Disclaimer: This preview is based on a single four player play of the production prototype at Essen 08.

I grew up with Conan, Elric and the Grey Mouser. My fondest childhood memories consist of curling up on the couch with a grand adventure in my hands. Thus I came to view Age of Conan (AoC) with two conflicting emotions: A) very high expectations and B) the conviction that the game would suck. Neither proved to be true.

Pure Ameritrash - for better or for worse.

It may have been created by a bunch of Italians but AoC is pure Ameritrash. Forget cubes, optimization or limited player actions. Instead you get flavour, style and even more flavour. The game looks good (I got to play with production grade miniatures on a printed mock-up board) but not overwhelmingly so. The main attraction lies in the miniatures which differ depending on the nation.

Gameplay is deceptively simple. Each turn (called age) begins with the starting player rolling the action dice. On each player's turn he picks an action die, which decides what action he may take this turn. On one hand this is a time consuming mechanism that isn't strictly necessary – on average there is a good spread to the dice and there are several wild actions on each die. But it does add tension to the game, by putting you in a position where your opponent can block what you want to do buy picking the right action.

Dice are central in AoC.

The available actions are Court, Diplomacy and War, which are self explanatory, and the Conan action which is another not-strictly-necessary-but-clearly-flavourful action. Picking the Court/Conan action you get to move Conan (if you control him) or let him pillage a province (forcing the controlling player to lose and army or a point). If you don't control Conan you get to pick up one of the treasure tokens from the Conan track.

Which brings us to the whole point of AoC – Conan. Each time an adventure is over players get to bid for who becomes Conan on the next adventure. This is more of a card-turning mechanism than anything concrete as controlling Conan doesn't add that much to your play – but it sure is Cool with a capital C.

The Man himself.

A court/Conan action also lets a player draw cards, either strategy or kingdom, but the kingdom cards are way better – they add magic and special powers to the game while the strategy cards only give you a specific bonus on a single die roll. Kingdom cards also add tons of flavour to AoC as they let players control elements from the books, such as the Aquilonian Black Army or the Hyperborean Blood Queen.

But back to Conan. Each time it is the Conan player's turn Conan takes a step towards his quest goal, and the Conan player gets one treasure token. If Conan makes it to his quest goal the controlling player gets an extra treasure token. This isn't very likely as quests are 3-5 tokens long while the quest can be a long way off and other players get to steal treasure tokens by taking the court/Conan action themselves.

Quest card.

Treasure tokens are then used to bid for Conan's magic items (at the start of an age) or to Crown Conan King (note the capitals – it is a big event as it ends the game). To Crown Conan a player must move the Conan miniature to his homeland and then have the most of any single type of treasure token (women, monsters or gold). Thus there is a slight bluffing/memory element in Conan.

Warfare is pretty simple – move your army into a province and roll dice. You get to fight in the different terrains in the province (another unnecessary-but-cool feature) and have to win a series of battles to claim it. The attacker has an advantage in the ability to play cards and the "attacker only" hits on the dice but the defender wins all ties. The main thing stopping you from conquering the world is the scarcity of armies: not only do you get a limited number of them when you recruit (two at most or buying them at exorbitant prices at the end of an age) but you've got a limited number of army miniatures as well.

Aquilonian emissary.

The other way to claim a province is to send in your emissaries and convince them to let you establish an embassy. This only takes a single die roll but embassies are vulnerable to enemy troops and can be replaced by enemy emissaries too.

Well, that's about all there is for the game; you go out and conquer for three ages consisting of four quests each. Each quest is then subdivided into 3-5 treasure tokens which means that each player gets an average of 35-45 actions per game. Plenty to go around but not enough to make it boring.

Stygian troops.

Is Age of Conan good enough to pick up? When I walked from the table I was convinced that yes, it's the greatest thing since D10's. Now, with two days worth of hindsight, I'm not so sure. It's not a bad game, for ameritrash at least (I'm an Euro fan if you can't tell), but it does ride on the coolness factor. So if you love Conan it's a sure buy. As for me I'll have to play it again before deciding.