by Kingdaddy
Truth in advertising
I don't normally write a review until I've played a game at least three times. However, I'm going to break the rule this time for two reasons:
Last night, I played my second game. Only a few feet away, we had another session of Age of Conan running. Therefore, I can claim some insight from watching this other group.
At this point, the big question for me is, 'How much do I want to keep playing this game?' For reasons that I'll explain in the course of the review, reaching the second or third game of Age of Conan is a good time to ask that question.
Therefore, this won't be a review from someone who has played Age of Conan enough to unlock all the virtues and vices that come from greater experience with the game. My objective in writing this review is weighing the arguments for reaching that level of experience. Along the way, I hope to give some pointers to other AoC neophytes that might make their first games more rewarding.
I'll also say, to be fair, that this review will be predominantly critical. I like the game a lot, but first-time players should be aware of the things that might momentarily annoy them, or turn them off the game altogether.
We're also in the middle of the early rush of enthusiasm for a new game, on a fairly popular theme, from a publisher and design team with a good track record. Therefore, potential buyers run the risk of getting disappointed after reading some of the initial, overly enthusiastic reviews. You can read them for reasons to buy the game; I'm hoping to balance these reviews by providing some salient details that might lead you to conclude differently, depending on your tastes.
Learning the game
Fantasy Flight Games often receives well-deserved criticism for its rulebooks. While the company often does an excellent job of game development--which includes making a game accessible--these skills often don't get applied to the rulebook. While overall the rulebook is very clear, it suffers from a couple of avoidable defects.
The rules are in the wrong order
Aside from having an index, good rulebooks make it clear, from the beginning, what the game is about. Age of Conan is about seizing short-term scoring opportunities while positioning yourself for the much more critical endgame scoring phase. Unfortunately, the rules authors were much too literal in their approach, putting the endgame conditions at the end of the rulebook.
Why does this matter? Age of Conan presents a few challenges to the new player:
(1) Several major game systems (the adventure track, actions, combat, intrigue, etc. etc.).
(2) Several scoring mechanisms.
(3) Hidden or difficult-to-discern information about the relative standings of the players.
(4) The majority of the scoring at the end.
(5) Some opacity, for first-time players, of the relative value of different scoring mechanisms (richest kingdom, most adventure tiles in a category, etc.)
Therefore, first time players, while struggling with (1), are likely to lose track of how the game mechanics contribute to (2). Therefore, when they remove (3) during (4), they may feel frustrated--not with the actual outcome, but with the 'betting on the wrong horse' aspects of (5).
The rulebook needs clarity on key points
A few days ago, I asked a question about the timing of two critical mechanics, resolving adventures and crowning Conan. The rules aren't misleading about adventure resolution, but you have to read that very small piece of text a couple of times to get it.
On the question of crowning Conan, however, the rules are maddeningly vague. Again, see this post for details. The response from one of the designers was helpful, but also a bit troubling:
Regarding the bonus token, I normally play by allowing the bonus token to be drawn if Conan's destination is the same as the player's home province during coronation.
I bet I'm not the only person surprised to read the phrase, 'I normally play...' Is it the rule, or isn't it?
The ho-hum world of swords and sorcery adventure
While I think it's debatable whether the adventure tiles are the only path to victory, it's definitely fair to say that they're critical. Not only do they determine a big chunk of the endgame victory points, but they also play a role in deciding who gets the powerful artifacts during the end of age phase.
Unfortunately, this tile-centric aspect of the game focuses attention on one of the least exciting parts of the game. While the adventure cards give a nod to the Conan stories, the adventuring mechanics don't throw you into those stories.
Instead, the adventure track puts Conan into something that feels more like a morning jog than a sword-swinging epic. As players take the generic tiles (Monster, Treasure, Women), the clock ticks down. Meanwhile, Conan moves from point A to point B on the map. Will Conan make it to the finish line before time runs out?
Conan can play an important, direct role in the game. His presence on the battlefield can turn a pitched battle into a rout. (However, in one of our games, we saw Conan contribute nothing to a battle, since over several rolls of the dice, the 'Conan Plus Hit' result didn't appear once.) However, the way the game uses its eponymous barbarian, it feels less like 'The Age of Conan' than 'The Hyborian Age, With A Cameo Appearance By Conan.'
Oddly, the same design team used a similar mechanic in War of the Ring and made the heroic side of the game far more exciting and more central. The Fellowship's progress was as important to the final outcome of the game as the great clash of armies. In contrast, translating the observation, 'Conan never had any cause but his own,' into game terms means, at least in this case, that his story is disconnected from the main action.
The 'wandering hero' mechanic has appeared in other games, most notably in Chaosium's Elric. However, in that case, Elric did fight on the side of the players, albeit for a limited time, and usually ending badly. (Usually with his demon sword Stormbringer taking control, slaying an important leader, and feasting upon his soul.)
If this is Tuesday, it must be Aquilonia
You might assume that, if the 'local color' from Robert E. Howard's stories is missing from the Conan adventure track, it's going to be represented somewhere else. Since the players represent four major nations in the Hyborian Age, you might also assume that each major power would have a distinct personality.
And you'd be wrong, for the most part. Age of Conan isn't a Hyborian knock-off of Sword Of Rome, in which the four major powers have different strengths and weaknesses, different ways of scoring victory points, and as a result, different playing styles and strategies. In Conan terms, you might have a sorcery-heavy Stygia, good at sneaky intrigues, but weaker on the battlefield. The Turanians, on the other hand, might have all the advantages of the Arab or Persian kingdoms on which Howard based them, such as large, mobile armies--but might also have problems holding on to territories they conquer.
Instead, the only real distinguishing features of the four major powers lie in the Kingdom decks. While each power has its own set of special characters, elite units, events, and other special capabilities in these decks, there are a few weaknesses with this approach:
The distinguishing characteristics are not that different. While each Kingdom deck may have a different emphasis, they also have a lot of overlapping capabilities. For example, the Aquilonians have a card that lets them continue a campaign without sacrificing a unit during one forced march. That might make sense, as the disciplined, quasi-Roman force they're supposed to be...Except the Stygians have roughly the same card.
The Kingdom cards are random. You get what you draw, which might be a killer collection of leaders and units, leading to much different playing style throughout the game...Or you might get a lot of single-use event cards.
First-time players may not pay much attention to the Kingdom decks. Certainly in our group, we saw the immediate value in drawing more Strategy cards (Conan bids, attacks, intrigues), and less obvious value from the Kingdom deck. Drawing from the Kingdom deck might make a lot of sense, in the long term, but that's not altogether clear in the first couple of games.
Gonna Roll The Bones
Our group's reactions to the combat system were mixed:
Calculating the odds.
While the mechanics of combat are not difficult to understand, the implications are a bit opaque in the first couple of plays. Which is riskier, a five-army attack with no strategy card, or a three-army attack with a Strategy card?
Somewhat dicey outcomes.
Even after we did get a better handle on how to improve the odds, we saw some pretty big swings of fate. When I controlled Conan and put him into battle, I went through the enemy army as if it were Kleenex. Another player saw Conan sit out the battle, even after several rolls of the dice. Highly unlikely, sure, but this isn't a combat system like A Game of Thrones, or even traditional wargame CRTs.
The happy third.
It's easy to get too aggressive, in which case an attack might weaken an army in a key border location enough to invite an attack. Worse, both the attacker and defender may be so weakened that the third player pounces on both of them. Admittedly, we've only played three-player sessions, but I'm not sure if a fourth player would balance the situation, or just add another vulture.
Flunk geography at your peril.
If you add up the mechanics of the game--army movement, army recruitment, where you should intrigue versus conquer, the shortest path for Conan, etc.--you really, really need to study the map.
How much does combat matter?
I've had a slight change in opinion about this topic, but it's worth opening the issue for debate. You can't avoid fighting in this game, but it's not clear, given the risks, how much you gain. Sure, you can conquer provinces and thereby pick up victory points during the game, as well as in the end. However, you might also overextend yourself, since you have a limited number of units you can build, and you can only reinforce locations during regular turns one army unit at a time.
Compared to accumulating adventure tiles, which might lead to a lot of victory points at the end, combat feels riskier, and perhaps less productive. However, having learned my lesson about over-extending my empire in the first game, I had far more success in the second session, with a more patient and cautious approach.
Free will or determinism?
One of the players in this week's games said that he felt as though the game was scripted. He didn't mean 'scripted' in the sense that, say, Third Reich has rules that force the events of the game through an historically predictable pattern. Instead, he felt that the choices each turn were limited, and the best choice pretty obvious.
That statement jarred me a bit. I'd been enjoying the shared dice pool mechanic, particularly once I got used to the idea of making my selections, in part, to shape other people's selections. However, I wonder how interesting that system will be, after several plays of the game? Hard to say, at this point. Just worth noting, maybe, that someone in your group may find the dice pool less interesting than you do.
Miscellanea
The objectives don't seem to add very much. It's too hard, with everything else happening, to tune your strategy to meet the objectives, which only give you 1 or 2 extra victory points.
I liked the original box art better. The new painting looks like an angry Fabio and his Lippizaner stallion.
Need to play more to be sure, but it seems as though each artifact has the most potential benefit in a particular age. For example, I'd rather have the Serpent Crown's power in the first age, when making alliances seems more lucrative (or even possible, once real estate starts getting occupied).
The verdict
As I said at the beginning, one reason for writing this review was to decide how strongly I'd choose another game of Age of Conan over other games. The answer? I'm kind of lukewarm on the idea.
The game has promise, and there are a lot of things I like about it. (See other reviews for those positive points.) However, looking back on these negatives, or might-be-less-negative-if-I-played-more, and they do put a slight damper on my enthusiasm.
I'd love to discover that the game is better than I originally thought--something I discovered after we cracked the code for playing Twilight Imperium the first couple of times.
And, if I might editorialize a bit more, that's why gushy initial reviews are counterproductive. 'Woot! Conan! Woot! Nice figures! Woot! Innovative mechanics!' is not going to convince me that, despite my initial qualms with the game, it's worth persevering, in place of playing another game.
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