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Captain Nemo
United Kingdom
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The October meeting of Croydon On Board featured a four-player game of AoC. The game took about 200 minutes but we had only got half way through! Initial rules explanation took an hour but we then concluded that learning the rulers by playing was more effective. Play is fairly straight forward but there are a lot of intricacies so I would recommend learning by play as you only get to understand the factors by playing the game. First play is very much a learning experience.
For the first age there was a general expansion and learning phase. An early casualty was clarity as we found during the evening a succession of differences between the rules and the summary aid. No doubt these have been clarified on BGG but that was an irritant for us. One feature that was effective was the use of the fate dice. This is an excellent way of ensuring that the game does not devolve into a single dimension game styled like risk and I wonder who else has used this approach. The need to think through the use of military, diplomatic and card play ensured that it gave the game real differences in play style. One difficulty we could not resolve was how you moved beyond diplomatic success. Once you had got an ally you could not upgrade to a city as you could with military conquest. The implicit complexities of this approach gives the game flavour but is also why leaning these intricacies tales a while.
Game play was well balanced as one could expect with a four player game. As a player could not lose his home kingdom province these were comparatively neglected but represented a realistic point that players all need to be kept in play. As we had only just started having battles between players the full flavour had yet to emerge. However, the multiplicity of dimensions to the game was very pleasing as the way to victory was not only through scoring victory points through conquest but also through the Conan adventures and the enforced use of the emissaries.
It is difficult to gauge how the different factors balance but the final scores, albeit being scored at the half-way point were: 27 [more Conan tokens], 18, 14 and 11. It seemed rather a long game but familiarity with the rules brings considerable faster rate of play so although it seemed to be a long game to play other will have a better feel for this. The different aspects of the game gave some challenges to choosing different approaches to play. We enjoyed ourselves.
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Sarge in charge!
Germany
Bremen
Ash nazg durbatulûk
Speak "thriend" and enter!
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I'm glad you had fun.
This game is great, but it takes a while to get all rules done properly. After a few plays under your belt, though, you'll get the hang of it and enjoy it even more to krush yur enmies, see dem driven befoa yu, and hear ze lamentations of ze women!
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Captain Nemo
United Kingdom
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Engoduun wrote: I'm glad you had fun. This game is great, but it takes a while to get all rules done properly. After a few plays under your belt, though, you'll get the hang of it and enjoy it even more to krush yur enmies, see dem driven befoa yu, and hear ze lamentations of ze women!
Yes, it is an impressive effort. What intrigues me is that it is done by the same people who did WAR OF THE RING five years before yet it is not ranked anywhere near as highly as WOTR is. Both are good themes but it would seem Tolkein's work attracts a cult-like status that significantly increases its popularity despite the presumed development work to create an enhanced gaming experience with AoC.
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Was George Orwell an Optimist?
United States
Corvallis
Oregon
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hammurabi70 wrote: What intrigues me is that it is done by the same people who did WAR OF THE RING five years before yet it is not ranked anywhere near as highly as WOTR is. Both are good themes but it would seem Tolkein's work attracts a cult-like status that significantly increases its popularity despite the presumed development work to create an enhanced gaming experience with AoC.
I don't think cultism has anything to do with it - the ratings reflect the fact that WotR is a significantly better game. I like AoC well enough, but it isn't in the same league as WotR.
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Mike Clarke
Canada
New Westminster
B.C.
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hammurabi70 wrote: What intrigues me is that it is done by the same people who did WAR OF THE RING five years before yet it is not ranked anywhere near as highly as WOTR is. Both are good themes but it would seem Tolkein's work attracts a cult-like status that significantly increases its popularity despite the presumed development work to create an enhanced gaming experience with AoC.
The same Italian team also did Marvel Heroes and it's out of print and was at best a mediocre game. It has nothing to do with the theme and everything to do with the quality of the game.
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Was George Orwell an Optimist?
United States
Corvallis
Oregon
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mikecl wrote: The same Italian team also did Marvel Heroes and it's out of print and was at best a mediocre game. It has nothing to do with the theme and everything to do with the quality of the game.
That's a good comparison; Marvel Heroes got very much the same mixed reaction as Age of Conan. I'm happy to own all three of those games, but War of the Ring is definitely the pick of the litter (even if I didn't have a copy of the CE).
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Captain Nemo
United Kingdom
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Sphere wrote: I don't think cultism has anything to do with it - the ratings reflect the fact that WotR is a significantly better game. I like AoC well enough, but it isn't in the same league as WotR.
Can you elaborate on that. From reading the reviews I do not see a significant difference.
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Was George Orwell an Optimist?
United States
Corvallis
Oregon
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hammurabi70 wrote: Can you elaborate on that. From reading the reviews I do not see a significant difference.
You must have read the wrong reviews. Beyond the dice selection mechanism, the two games have very little in common.
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I really prefer AoC.
WotR it's more thematic, less strategic.
I think that's the main difference.
And i think that WotR have more success not only for the fan-based audience but also for beautiful components (map, miniatures, etc).
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