by PaladinH
The Conan Monolith Sourcebook is the product that this game needed to truly feel “complete.” One of the main concerns I had with the core game was its lack of a campaign, as well as the lack of flexibility in scenarios in terms of hero selection and equipment loadout. So much cool stuff was included in the game (especially the King’s Pledge) and yet, because the scenarios in the core game are all standalone, much of this cool stuff would go unused. This book addresses both of these issues superbly, and tacks on a challenging Overlord AI so you can play alone or with friends and make use out of your entire Conan King’s Pledge.**(It should be noted that the book also contains a regular campaign where a human plays the Overlord, as well as a section for the Modiphius Conan RPG. This review is focused exclusively on the co-op campaign portion of the book.)
Here is my review of the book, presented as a series of thoughts:
Choose your own adventurer. The campaign kicks things off with a very exciting start, allowing you to actually tap in to all the wonderful minis and hero cards you own by allowing you to choose your three adventurers (with rules for an optional fourth), and the pool of choices makes up most of the heroes in contained in the King’s Pledge. This lets you play a character you are excited about, rather than one dictated to you, and also adds a bit of replayability right from the start.
But aren’t all the scenarios just about fighting? Well…yeah! The game IS called “Conan” and not “Starfleet Diplomatic Corps” so not sure what you might have expected? In all seriousness though, I heard this complaint from a couple of sources prior to purchasing the book, and I think it is more a criticism about a lack of variety in game mechanics throughout the scenarios than an actual complaint about how a game centered on a barbarian is somehow full of scenarios that involve…fighting. And I have to say—this statement is not completely wrong! The main function of the Overlord AI is to put pressure on the heroes by bringing relentless attacks, with the default focus for enemies being to target the most vulnerable hero. So of course the scenarios are going to be ones that work well within the confines of such an AI. However, there is far more depth in these scenarios than just “kill them all!” You see…
There is a lot of variety in the scenarios. Take the first scenario, which seems like a simple enough mission: you are on a boat, and two monsters are harrying you—defeat them! But even this simple opening adds some neat twists, as positioning becomes important to keep your hero away from nastiest monster, yet being too clever about positioning can result in a hero unexpectedly being caught by a tentacle and dragged towards the creature. So, while the scenario is certainly “just combat” it is not a mindless hack and slash game—you have to put some thought into how you position your team, which enemies you attack, and also how you spend your stamina so you are not caught without a defense should the enemy activate at an inopportune time.
And though some scenarios are indeed just “run through this area and kill everything” there are some clever scenarios as well that stand out and make me excited for the potential design space in co-op mode:
-One has you knocking out enemies and trying to carry them across the board to offer them up as a sacrifice. Of course, they are heavy and therefore slow down your movement (and possibly impede your special abilities). So you would think the best plan is to have one person on your team carrying fallen foes while the others protect the carrier. However, if that enemy tile activates, all of the knocked out units spring back up and fight again. So maybe it makes more sense to have everyone in the party carrying an enemy, so they don’t spring back up? But then that means you are all moving slowly across the board, giving the enemy more attack opportunities…!
-Another scenario has Conan and company enduring a nightmare, and stumbling from room to room looking for a way out of the dream (or is it a dream…?). This one becomes a series of boss battles, as most of the villain tiles are major foes, and evokes a horror element as you open doors and wonder what menace lurks within!
The sense of progression is great. When I first read the campaign rules, I was initially disappointed. There is no “leveling up” where skills get better and better as the campaign progresses. You do get the occasional boon card, that functions as a sort of stat boost, but these are given only twice in the campaign. Instead, improvement across the campaign is reflected in the loot you find, with items and spells carrying over from adventure to adventure (assuming you don’t suffer a total party wipe and lose it all!). Whereas in the standalone Conan scenarios loot can sometimes feel like a game of chance, here you have a strong incentive to find all the treasure and see what neat new items you find. Sorcerers, in particular, will want to find spell books wherever possible, as in classic D&D fashion they start the campaign fairly weak but can potentially end the campaign as the most powerful and versatile character. And the progression is not linear—you will find weapons and equipment with different uses, and will eventually face meaningful decisions about what to equip for your next session.
Unexpectedly great. As the campaign goes on, you will see your party get better individually but also as a team. The sorcerer especially begins to shine as a support piece. In one scenario, the sorcerer boosted the warrior, who had previously found a nice new bow, improving their ranged attack die and allowing the warrior to easily wipe out five enemies in one activation. In another, the sorcerer used a teleportation spell to switch places with allies, allowing them to move quickly about the board while still maintaining combat effectiveness.
As the campaign goes on, you begin to get a feel for your team’s strengths, and with the equipment you find begin to develop neat pathways to specialize in certain aspects of the game.
So do I really need the Modiphius Tiles to play this? You sure do. While some of the scenarios use the boards from the core game, a majority of the scenarios use the Conan Tiles sold by Modiphius. However, if you cannot find a retail copy of the printed tiles, you can buy the digital files online and print them out at home.
But do I really need a King’s Pledge? Officially, yes. However, if you do not mind proxying then you can easily play through the campaign with just a retail box, some proxied miniatures, and a few home printed cards. Each scenario lists the tiles you need for the Overlord—however, because the tiles are printed within the scenario itself (with all the unit’s abilities and stats) and because tile activation comes from number tokens and not the typical “river” of the core game, you can easily run the enemy units just from looking at the tiles in the book and keeping good track of which number tokens have come up. So, if you can find some suitable minis to proxy (or hey, just use similar looking ones from the core game) you can easily run the enemies without needing their tiles or official minis.
The only other tricky part is the equipment cards and spells you will find are drawn from both the retail box and the King’s Pledge box. But here I would direct you to the wonderful resource that is the Conan Companion, a website collecting all of the heroes, tiles, spells, equipment, etc. from the game: https://conan-companion.herokuapp.com
Go to this website, find the cards you don’t have, print them out, and voila! You can now play through the Monolith Sourcebook even if you only have the retail box.
Oh, and it has a lot of replayability. I mentioned earlier how you can choose from a large pool of heroes at the start. Taking different heroes will therefore give you a different experience if you wish to replay the campaign. But another clever design element is that the scenarios are not required to be played in any particular order in terms of balance. This struck me as odd at first, and for your first playthrough you should definitely stick to the recommended order. But if you want to go back and play them in a different order, the rules allow for this, and doing so then has the effect of resulting in a different progression for your characters, as the loot you can find varies from scenario to scenario.