Conan and the Princess

 This week we dug out a game I haven't played for a few years... Conan which I bought as a Kickstarter several years ago.  It has languished unloved and forgotten in the loft for too long so when Anthony and I were discussing it recently we decided to dig it out and have a game.

Conan pits a number of players against one who controls all the 'baddies' using an interesting resource management system.  Players use coloured gems representing energy levels/health to perform actions and in theory can do as much as they want in one turn until they run out.  Of course it only recovers slowly so players need to manage this carefully. The GM (or Overlord) uses a similar system but once a unit or character has activated it moves to the end of his row and then costs more to reactivate.  This forces the Overlord to spread his activations around different units or spend his precious gems to keep reactivating the same one.

Actions, combat , magic etc are all pretty intuitive and we quickly got into the game.  We played the 1st scenario in the book.  Conan has been asked to rescue a princess who has been captured by the evil Zogar Sag and is about to sacrificed.  She is hidden in one of a number of huts in the village.  Conan also has to bring back Zogar Sag's head!  He has brought along a couple of pals to help... Hadrathus, a wizard, and Shevatas who is a more nimble thief-type.

If read various opinions on how to set this scenario up and whether all of the Overlord's figures should start on the table.  I thought it was much more fun to have most of them hidden until Conan and his gang looked into a tent or I chose to bring them out.

The village seems strangely quiet apart from a couple of Picts and their pet Hyenas...

Nice doggy!   Shevatas decides to avoid fighting the Hyenas and nimbly runs away to another part of the village

oops... our heroes weren't expecting to find a giant snake hiding in the tent!

Shevatas finds the Princess guarded by some Picts who are quickly despatched

Conan had already wounded Zogar Sag and Hadrathus finished him off with a blast of lightning

Grabbing the enemy's head he teleports to the edge of the village and off to safety.  Shevatas has also escaped with the Princess winning the day for our heroes

In true Robert E Howard style,  the Princess is completely passive and exists purely to be rescued by our manly hero... slightly problematic!!  I'd forgotten what a good game this is.... some clever mechanics and well thought out scenarios really capture the feel of the books.