• Game: Conquest of Nerath
• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
• Designer: Richard Baker
• Genre: Old-school "Dudes on a Map"
• Players: 2-4
• Playtime: 120-180 minutes



• What's Hot: Traditional but well-considered design; great D&D theme; knockout production with lots of great plastic figures; several options for game length; simple questing mechanic adds flavor.



• What's Not: Not exactly the most innovative game out there; designed specifically for four players regardless of support for two and three.

by: Michael Barnes

The easiest criticism to file against Wizards of the Coast’s new Dungeons and Dragons themed board game, Conquest of Nerath, is that it is an unabashed throwback to the 1980s Milton Bradley Gamemaster titles, particularly Axis and Allies. Each player represents a faction in conflict over territory, tosses dice with impunity (preferably into the lid of the box) to get rid of plastic figures in the way of domination, and then they spend resources to put more plastic figures on to the map to augment defenses or prep offensives. And thus the eternal cycle of the “Dudes on a Map” template established by Risk over a half-century ago continues.

I’ve publically frowned on games that have followed on from this model without significant innovation several times over the past four years of Cracked LCD. The better examples of the genre - titles like Nexus Ops and Chaos in the Old World - have evolved often into unrecognizably divergent forms. And I’ve stated more or less that I’m done with these kinds of games if they’ve got nothing new to bring to our tables. Yet here I am, getting set to tell you why Conquest of Nerath is a fun and worthwhile addition to the genre canon despite its religious devotion to mechanical cliché and gameplay trope.

I almost think it’s not worth explaining any part of the rules or process in this review. When I opened the box and looked through the components, I felt like I knew exactly how to play it without even a cursory scan through the rulebook, although I would need the reference cards to determine unit differences. After reading the rules, I was almost completely right on the money in every instance. Such is this game’s adherence to traditionalism- only the particulars such as turn structure aren’t immediately apparent, and even then it’s just a matter of details like whether you get paid at the beginning of the turn or the end. If you really have no idea how this kind of game works out then you really should be looking into a copy of Risk or Axis and Allies instead of this game anyway, unless the Dungeons and Dragons brand and fantasy trappings- both of which are handled extremely well- are the primary draw over the gameplay and mechanics.

Despite its dogmatism, Nerath acquits itself very well in its genre. It’s a clean, no-frills design with a well-planned map that encourages immediate and direct conflict with very little room for turtling or other game-stalling techniques. This is not a game where you can sit back and churn out troops at all. It’s bloody, aggressive, and every turn plastic figures are going to die on every front. There are no tech trees, no multiple currencies or resource types, and no modern conveniences such as turn threading or role selection. There’s very little to get in the way of its aims, and I admire its directness. It knows what you came through the door for, and it’s ready to give it to you without pretense.

It isn’t that Nerath is totally without innovation. In fact, the game does a couple of very smart but subtle things that circumvent a lot of the more old fashioned and outdated pitfalls these kinds of designs often find themselves in. I like that the game offers a tight, well-considered map pre-seeded with units, which does away with any kind of exploratory element or dealing with neutral territories. There is also a definite and mutable timeline on which the game operates. There are options for short, medium, and long games so the time commitment is really kind of up to the players. Although many hardline fans of these kinds of games may scoff at victory points as a barometer of success, in this game they can make the difference between a fun, two hour brawl and an repetitive eight hour slog that ends with everyone just kind of giving up on the game rather than playing to its conclusion.

Every enemy territory taken- even if you lose it and take it over again- is worth a point. So border skirmishes can be bloody struggles not only for points but also to prevent frontline breakthroughs. Taking enemy capitals nets larger rewards (five VPs), and in the long game you can go for that old fashioned (and highly unadvised) “dominate the map” game. The VP system keyed to every successful battle rather than objective points or control actually solves a couple of the major issues in these kinds of games, specifically time and pacing problems.