Overview: Conquest Tactics is set on Fire Continent, an imaginary world in which the humans have been subjugated to the Kaborha (big rhino-headed guys) for hundreds of years. But now they’ve been able to unlock their magic and are casting off their bonds. Meanwhile, some interdimensional creatures known as The Malice have shown up, wreaking havoc and destroying both humans and Kaborha. In Conquest Tactics, two of the three factions face off in a battle.
Players: 2
Ages: 13 and up
Playing Time: 40 minutes
Retail: $50 for the starter set on Kickstarter; other reward levels available
Who Will Like It? This is more of a collectible card game, which I have less experience with. The game involves building your deck and will eventually have many more cards available to add to your arsenal, though so far only the pre-built decks for each faction are available. But there’s also a board and tactical points, which make it somewhat different from Magic: The Gathering. Players fond of CCGs may want to check this one out.
Components:
The game is actually mostly complete: Zeitgeyser had been working on the game for some time on their own, and turned to Kickstarter for the final leg of publication. Right now they’ve got cards, boards, and bits, but they don’t have a nice box — they want to be able to have everything in a nice boardgame-quality box, rather than the thin cardboard version it’s currently in. I warned them to be careful, though, because it’s a large box (to fit the board) with not much in it, and I’m picky about that sort of thing.
The starter set includes a deck for each of the three factions, with 68 cards each. There’s also a fairly large gameboard which shows a 5×5 battlefield grid and the tactical points trackers. There are also a bunch of little plastic gems which are used for tracking hit points on cards, the tactical points, and so forth.
At first glance, the artwork on the cards looks pretty great. I know from the rules that in some cases there are cards stacked (like if you attach some armor to a troop, for instance) but I’m not sure how you would easily read the armor rating when it’s underneath the troop card, and the spaces on the battlefield aren’t so large that you can spread cards out much. This may become more clear in play, but part of me also wonders if the board is necessary at all.
The quality of the components (aside from the aforementioned box) are all pretty nice; we’ll have to wait to see what the box turns out to be like if the Kickstarter campaign succeeds.
A few of the Conquest Tactics cards.
Gameplay:
If you’re interested, the rules are available as a PDF here.
Each player picks a faction and then builds their decks (though in this initial starter set you just use all the cards provided). You get a deck of 60 troops, spells and skills, equipment, and circumstances. In addition to that supply deck, you also have a base, 4 Victory Conditions, and 3 Trophies. Players then select up to 20 tactical points’ worth from their supply deck which will form their starting deployment, and they set up troops on their end of the battlefield. Then the battle begins.
The round takes several steps (named so that they spell out TRIUMPH), getting tactical points, resupplying your hands, passing initiative, moving up the field, deploying new troops and other cards, and then playing out actions by using tactical points to activate cards. You can use things to protect and enhance your own troops or to attack the other player.
The game ends when one player achieves 3 of their 4 Victory Conditions.
Conclusion:
There are still about three weeks left on the Kickstarter campaign, so I’m hoping to be able to play this one at some point to find out what it’s really like. Again, I don’t have much experience with CCGs so it looks a little intimidating (and I’ve never been a huge fan of collectible anything) but it does seem to have some similarities to other games I’ve been playing recently.
You can go to the Conquest Tactics website for more information, or to their Kickstarter page to back them.
