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Mark Collins
United Kingdom
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Full blog at http://grimtreegames.com/grimblog/?p=159
Two for one for you, Stabcon over view and Conquest of Nerath breakdown. Get in.
Firstly a bit about stabcon if you have never been. It’s a weekend event held at the Britannia hotel in Stockport, a good venue with friendly staff. The event itself is held in one of the big conference rooms and is crammed with tables playing board games and roleplaying games. Everyone is willing to give anything a try so you are never short of a game to play. There is also a bar in the conference room for lovers of beer (me).
If you get in touch with the organisers beforehand they can sort your accommodation in the hotel as well as the Stabcon entry, meaning you can play games non-stop from Friday to Sunday. I went along with a box of games, the biggest game we played was Conquest of Nerath. We played a short version of the game which should have been 2 hours, however due to chatting and learning the rules ended up being about 5. Didn’t mind though as it was awesome.
The game is basically a world conquest strategy game. Four factions fight for land and supremacy, Karkoth (Undead), Vailin (Elven), Nerathian League (Human) and Iron Circle (Goblin-kind). It’s a 2 to 4 player game, with 4 players you have a choice of free for all, or an alliance game. Free for all self-explanatory, where an alliance game lets you have a 2 vs 2 game. This is essentially the same as a 2 player game but each player takes 2 factions. This worked out well, as to begin with there was only me and Grim Tree regular Andy, who started the game taking 2 factions each, however as soon as someone else wanted to join in it became 2 vs 2.
So, the game started with just me and Andy, new to this game but veterans of plotting world conquest and laying waste to continents. The game round breaks down into the following phases, draw event card, move, fight, reposition, reinforce, then income, with the active player running through those phases then moving onto the next player.
There are 3 game lengths available which you agree on before starting. Short and medium, which are won by accruing victory points, and long, which is won by capturing all the capitals or gaining 8 treasures (which I will mention later). This is good, as it means you can play a game of this type and it only take 2 hours, usually world conquest games can take days.
You start by drawing an event card. The event cards give you advantages and powers that you can use through the game and are different for each faction. Each faction has a different theme to the event cards to reflect them, for example the Undead faction has cards that lets you sacrifice units to give you unearthly powers.
Once your event card has been drawn you can move your pieces. You are free to move in your own territory spaces, into unoccupied enemy territory (gaining a victory point) or into occupied enemy territory to trigger a fight. Each unit has different abilities, dragons can fly 3 spaces over the enemy, storm elementals can do the same but end their turn over water, different units can move farther than others. War ships can pick up coast based troops and drop off them off else where for quick and sneaky movement behind enemy lines. Lots of decisions and strategy to be had.
Next, units in the same territory fight. Its a very easy system, for every unit in the fight, they each get a dice. The better the unit, the bigger the dice, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20. Each side roll their units dice, every 6 or over they get is a kill. The defender chooses which of their units takes the hit and all damage happens at the same time, which could mean all units dying. The attacker then chooses to attack again or retreat to a safe space. Each unit has special abilities that makes them good to use in the right situations, storm elementals roll double against ships as they might capsize them, wizards get to roll and dish damage before the other side, siege engines roll double dice when attacking, monsters if they win the fight can run amok in unoccupied adjected enemy territory. Strategy overload.
Also in this phase if you have any hero units that entered dungeon spaces they can plunder the dungeon. Dungeon spaces are special spaces that only hero units can enter. They contain random dungeon door tiles that when turned over reveal monster the heroes need to defeat to claim the monster treasure. Beware, there are easy monsters, and very very tough monsters. I lost more than a few wizards by in this way.
The last couple of phases in the turn see you buying new units and collecting income. When buying units each unit has a gold cost, the more expensive the better they are. More strategy, which units to buy? Foot soldiers only have a d6 to attack but are cheap and can soak up damage, castles give you another starting territory for your troops to move out from, each unit has it’s own strength. To begin with your troops have to start at your capital and your default starting castles, but if you build castles out in the world your troops can start there instead. But be careful as if your castle is captured the enemy can start there instead of you.
Lastly you collect income, 1 gold for each territory you hold, unless you have lost your capital, then you half that. Bearing that in mind it’s very important to take and keep land, not just for victory points, but for income.
So, our game, we started playing with just me and Andy. We were getting used to the rules and playing it cautiously, attacking but stock piling troops. We were then joined by Nathan and another Andy to fill it out to 4 players. New Andy joined me and took the Undead whilst I had Goblin-kind, Nathan joined Grim Tree Andy and took the Elves whilst Grim Tree Andy kept the Humans. The new guys were cool and got into it straight away, told them the rules and they got started. Then they unleashed hell. On the Elven vs Undead front they pushed all the troops forward and had a huge battle, with Undead coming off slightly better and pushing down. In later turns the Elves retaliated by buying dragons an flying up the coast and coming in behind the Undead. Once there the land was not as well defended so they were able to capture and score more victory points. My Goblin-kind side struggled, at the end I was down to 8 territories and very few men left to defend. I had stretched myself too far trying to take the centre island. The humans were just about to smash me as they had managed to push right down, but we scored enough victory point to win the game before that happened.
Dungeons are definitely worth plundering, the Human facion gained a treasure that allowed all hero figures to move an extra space, a big advantage. Also treasures give you victory points when played. I would say go in with a group of heroes as some of the monster are very difficult, with them rolling more than 1 dice or needing more than a 6 to hit, amongst other nasty surprises. Once a monster is defeated 2 take it’s place, so it’s worth trying to get them early.
We had a conversation about dragons, why would you buy anything else? I described their flying ability above, but they are also durable, which means that they can take 2 hits before dying, and they roll a d20 in combat. One reason is the cost, they are the most expensive unit at 5 gold. I think in the end part of the game it can get dragon heavy as winning sides have the gold to spend, however I think that there is merit in having lots of smaller cheaper units, more dice to roll, but also more damage to soak up.
I can’t wait to play this again, after the game I was thinking about the tactics possible, what to do next time, the best fit for each unit.
I will be taking it to any club nights I go to so keep an eye out on our Twitter / Facebook / forum if you want to come along and have a go. Also, it is available in our shop here http://www.grimtreegames.com/conquest-of-nerath-p-67.html.
Thanks for reading, hope to see you across a table soon.
Mark
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for Stabcon.
