Conan by Monolith - a review

Faithful readers of this blog will have seen some of the superb miniatures from Monolith's boardgame "Conan". The least I could do for the Holidays was write a review!

Conan came to be in a Kickstarter campaign and became one of the most successful campaigns ever to do so. Over 16.000 backers provided more than 3 million dollars to create a boardgame based on the barbarian hero from Robert E. Howard's stories. So what has become of it?

Conan is an example of a genre that has become very popular in the last years: the miniature boardgame. The Kickstarter campaign has of course spawned a sprawl of stretch goal extensions and extras so for clearity's sake I will limit myself to the basic game: still an impressive set in it's own right and one that should be available for retail by now.

The first thing that grabs the attention is the excellent visual appeal this game offers. I am not ashamed to admit that I entered the Kickstarter campaign solely for the miniatures, before I even knew what kind of game it was. The board and card materials all are first rate prints based on exquisite artwork by several very skilled artists.

The game is a semi-cooperative boardgame. Hero players play against one opponent: the player that plays the Evil Overlord. Hero players play one or more heroes, the EOL plays all opponents. The game has several very clever innovations that will be described below.

The basic game offers four playing boards, printed back-to-back on heavy cardboard. These allow you to play scenarios on two pirate ships, a Pict village, a tavern (of course!) and a ruined fortress. The boards are dived in board areas that allow movement across the board. Movement is hampered by terrain features printed on the board (good lighting is recommended during a game!) . Line of sight is simplified by white dots printed in a board area. If you can draw a line between two white dots without crossing a terrain feature, you have line of sight.

The piece de resistance of the game really are the miniatures. They are SUPERB. Made of tough plastic they (with one or two exceptions) are beautiful sculpts with great detail. They paint up beautifully, but some will take some skill to get right, as the detail on especially the female figures is very small and finely sculpted. The figures would be an asset to any wargaming collection, even if you never play the game itself.

I was pleasantly surprised that Conan was not just a pretty game, but a good game as well! So how does it play?

The Hero players use Character cards that hold all information, weapons and skills of the Heroes. Skills and equipment enable you to do special things or roll extra dice. Nothing special here.

However, each Hero has an amount of Energy (blue plastic gems) that enable the hero to take actions. A Hero may take any action he wants in any sequence and as often as he wants. However, each action costs Energy and when Energy is exhausted, no more actions are possible. Reclaiming Energy takes time and you will get the point, dear reader: spending Energy is a lot faster then reclaiming it! This makes for interesting dilemmas. While a Hero can take a breather instead of a turn full of action, this will still not give him back all his Energy, so energy management is a crucial element of this game.

The EOL has about the same amount of Energy at his disposal as a Hero, but reclaims it faster. No luxury, since his Energy must power ALL adversaries. He does this using a clever gaming ad called The Book Of Skelos. The main feature is "The River" where he keeps his character cards. The more to the left a card is placed, the cheaper it is to activate. Once activated. the card moves to the right and can only be activated against a bigger Energy cost. The entire "River"then flows to the left. So the EOL can activate every card he wants (twice per turn) but the Energy costs may vary enormously. Here, too, energy management is the key.

The skill and combat system has cleverly and completely done away with modifiers by using special coloured dice. The yellow ones are the least effective, the red ones the most. No math is required, just pick the right number of dice of the right colour and roll them!

All this makes for a game full of well-pondered decisions while still flowing fast enough to get that action-packed feel that is essential for the world of Conan.

The game provides several scenarios to play, which may also serve as inspiration for writing your own.

There are some point of criticism of course. Some miniatures are not very good. Different sculptors worked on the game and a few of the earlier sculpts (Conan's lion being a sad example) are definitely of lesser quality. But they really are the exceptions, as the pictures will testify.

The orginal rulebook (separated in a player's book and an EOL book) provided in the Kickstarter simply sucked.

Parts of the rules were missing or badly translated from French. Inventory lists are missing  and determining what you would need for a scenario is a puzzle solved only by reading the scenario and looking at the graphics VERY closely. However, Monolith is correcting this as I write to provide a better rulebook that will be downloadable free of charge.

There is a plethora of marvellous expansions dealing with Khitai, Stygia and the North, making the longevity of this game even better.

Containing all this treasures, Conan does not come cheap. It is definitely a high-end miniature boardgame and has hit retail at prices around 120 dollars/euros. Still, I recommend it heartily! You will paint and play for ages with this game.

British Legion Cavalry!

Below my ersatz cavalry for the British Legion in the AWI. Figures are British Light Cavalry from the Egyptian Campaign made by Strelets in 1/72 scale (obviously!)

Strelets does not always get the best reviews and do use a singular sculpting style you either love or hate. They did however produce a very nice set here, for a unique theatre of war and IMO eminently suitable for the AWI, in itself a rare period.

Redbox Jacobite Highlanders

I have been painting the first of the Redbox 1/72 Jacobite Highlanders for Blackpowder. Not being a purist I plan to field them in my AWI armies and Imaginations games. 

Redbox has an interesting reputation for producing extremely interesting sets (Boxer Rebellion, Samurai) of atrocious quality. This time however, they have rehabilitated themselves in a spectacular way with their Jacobite Rebellion figures. Below are figures of the Highlander and Militia sets. I cheated some kilts on the long coats of some of the militia to get enough marching figures for a regiment of 24 figures. 

They are lovely figures to paint, a tad big but finely detailed with a bit of flash but nowhere near the blobs of plastic I have come to expect from Redbox. PlasticSoldierreview.com has some things to say about historical accuracy but as I said, I am no purist. The review is here. 

Officer and piper

NonCom and elderly Laird  (from the militia set)

The 42nd Regiment of Foote in Line

And in column.

NB: I added better pictures to my blog on september 25th. 

John Carter Project Pt 2: Barsoomian skiffs

While my order of |Barsoom figures is speeding towards me I thought it fitting to start building some vehicles for them. 

Scratchbuilt from foamboard and cardboard and still only in primer but I am quite content with the results so far. 

The 28mm figure (a converted WF Zulu) is shown for scale. 

The John Carter Project pt 1

I am expressing a serious ambition here: to stage a massive John Carter demo about a year from now. I have done some research already, a miniature ordering list is being made and drawings for Martian flyers being done. I am planning to stay as close to the movies as possible.

A few feeble first steps are these Wargames Factory Zulus converted into Red Martians. I hope many will follow!

Review and first game of Maurice

Last sunday we played our first game of Maurice. Maurice is an 18th century tabletop wargames ruleset produced by Sam Mustafa. I had never encountered any of his rulesets before so I was prepared for something new. I was not disappointed. 

Let's start with what was not surprising. Maurice has a standard IGO/UGO sequence. It uses d6es for every diceroll. It has relatively mundane mechanisms for shooting (4+ is a hit, then roll for result). It uses multi-figure bases. No surprises there. 

The first (so far untried) surprise is that Maurice has an integrated campaign system. I expect to dwell more on this topic in future posts. Maurice has no scale but measures distances for moving and shooting in base-widths. It could therefore be played in 10mm or 54mm without any adaptation as long as you use a consistent basing. My basing for Black Powder proved perfect, as I already based my regiments in 4 bases of 6 foot or 2 Horse. But any basing will do as long as the width is consistent. 

Then I must mention that Maurice is not so much card-driven as well card-governed. The game comes complete with a custom card deck including Action Cards, National Advantages, Notables as well as Battlefield cards and some more features. 

All units may volley fire (fire at musket or short artillery range) for free but to do anything else requires Actions. The Action Cards have the most direct influence on the game and have a double function. First, every card has a numerical value. Playing and adding these cards gives you command range counted from your C-in-C.. Every turn you may issue one command to a "Force" that is an integrated number of units within this command range. Only one you ask? Yes, only one. Usually, that is. Depending on the sort of command you may then draw no, 1, 2 or 3 new cards. If you ever run out of cards, you will have to pass and draw new cards. 

The second function is that every card offers some special ability or influence. My hapless cuirassiers below for example were drawn into a premature charge by my opponent playing a card that could disrupt my plans. Thus they charged a superior force and were wiped out. When timed right, such cards can have quite an influence on the game as it turned out. 

 My cuirassiers revving up..

 And here they charge for death or Glory! Death, as it turned out....

When building an army you can buy National Advantages. These are special abilities. I bought Lethal Volleys for example that enabled me to enhance the effect of my short range musket and canister volleys. This commits you somewhat to a certain strategy and tactics. Obviously, musketry would be a primary asset for me and my strategy should depend on that to a certain extent.  

You can also buy Notables, on-table characters that attach to a unit and give that unit certain advantages and abilities. We skipped that for our first game, but one can imagine Prince Rupprecht of Twitterling-Hupsenback and his spaniels charging into the ranks with a +2 combat result.....

Here my opponent's Guards approach my thin red line...

And here they are gone, wiped away by Lethal Volleys and First Fire....

When fired upon units collect "wounds" called Disrupts. A certain number of Disrupts will break the unit, influence their combat abilities and may be Rallied away with a Rally command. Disrupts therefore function as a kind of dynamic Morale value.

Because Actions usually occur only once per turn, the game encourages you to manage your army in a cohesive way (as was the practice then, as it is now). Moving individual units costs lots of actions and the same number of turns, so you must move entire Forces to accomplish anything. Therefore battles tend to get decided at a certain, central point as can be read in the history books but is rarely seen on the wargames table. When you are used to the fact that your entire army is in action all over the battlefield and all at once, you will not see that in Maurice.

This resulted in our small 75-points game in a battle with an early fierce and short cavalry action, a initial artillery bombardment at long range followed by steady advances of the attacker's infantry. By using my Lethal Volleys combined with a First Fire card (which enabled me to "steal" his first volley in his turn) I wiped out his center infantry Force. Units that we placed far out on the flanks did little or nothing, since neither of us was willing to pay the cards for ordeering these units to do anything. Quite like the real thing, actually.

It was a very pleasant first encounter. I expect many will follow and I will certainly come back to you on the Campaign system.

Cuirassiers!

As I wrote earlier I am planning to expand my 18th century cavalry options. For this I need more hussars and dragoons, but especially the powerhouse of all 18th century shocktroops: the cuirassiers.  

Of course no cuirassiers are made in 1/72 plastic and even metals are rare. I found the Outland games ones but so far have failed to acquire any. So I turned to conversions. 

I started with Zvezda and HaT Napoleonic Russian Cuirassiers, removed their heads and replaced them with heads from the Imex AWI British infantry. The horse harness seemed appropriate enough and so a further paintjob led to the results below. The one with the raised sword is Zvezda, the other one HaT. After the headswap and the paintjob they look remarkably similar and I am quite pleased with them. Another 22 to go to finish the two Cuirassier units I have planned. 

Hussars and dragoons are to follow. These are both made by Zvezda for the Seven Years War and the Great Northern War. Wait and see!