Played my first 2 Solo play-throughs of Conan by Monolith Games which arrived in the post this week. The monster figures, cards and maps look great. The mechanics are good and very clever but I did struggle with some of the rules that were not explained very well. It also seemed the Overlord can use lots of gems thus extra dice on Guard for the Blocking Snake and thus effectively trap the Heroes indefinitely which is quite tricky when there is a time limit and they need to exit the playing area. Still it was a lot more fun second time round when I worked out how to search for the Princess using Teleport. There is a French FAQ and some advice on BGG so I think I have it now.
My first rules questions:
1 Does the scenario start on turn zero then so that on the Overlord turn he moves the tracker to state that turn 1 begins? Makes sense but odd. The heroes arrive quite exhausted so maybe they rest up on their turn zero? Or should it start on turn 1 with the Overlord effectively having passed and just restored fatigue to the level shown. Maybe start on turn zero as explained in setup.
2 Teleport could be better explained. It is in fact able to go adjacent which means through walls, yes. Is it a move? No. But it can be added to movement. Can it be done during a Cautious phase. No.
3 Should the Overlord set a Guard limit to make it more fun for the players? Probably not but 4 orange dice make even Conan’s mighty strikes feeble. Tried limiting it but then the Monsters just die. The overlord can easily get 4 gems back but poor Conan will miss his next go to do so and can’t move out being blocked. I suppose it is up to his crew to distract the overlord too whilst he is doing this.
4 Wall wrecker is only wooden walls and wooden doors.
5 The flaps are annoying as its hard to see where they are on the map. They slow people and block line of sight which is fine I guess.
6 Where is the wound tracker? I think it is the turn tracker as explained in setup.
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