Age of Conan is a board game which puts players in control of one of the major kingdoms of the Hyborian age, in the period of history well known through the tales of the adventures of Conan the Cimmerian, the barbarian hero created by Robert E. Howard.
You will fight with armies, sorcery and intrigue to make your kingdom the most powerful of its age, and to secure on your side the mightiest hero of all – Conan the Cimmerian!
In Age of Conan, you control one of the major kingdoms of the Hyborian Age – Aquilonia, Turan, Hyperborea and Stygia.
You will build up and use your armies and emissaries, you will enhance your actions with your kingdom cards, and you will try to take advantage of the adventures of Conan to increase the power and wealth of your kingdom.
The game is played over the course of three ages. At the beginning of each age, four Conan adventure cards are drawn and used to create the adventure deck. At the beginning of each adventure, players will bid to decide who will be the Conan player for that adventure; when an adventure ends, a new one is drawn and a new bid determines who will be the new Conan player.
The roll of the fate dice is used to determine the actions available to the players. The dice are rolled to form a common pool from which all players will pick their dice. Each player, in turn, will choose and use one fate die and will be able to do one of the actions allowed by that die result.
When the fate dice are all used, they are rolled again and the game continues in this way until all four adventures in the adventure deck are complete. At that point, the game will temporarily stop so that players may earn gold and take several kingdom–building actions in preparation for the next age.
- liked the theme
- liked the aspect of going through different terrain on different adventures
- didn't get it
- gameplay left me flat
- whole lot of chrome for a fairly simple and not very engaging game
- disappointed
- Hyborian Age
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Adventure — Mentioned as a component the host typically enjoys.
- cards and dice — Mentioned as components the host typically enjoys.
- Dice combat — Mentioned as a feature of the game.
- Dudes on a map — Mentioned as a component the host typically enjoys.
- Terrain Movement — The host mentions going through different terrain on different adventures.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- My top 10 game disappointments of all time.
- These were games that I was really looking forward to for one reason or another, and they just fell flat or they are just bad games.
- I like to talk about fun games, but uh I think it's important sometimes to recognize there are some games out there that are not that great or again just disappointing.
- This is a genuinely bad game.
- And I don't think I've spent a game or I spent as much time in the rule book while playing a game.
- if I got to work that hard to learn how to play a game already, you've lost me.
- And then when I played the game, like I say, for the amount of work we put into it, it just wasn't wasn't that much there.
- This is not only is this a disappointing game, this is probably for for for the kind of game it is, easily the worst game I've ever played.
- The game is unplayable. It's unplayable.