The game is produced by Comic Images. It’s setting is Robert E. Howard’s pulp fiction setting of Conan, which is a heady mixture of blood, swords and bosoms. Everything is stylized, polarized and amplified. The card game reflects this world very well. The artwork is magnificent, done by Ken Kelly, Alex Hurley, Paul Lee and others. The game play is very fun. If it can overcome its’opaque rulebook, the somewhat complex rules themselves and the somewhat lengthy game play, this should be a successful game.

Game Play

The game has its players taking turn playing “Conan.” The rest of the players play Conan’s foes, fight a round of combat, and then the next player plays Conan. Hence, only one player is playing Conan at a time while the rest play his foes. If a player is playing Conan’s foes, their Conan is currently inactive and doesn’t factor into play. Conan wins “renown” points by defeating his enemies. There are various victory conditions – the first player to reach 40 “renown,” the last player with a surviving Conan, or the last player with cards left to play wins the game.

Each player starts with one Conan card, a “foe” deck and a draw deck. Players randomly decide who will go first. That player becomes the “active” player, and places their Conan card in the center of the table and is considered to be playing Conan. All players then draw cards form their draw deck and play begins. The Conan player then can place into play any allies and locations that he or she might have and also place items and weapons on their Conan card for Conan to use in the upcoming combat. Whether or not cards can be placed into play depends on several factors, but the main mechanic for both foes and Conan is their pool of “prowess” points. Most cards have a prowess cost that gets subtracted from this pool in order to place a card into play.

Then the foes draw from their foe deck a number of cards partly based upon how many much “renown” Conan has. For every foe Conan kills, that player places that foes card into the area known as the chronicle. Each foe has a renown score, and the total of all the felled’ foes renown score in Conan’s chronicle is his “renown” score.

The more defeated foes in a Conan’s chronicle, the more foes the opposing player gets to put into play, i.e. the more famous Conan gets, the more enemies want to take him down. Once the foe pool is drawn, the foe players then decide which of these foe cards they want to put into play. There are major and minor foes and rules governing how many foes from the foe draw can be put into play. Once the foes decide which of their foe cards they are able and want to play, they place their foe cards into 4 zones around Conan (front, left, right and rear). They then place “move” cards from their draw deck for each foe they have assigned to do battle with Conan. These cards are placed face down and represent both offensive and defensive elements. The Conan player then responds to these move cards with his own move cards, placed face up, to counter each foes’ move card. Conan’s move cards also incorporate both offensive and defensive elements. The foes then reveal their move cards and combat is resolved. If any of the foes are left alive, all players draw cards from their draw deck, and the surviving foes place new move cards onto the table. Conan once again counters, combat is resolved, etc. until either Conan retreats or defeats all his foes. If Conan retreats he loses renown. If he defeats all of his foes, Conan then can decide to rest and replenish his prowess pool and a small fraction of his life points. Conan can also “press on.” If Conan presses on, he starts a new round of combat, but does not get to replenish any prowess or life. Once Conan rests or retreats, the next player then becomes Conan.

Play continues until a victory condition is met -– the first player to reach 40 “renown,” the last player with a surviving Conan, or the last player with cards left to play.

Deck Construction

Constructing a deck highlights perhaps the biggest problem with the rulebook. There is no deck building section. You find the rules governing deck construction under “foe deck” in the glossary, and that’s “F” for foe.

That being said, each player must provide two decks which meet the appropriate requirements. The Draw Deck must contain at least 40 non-foe cards. No more than 3 copies of any given card are allowed, with no more than 1 copy of any unique card. The Foe Deck must contain at least 25 foe cards. No more than 3 copies of any given foe card (or 1 copy of any unique card) are permitted. The total renown of the foes in the Foe Deck must total from 95 to 105 points.

Card Stats

The Conan CCG currently has 197 cards. Of these here is an approximate breakdown:

15 foil cards, 4 of which are Conans in the starter decks. The other 11 aren’t considered “ultra rare,” but just designated as foil.

12 foil “Ultra Rare” cards

45 Rare cards

48 Uncommon cards

48 Common cards

25 “Very common” cards

There are 4 starter decks, each with a differently colored box. Each starter deck contains an exclusive foil Conan card, 11 fixed cards, 3 random rare cards, 12 uncommon cards, 9 common cards, 19 very uncommon cards and a rulebook.

The boosters contain 11 cards.

Collectible aspects

From what I could read on Conan CCG forums, attempting to get a complete set is tough. You would have to buy the 4 starter decks (running about $10 bucks), and it appears that there are 1-2 ultra rares in a booster BOX, which is 36 booster packs. Also, 2 ultra rares per box isn’t guaranteed – sometimes you only get 1. So, assuming you get lucky and get 2, you have to buy 4 starter decks and 6 boxes of boosters. 4 starter decks are $40 boxes and the cheapest price I could find on Ebay for a box of boosters was $70. That’s $460 bucks if you get lucky and don’t shop for individual ultra rares. The individual ultra rares are going from $35 to $55 bucks each on ebay, and not ultra rares were available.

You’d have to be a very serious collector or Conan fan to want to build a complete set.

Analysis and Conclusion

This game is fun, fun, fun. The artwork, text and gameplay all reflect the Conan world very well, I think. Before I give the salient negatives, I’d like to repeat this game is FUN. COOL. If you dig Conan, or card games, get it.

Now, the rulebook is pretty bad. There isn’t a table of contents or an index. I was lucky and had the rules taught to me, but I think it will take you a few trial games and more than a few hours to figure them out. With the rules being taught to me it took 4 hours for my first game. However, it’s worth it. Once you do this, the rules provide great gameplay and a lot of enjoyment. I've been told that experienced players can knock out a game in 45 minutes.

Another downside is the collectibility aspect. My very rough estimate is that you’d have to spend anywhere from $300 to $500 bucks to get a complete set. Personally, I think this is crazy and even though I have gotten into a collectible buying frenzy at times with both cards and miniatures and can appreciate people’s fear of a slippery collectiblity slope, there is simply one truth – you don’t HAVE TO HAVE EVERY CARD. You don’t have to have that super cool card that’s selling for $50 on Ebay.

I’ve heard a lot of talk about how CCGs are dead because people are “over” CCGs - tired of hunting for that one card, afraid to get into a game because of the slippery slope of collecting frenzy, needing to have that one ultra rare. I guess my reaction to this is… then DON’T. It’s still a GAME. Pretend it isn’t collectible. You might laugh, but I’m serious. You can play the game with a $10 starter deck. Yeah, you’ll probably want to buy a few boosters to round out your options, but from all the doom and gloom concerning CCGs, I think you as a consumer have to take some responsibility and not blame the game if you can’t control your fever to have each and every card. Sure they’re hoping you buy $500 worth of cards, but you don’t HAVE to.

Get the game. Buy a few boosters. Have fun. Fight the collecting fever.

Oh, btw, I’ve got $50 bills and a “Split Head Like Ripe Melon” for a “Many-Tentacled Thing.”

Thanks.

- Doug Fawley, This review first aired on episode 7, July 17, 2006 on the Twenty Buttons and Twenty Levers tabletop gaming podcast, which can be found at http://20b20l.com/podcast.