conan and friends against the overlord.  The market for two player games is limited and the market that would pay $100+ for a two player only game game is probably even more so.  A game like this does better with three or four players.  It works for two, but is probably at it's best at three or four with the players not playing Conan, getting two characters to play.

Scenarios based on the Stories

The second issue, which is directly coupled to the first, is the scenarios and while they are Conan-esque and are so much fun but they are, in general, not based on Howard's writings.  They are based around the themes and inspired by the idea of Conan and friends having adventures in this forgotten age.  They sometimes fill in the gaps in Conan's timeline (which has plenty of gaps to fill).  This, admittedly, is nitpicking.

The larger issue within the scenarios, as I try to reinforce my point, is some of the items like a magic hand grenade (of Antioch?) feel out of place in as does some of the flashier spells available to various sorcerers and sorceresses.  But, for balance purposes, you need things like this or nobody would want to play Hadrathus.

Scenarios

The base game comes with 8 scenarios of varying complexity.  Each has their own rules that tweak the game and has the heroes and the overlord each trying accomplish an objective.  Some scenarios are not well balanced and that favors either the players or overlord.

If you can get your hands on the Kickstarter version, you get four additional scenarios, another double-sided board, and more miniatures.  You can also download a print and play kit of this version from Monolith.

There's also many more scenarios posted at The Overlord.net .  An issue some people will have, especially with just the retail box, is if you don't have the models and the stats card you can't play many of the Monolith or fan created scenarios.  This is also true for the add-ons, most of which didn't originally ship with any scenarios.  Especially for fans, to utilize the extra stuff that came without scenarios, was a priority.

Something the fans have been clamoring for is some guidelines for swapping characters and equipment.  If a scenario recommends Conan, Belit, and Shevetas - could you swap Belit for Valeria?  Can you swap base Conan for one of the other ones?  And the answer is, a very non-committal, it depends.  Some abilities can destroy the balance of a scenario making it very lopsided.  You can always swap the model, but the weapons and character card need some careful consideration before doing so.

In general, to swap characters, you need to match skills between the character being used and the original one suggested.  They should also have a similar damage output and equipment.  There's no hard and fast rules and there's been many discussions on BGG about what a point buy system would look like for this game.  I believe The Batman versus mode can be set up as a point buy system for both teams.

Overall/Conclusion

What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?

I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.

The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;

Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king.

- The Road of Kings

Will you love it?

If you like skirmish games or games heavy on fantasy or sword and sorcery theme that's heavy on combat, there's a pretty good chance you'll enjoy Conan.  If you're a Conan fan, this is a great Conan themed game.  Either way, I think the cost factor has to come into the decision.  The base game still goes for about $100 at retail with copies on BGG's geek market going from $65 to $800 (probably a retail box and an all-in King's pledge, respectively).  If you're picking between the retail and the King pledge, I think the King's pledge has some extra value due to the extra board, scenarios, enemies and characters but you still have factor in the extra content for the extra cost.

If your group likes strong competition this game can be excellent but you also have to recognize that the balance isn't perfect in the scenarios and several lopsidedly favor one side.  Likewise, a less competitive group can still have a great time if the Overlord takes up the Book of Skelos as a GM and leads the game making the game tense and action-packed but the focus is on having fun instead of trying to win the game.

If you need watertight rules, this game may not be for you.  There's some looseness that requires interpretation at times.

If your group has players who detest the typical depiction of women in fantasy games...  first get the 2.0 rules, a sharpie, or black electrical (to avoid or modify the racy cover) and then talk to them showing the cards of the characters (male and female) available and telling them a little of their backstories.  Likewise, some of the art and content may not be appropriate for children but that's to each parent to decide (I'd probably let my son play when he's 12-ish, it's no worse than the old AD&D first edition books, but with higher quality art!).  And in reality, the violence should probably be of bigger concern than the boobs, but I'm not telling anyone how to raise their kids.

As stated in the sidebar post, Conan is a power fantasy game featuring powerful men and women fighting against their opponents.  It's not subtle and it doesn't try to hide it.  Conan and friends are anti-heroes.  This is good versus evil.  It's us versus them and they're worse than us.

While I've been nitpicking aspects of the game overall; I really love it, flaws, pastiche, and all.  Every person I've played Conan with has had fun.  It's fast moving, exciting, and fairly easy to explain the basics.  You will need to have a good grasp of the rules to explain the nuances to new players as the game goes along.

Final Rating: 8.5/10

Why not a 10?  Perfection is hard to achieve.  I'm knocking points off for the imperfect rules and the lack of a system to interchange characters.

Should I buy Conan or Batman?

That, depends on which you like more.  Even as a big Conan fan, I think that Batman is far more accessible to people so if you can't decide, I think Batman might get more table time with more people.  Also, in Batman's favor, it seems like some of the Conan's rough edges have been smoothed out in Batman.

Monolith is talking about another campaign in 2019 with new expansions.  This may also be an opportunity to fix some of the rules and possibly inclusion issues.

Who would win in a fight between Conan and Batman?

Conan, obviously.