Why Aren’t There More ‘Conan The Barbarian’ Board Games When This One’s So Good?
While HeroQuest is thriving, and Lord of the Rings gets tons of movies and series, the Conan board game sits idly waiting for the attention it deserves.
It is strange, isn’t it? Why some series seem to take off and get rebooted over and over, while others simply don’t get the attention they deserve. It might have something to do with fact that no one saw the 2011 Conan movie, starring Jason Momoa and Ron Perlman. Did you even know that was a thing?
Either way, in 2016, Monolith Board Games, made a fantastic Conan board game that I somehow totally missed. So, today we are taking a closer look at this hidden gem of a HeroQuest style dungeon crawler, starring everyone’s favorite axe-wielding berserker.
Conan Board Game Overview
The Conan the Barbarian Board Game is a one-versus-many style of dungeon crawler, that has a similar basis: one player is the game master and they set up the villains according to the scenario. the other players are different characters, and take turns moving, attacking, and looting in order to achieve some scenario objective.
That’s basically where the similarities stop. The main core of the game for the players is the Stamina tokens. Each character has a base level of ability to move and attack. However, they also have stamina tokens which can be attributed to moving, attacking or rerolling dice.
Stamina Makes The Game
For example, let’s say Conan has 11 stamina. He could use 2 stamina to move an extra 2 spaces on his turn, then 4 stamina during his attack in order to gain bonus attack dice, then save the rest for rerolling during his or other turns.
Between turns, players will recuperate stamina, but only a limited amount. While in their active state of moving and attacking, players will only recover 2 stamina. However, they can switch to a defensive rest state and recover more stamina, at the cost of not being able to move or attack, and only reroll dice. Of course, players will gain new weapons and items which will grant bonus die and other nifty abilities as well.
This simple mechanic completely changes the nature of the game. Rather than simply running in fireballs blazing, like you might in HeroQuest, you’ve got to consider your opponent’s turns and well as you next turn. It add a huge strategy element lacking in other similar titles.
This shift of action points into a stamina system in the Conan board game means players will need to carefully weigh their turns. Charging in recklessly, as Conan as wont to do, means he won’t have much stamina left to defend himself or get out of there quickly.
Final Thoughts
This game does seem to have a decent following. And Monolith is still putting out expansions fairly regularly. So maybe I’m the weirdo who’s living in the outskirts because I’ve never heard of this game before. Still, Conan does feel like one of those series that everyone knows about but never gets a ton of attention. You never see any cosplays, or fan art or anything.
Now Red Sonja on the other hand…
