Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game | BoardGameGeek

Thread: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: General:: Game Length

Superhawk2300 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:24:46 +0000

This seems to be one of those games that last a certain amount of time regardless of how many players it has, in general.

Anyone play around with using less adventure cards to play a shorter game? (or longer). It seems 4 cards are used to give each player in a 4 player game a chance to "be Conan" so I wonder if one adventure card per player per age would work?

Anyone try this / or something like it. With only 2 players 4 adventure cards per age seems a bit long to me, and we each get a bazillion adventure tokens.....

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Variants:: Re: Longer third age

Mantuanwar — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:46:48 +0000

by Mantuanwar

There is a throwaway remark in the original post on this thread which is actually a great idea. Loic said that you could keep the crowning rule and just carry on playing after an attempt...

What about if the game continued with a successful crowner able to now keep the Conan figure and move and fight with it as if it were an extra army, plus gaining the Conan bonus in combats where it was present. It would be eliminated like other army pieces. I guess he would get the normal Crowned Conan victory point bonuses as well at game end (or would that be too powerful? Maybe you could say he would not get them if the Conan piece were eliminated in combat). A failed crowning would see the attempter eliminated and the game would continue to the end of Age III in the normal way (unless it were a 2 player of course), with the remaining other players eligable to try to crown Conan also.

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Variants:: Re: Longer third age

Mantuanwar — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:57:26 +0000

by Mantuanwar

Petrov is right about the limited supply of adventure tokens placing an upper limit on the number of adventures that you can include in any altered game. There are 7 "3" adventures, 19 "4" adventures, and 1 "5" adventure. So in a standard game if you drew 11 "4" adventures and 1 "5" adventure, and if the game went through the full course of the third age, and if each adventure was completed by Conan and an extra token drawn (all of which happening in the same game is possible but very very very unlikely), then you would need 61 tokens and would run out (there are 56 tokens).

However, it needs to be borne in mind that in most games somebody will have discarded some adventure tokens to get sorcery or gold. The rules state that these tokens are put back in the stock if it runs out.

As it stands therefore, there are more than enough tokens for a game of 12 adventures, and practically speaking you could incorporate several adventures more than that with virually no chance of running out of tokens.

Thread: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: General:: A little tip about keeping score

drpetrov — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:32:49 +0000

by drpetrov

I have found that using one of your towers as your score marker, instead of the little cardboard disc, spices things up a bit. They are easier to see and pick up, and overall add a little bit of flavour to the game.

Try it... maybe you'll like it.

Peet

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Strategy:: Re: Red, and Stupid - Aquilonian and Proud

magic gecko — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:15:46 +0000

by magic gecko

The crown provides another 3 gold, making 31.

I also missed an occurance. . .
Intrigue - Intrigue Success on Koth . . .Seems right since the next instruction is conquer W Shem.

This provides another 5 gold, making 36 total (! seems good !)

The reason there was 34 not 36, is a long story that involves bidding in the opening startup for the crown, sword and women using a conan bid and any starting money.

But that is prolly more info than you needed. :)

Wow 36 . . . !

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Reviews:: Re: "Everything Conan" inside, except lamenting women

Scrat — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:22:19 +0000

by Scrat

From the same page I linked in my last post:

Prototypes: Red Sonja vs. Red Sonya

The character was loosely based on Red Sonya of Rogatino in Robert E. Howard's short story "The Shadow of the Vulture" (The Magic Carpet, January 1934), which Roy Thomas rewrote as a Conan story for Marvel Comics Conan the Barbarian #23 (1973). Thomas also somewhat based Red Sonja on another Howard character, Dark Agnes de Chastillon, a sword woman in 16th-century France.[1]

Red Sonja is somewhat different from Robert E. Howard's original Red Sonya. Besides tweaking the spelling of her name, Thomas transformed her from a sword- and pistol-wielding supporting character of the late Renaissance into a sword-wielding heroine of Conan's prehistoric Hyborian Age.

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Reviews:: Re: "Everything Conan" inside, except lamenting women

shnar — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:35:02 +0000

by shnar

Which stories have Red Sonja? Did he do some short stories with just her?

-shnar

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Reviews:: Re: "Everything Conan" inside, except lamenting women

Scrat — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:36:14 +0000

by Scrat

Quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sonja

Red Sonja, the She-Devil with a Sword, is a fictional character, a high fantasy sword and sorcery heroine created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith who adapted the character from Red Sonya of Rogatino created by Robert E. Howard . She first appeared in Conan the Barbarian #23 (Marvel Comics).

So she is the least 'connected' to REH, but still based on a character from his work.

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Reviews:: Re: "Everything Conan" inside, except lamenting women

shnar — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:16:00 +0000

by shnar

IIRC, none of the characters except Conan are in the various different Howard stories. Is Red Sonja really a Howard character? I thought it was an invention later on...

-shnar

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Variants:: Re: Quick Start Variant

drpetrov — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:57:49 +0000

by drpetrov

FYI: The total value of each player's starting units in gold (including starting gold) in the normal game is 25. I agree that 30 gold is too much to buy stuff with at the start.

BTW, Turan and Aquilonia should either not be able to buy sorcery tokens, or at the very least should have to pay significantly more for them than Stygia and Hyperborea.

Peet

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Reviews:: Re: "Everything Conan" inside, except lamenting women

Scrat — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:49:15 +0000

by Scrat

Red Sonja, along with Kull, Cormac Mac Art, Bran Mak Morn, and Solomon Kane are all Robert E. Howard characters, but from different places and times in history. I believe Amazon has some of the collected stories available.

Valeria in the film has more in common with a character from the books named Belit. She was a pirate, and the love of Conan's life.

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Reviews:: Re: "Everything Conan" inside, except lamenting women

MaximumPain — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:38:27 +0000

by MaximumPain

shnar wrote:
What is the origin of Red Sonja? I recently read all of Howard's Conan stories and don't remember any mention of a Red Sonja. Is that a Marvel creation?

-shnar

There is Valeria featured in the story "Red Nails" Available on the Gutenberg project online http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600771.txt
http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#letterH

I dont recall if shes in any of the other stories but she is a cool character, but maybe not prominent enough to be a feature character. Perhaps someone like Juma the Kushite would be a better fit lol.

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Reviews:: Re: AoC - why it deserves better

alex352 — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:27:08 +0000

by alex352

Dr Schlotter wrote:
Great review! Your command of the English language is incredible! Keep up the good work!

Cheers
Kilian

Thanks very much. Tried my best :-)

Besides, I had a series of Conan sessions in the last 3 weeks. The resulting experiences lead me to edit my review and add a few comments. Would be interesting to get peoples opinions on that...

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Reviews:: Re: AoC - why it deserves better

Brother Narsis — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:00:49 +0000

by Brother Narsis

Sphere wrote:
I think the ratings suffer because many expected to be Conan in the game, not some petty monarch who keeps a wary eye on him and hopes to enlist his services.

Being a player of the play-by-mail game, I never assumed to actually play Conan. He was always a figure to use, not to become.

Conquest for your individual nation is the objective.

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Variants:: Re: Treachery variant - making emissaries more useful.

drpetrov — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:35:09 +0000

by drpetrov

Mantuanwar wrote:
I agree that the Intrigue action declines in value as the game progresses, but it has other uses apart from gold generation. For instance, you can use Intrigue to quickly acquire a friendly province in an area that is very distant from your home kingdom.

Depends on what you mean by "quickly." The further away from your kingdom the province is, the more turns it takes getting your emissaries into position.

And remember, we're talking about late game uses of the Intrigue action, and it's unlikely that you'll be able to take a neutral country anywhere with late in the game, even if you saved your starting emissaries for later.

Mantuanwar wrote:
Military units can then be built there. Intrigue allows a faster and and more far-flung reach of influence and force across the board than is possible via the more plodding expansion by military actions.Tower provinces can either be a base for military conquest of the provinces around them, or they can act as a quickly established barrier to enemy actions. A province with only a Tower in still has a greater defensive potential than a neutral province, and you can decide to add a garrison of army units too.

All your points here are valid for the use of the intrigue action early in the game, and I agree with them. But they still do not do anything to address the weakness of the intrigue action late in the game.

Mantuanwar wrote:
I have won several 2 player games by hemming in my opponent's expansion with a chain of Intrigued provinces close to his home kingdom.

Were you playing Aquilonia? In a 2-player game it is much easier for Aquilonia to dominate the middle of the board early than Turan, since Aquilonia is closer to the middle than Turan is. In a 2-player game you can wall off the board with just Koth and Corinthia, and there are a lot more points on the Aquilonian side, which is why I don't really like the 2 player setup.

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Strategy:: Re: Red, and Stupid - Aquilonian and Proud

drpetrov — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:27:24 +0000

by drpetrov

magic gecko wrote:
Intrigue - Move 2 Emissaries (Nemedia, Corinthia)
Military - fail to conquer Ophir, :(
Intrigue - Move Emissary to Bythinia, Intrigue Success on Nemedia
Conan & Crown - Get 2 Sourcery and 1 Kingdom card, 1 Strat card
Intrigue - Move Emissary to Koth, Intrigue Success on Corinthia
Intrigue - Move Emissary to Ophir, Intrigue Success on Ophir
Military - Men in Corinthia and Ophir
Conan & Crown - Get 1 Sourcery and Play Event "squeeze the peseants" 1 Kingdom card, 1 Strat card
Miltary - Conquer Western Shem

The first Age ended, and I had 34 gold.

How did you do that? I think your math is wrong.

Start - 3 gold
Convert Nemedia - 4 gold
Convert Corinthia - 4 gold
Convert Ophir - 3 gold
Squeeze Peasants - 3 gold

Age Change
Home Kingdom - 5 gold
2 gold per tower - 6 gold

That's a total of 28 gold, not 34.

Remember that in the age change phase, each tower is worth 2 gold, not the province rating.

Peet

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Strategy:: Re: The Domino Effect

drpetrov — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:12:00 +0000

by drpetrov

Lord Warlock wrote:
Played AoC for the first time two days ago as a Stygian and tried the "Domino"-Effect.

Problem was that my initial military conquest of Southern Shem ( 4 army units vs. province rating of 4) failed and so i lost lots of valuable actions. At end of Age 1 i had only managed to place 1 Tower (and one fortress in S. Shem)... perhaps i should have used a magic marker to ensure the fall of Southern Shem. What do you suggest? Conquering S. Shem in one turn (or 2?) using all means available or take a slower pace and conquer S. Shem slowly while collecting/waiting for decent strategy cards to use for combat?

OK, obviously this is a problem and I have had it happen to me as well. The thing about that first military contest is that you can't afford to lose any of the battles. The reason is that with only your home kingdom you can only regenerate 1 army unit per turn, which is not enough.

There are a few ways to help here.

Firstly, I don't mention court actions in the above strategy, but it certainly doesn't hurt to take a few to make sure you have enough strategy cards to play each time in the battle. Also, the play-on-the-table cards are often lifesavers in battle, especially the ones that let you reroll dice after the fact. The "force march for free" cards are also pretty awesome, and the Stygian and Hyperborean ones even let you spend sorcery to put an extra guy on the board when force-marching.

In the same vein, when you are bidding for Conan, unless the adventure tokens look really good or Conan is in a really useful place, don't bid with strategy cards you know will be useful in battle.

Thirdly, if you get a below-average roll, use those sorcery tokens! That's what they're for. Definitely if you didn't use this option you probably should have.

Fourthly, if you are playing Stygia an alternate route is to go for the Eastern Desert. At only 2 even Stygia can conquer it without much difficulty. However, before you do this try to make nice with Turan since he can easily take it away from you again. If Turan is being aggressive, stay out of the ED. The same applies to Hyperborea moving into the Border Kingdoms, though to a lesser extent because Aquilonia usually has much better things to do than go after the BK, so it's not hard to convince him to move elsewhere.

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Variants:: Re: Allow takeovers

drpetrov — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:32:02 +0000

by drpetrov

cybernex wrote:
Not really. If your opponent has just one unit, all may be over in one round. While conquering a Neutral may involve 2 or 3 battles against the same strength, with your army dwindling after each battle if you decide to force-march.

Not true.

Sure, if all you want to do is eliminate a lone army unit on campaign, yes, this is easier than conquering a neutral territory. Though you would generally be quite foolish to waste a whole action just to eliminate one enemy army unit.

However, actually conquering the territory is still more difficult, because you have to eliminate the army and then force march to fight the first battle on the campaign track.

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Variants:: Re: Longer third age

drpetrov — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:01:32 +0000

by drpetrov

Keep in mind that the number of adventure tokens in the game is tuned so that in a 12-adventure game, if the maximum number of tokens have been drawn for the game the tokens will run out before the last adventure ends.

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Reviews:: Re: AoC - why it deserves better

TheDarkKnight — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:06:01 +0000

by TheDarkKnight

I think the designers did an excellent job. Do you really want four people fighting over who gets to play Conan every game? Oh wait, they get to fight over who wins Conan over. That just makes more sense. If the players were allowed to play Conan, there would have to be other characters introduced for other players. That would change the game into a Descent like game. It might be easier for a Conan: Descent expansion so "one" person could play Conan during a game. I really like what they did with the game and I think it captures the flavor accurately of the books. Just my 2 cents, but it is probably only worth 1. :p

New Image for Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game

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by earache

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Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Strategy:: Re: Red, and Stupid - Aquilonian and Proud

magic gecko — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:27:32 +0000

by magic gecko

Tried it again.
Rolled just plain bad, but it mostly worked anyway.
Turan ran away with the game, and got pegged back very hard.

Nemedia was taken by Hyperborea, and he regretted it.
I moved the troops out of Koth, and regretted it.

Keep those three 4 provinces garrisoned with 2 men.
Slap your own hand away.

New Image for Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game

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Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Reviews:: Re: AoC - why it deserves better

Strom40 — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:03:06 +0000

by Strom40

verdelak wrote:
If this was mentioned in this thread, I apologize.
The OoC game is based on the Age of Conan series of books which take place in the Conan universe created by Howard, but contain very little Conan.

In one of the trilogies, Conan has recently conquered a kingdom and only appears in a section describing how this was done and in some text where he sends some troops out to help a situation in a border region.

Very, very little Conan in the AoC books.

That was by design. The AOC books are about new & different heroes:

“There are so many untold stories in Hyboria, not just about Conan,” notes Theodore Berquist, CEO of Conan Properties, who is overseeing the series. “These books feature new adventures and characters, set during the time when Conan is king of Aquilonia, a period in Conan’s life taken from Robert E. Howard’s sole Conan novel, The Hour of the Dragon. This is generally accepted as the last true Conan tale if one were constructing a timeline, and puts the Cimmerian’s age at about forty-five. We felt that putting the Age of Conan stories in this era was the best way to explore other areas of Hyboria without disturbing already established continuity.”

They were also targeted to the Young Adult market. Still each trilogy had a solid sci-fi/fantasy author and each book had awesome covers by Justin Sweet. Not all bad.

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Reviews:: Re: AoC - why it deserves better

verdelak — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:26:21 +0000

by verdelak

If this was mentioned in this thread, I apologize.
The OoC game is based on the Age of Conan series of books which take place in the Conan universe created by Howard, but contain very little Conan.

In one of the trilogies, Conan has recently conquered a kingdom and only appears in a section describing how this was done and in some text where he sends some troops out to help a situation in a border region.

Very, very little Conan in the AoC books.

New Image for Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game

superjosef — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:29:03 +0000

by superjosef

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no run-of-the-mill conan for me! i use this conan. primed, gonna paint it. looks good in black. Man, i love this mini!

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Reviews:: Re: AoC - why it deserves better

Dr Schlotter — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:37:57 +0000

by Dr Schlotter

Great review! Your command of the English language is incredible! Keep up the good work!

Cheers
Kilian

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: General:: Re: Cost of this game and some confusion on purchasing or not.

kenstein — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:14:37 +0000

by kenstein

This is a bit late, but you can have my copy for $40.00 US + shipping from Toledo to Canada. No one here wants to play it, so I might as well sell it. It's not a bad game.

Reply: Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game:: Reviews:: Re: AoC - why it deserves better

uweareuter — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:16:40 +0000

by uweareuter

RKFade wrote:
JVKhoury wrote:
2. Conan is not a builder of kingdoms or a leader.

He becomes the King of Aquilonia in the books. A great Warrior King, and a leader of men!

And so he can in the game.

At the end of the game (after each of the last 4 adventures), players can try to crown conan their king.

To keep it simple here with the explainations: It allows you to grab a few VPs and probably jump ahead a bit. AND it allows you to end the game prematurely there and then, preferrably when you are in the lead.

If it does not work: game over too, but you are out of the game. Conan does indeed then not care for your puny crown. :D

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New Image for Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game

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