Some six months ago, give or take, I wanted to do a full review of Nexus Games’ AGE OF CONAN, released in the US by Fantasy Flight Games. I was sent a review copy of the game at the behest of Roberto DiMeglio, one of the Nexus folks and co-designer of the game as well as the classic WAR OF THE RING. I was all primed and ready to dig in for a couple of playtest sessions and to spill out a thousand words or so about what I hoped would be a game that not only did the Conan license justice, but one that would skew more toward the success of WotR and not so much toward the failure of its follow-up MARVEL HEROES.

Advance word was strangely mixed, with some early adopters responding to the game with lukewarm notice. There were very few passionate, excited missives like those that heralded the coming of WotR. The game seemed to be greeted largely by indifference. By the time the game was in my hands, most of my friends had already played and even those who liked it weren’t really itching to play it again. I’d drag the game out to game groups and events, but any time I suggested it (even employing my “but I need to review it” begging tactic), AGE OF CONAN wound up on the sidelines, all that Hyborean barbarism certainly seething with frustration as it was left contained safely in its box.

In the half a year that I’ve owned it, I’ve played AGE OF CONAN exactly one time, and that one time was a three player game with two others totally new to the game. And it’s fairly complex, so needless to say that between the disastrously incompetent strategic blunders, ignorance of tactical subtleties, and plain old rules screw-ups it was hardly an ideal session by which to judge it.

Despite all of that, we thought it seemed like it was pretty good and wanted to try it again sometime so our opinion collectively seemed to be in favor of the game. Further, I felt like some of the early criticisms levied against the game- chiefly that the theme wasn’t there, that having an auction in a Conan game was somehow sacrilegious, and that it was a Eurogame in Ameritrash drag- were somewhat unfounded. The game looked great, played pretty well, and I thought it showed promise. But none of us have touched it since. I haven’t heard anyone talk about it, let alone see anyone play it, since that short window right after its release when first and second plays were occurring. I never got my second chance with it.

So what the hell happened with AGE OF CONAN? Why did a game with such an awesome license, designed by people who hit paydirt with another A-list fantasy property by demonstrating they know how to do justice to licenses, and with top-notch Fantasy Flight production values land with such a resounding thud? Granted, I’m sure there are folks out there who are reading this and thinking “huh, that was my favorite game of the year” or anticipating a fifth or sixth play with their game group. But I don’t know anyone who is still concerned at all with the game and most people I know that have owned it have traded or sold it to someone else, who may very well have now traded or sold it to a third party.

Thinking back over the game, which is essentially a “dudes on a map” conquest game with some fairly Howardian twists such as the ability to hire out Conan to aid in battle and a simple adventuring mechanic that finds the Cimmerian wandering around and looking for monsters to fight, treasures to steal, and women to bed. It’s not unlike the scale-changing shenanigans that went on in WotR- big, epic battles coupled with a character narrative. The action dice system from that game was also sort of brought over in a modified form, and it worked pretty well. There were also some quite good ideas- I really loved the idea that you had to campaign over a couple of turns to take over particular regions, dealing with different terrain conditions. And it was pretty cool to see how each Hyborian nation had a particular flavor (I got to play the sorcerous Stygians). These are all good concepts that normally add up to a good game- and it also played out pretty quickly given its complexity and scope.

But in reflection of that one game, I did find myself feeling like the design was so packed full of mechanical gewgaws, routines, and subroutines that it felt incredibly cluttered and burdened by a bunch of devices that should have described narrative events and situations, but instead felt like someone made a list of “What is Great in Conan” and attempted to map a different mechanic to each item. The result is that there was no impact, no sense of immersion, and no feeling of cohesion. And I do think that emphasis on things like resource and hand management were quite at odds with what most people would expect from Conan- after all, “what is best in life” doesn’t include Eurogame mechanics.

Like MARVEL HEROES, I did feel that AGE OF CONAN had a similar feeling of being way too overdesigned, that there were so many mechanics and strictures in place that I felt like the player was just a cog in a well-oiled machine. It’s almost as if the game just has too many rules, that it requires a lot of control in order to function. Honestly, I think WotR had a lot of the same rules bulk but had AGE OF CONAN come out first, it may have turned out to be the favored game between the two.