Anyone playing Conquest?

[Andrew_McGuire]

Subtitled: The Last Argument of Kings? I'm hearing a lot about it everywhere but on LAF. Surely, this must change.

[Dentatus]

It pops up on my radar every now and then but it's mostly absent. Aren't they large scale figs? 40mm?

[Bloggard]

looked at it a few times ... figures don't grab me somehow ... but by gum they must be large- the 'giant' figure in the core box is apparently almost 'a foot' tall.

[Mammoth miniatures]

Nice sculpts but The idea of painting ranks and ranks of extra large miniatures is a bit...eh.

I will probably pick up some of the character sculpts tho since they look like fun painting projects.

[Knight-Captain Tyr]

If the miniatures weren't absolutely gigantic I probably would have jumped in.

I wish the creators all the success in the world, but don't understand why they felt the need to go supersize on their range. They would sell more miniatures if they could be used in other games too, and probably tempt a lot more 28mm purists to try out their game proper.

[Elbows]

Add me to the list of "if they weren't feckin' huge I'd be all over it".  It's as frustrating as Red Box Games is for me sometimes.  I have a heap of fantasy miniatures, but certain ranges are either far too small compared to the rest, or, in this case, waaaaay too big.  Conquest miniatures look freakin' gigantic.

I've less than zero interest in the game, but I would have been buying up kits for use in my dungeon crawl, 100%.  I've bought Reaper, Frostgrave, Oathmark, Fireforge, etc...because they all work together.  I think Para Bellum really screwed the pooch on this, personally.

Making a rank and file fantasy game is already a super sketchy/risky idea.  Then to make sure you can't use the figures with...anything else?  Asinine in my opinion.  It's as if you're voluntarily trying not to succeed.

[Andrew_McGuire]

Making a rank and file fantasy game is already a super sketchy/risky idea.  Then to make sure you can't use the figures with...anything else?  Asinine in my opinion.  It's as if you're voluntarily trying not to succeed.

That doesn't seem to far removed from GW's business model. Admittedly they scrapped WFB but there seems to be a likelihood of it returning in some form (as may have been intended all along,once the market seemed ready). From a cynic's perspective, Conquest seems to be an attempt to fill the perceived gap first. Come to think of it. a game could probably be designed about this.

Perhaps a closer parallel would be CMON's HATE, which clearly wasn't intended to succeed, at least in the usual sense of being a cash cow, because it was only ever available to Kickstarter pledgers. That's not the case with Conquest, of course, but it does suggest that there is some place for very niche releases. Para Bellum must have great confidence in theirs to make it incompatible with anything else.

I'm, to say the least, ambivalent about the figures myself, as much because of the oversized weapons and grotesque / baroque styling - neither exclusive to this manufacturer - as their sheer size. My eventual decision whether or not to buy the starter set will be more influenced by an assessment of the strength of the rules.

[Mammoth miniatures]

I did wonder if the scale was a form of future proofing - like they looked at the size of GW models and the general trend of companies to copy GW's sizing and said"well this way we might look odd now, but in 3 years we'll be the standard."

[Andrew_McGuire]

Well, you're a mammoth - you would say that. Good point, though. No one can say how far scale creep will go.

[Malebolgia]

Looked at some of the miniatures...but found the prices to be very high. But now I understand that they are on the big side it makes sense. But then they are in no way interesting to me

[Elbows]

That doesn't seem to far removed from GW's business model. Admittedly they scrapped WFB but there seems to be a likelihood of it returning in some form (as may have been intended all along,once the market seemed ready). From a cynic's perspective, Conquest seems to be an attempt to fill the perceived gap first. Come to think of it. a game could probably be designed about this.

Perhaps a closer parallel would be CMON's HATE, which clearly wasn't intended to succeed, at least in the usual sense of being a cash cow, because it was only ever available to Kickstarter pledgers. That's not the case with Conquest, of course, but it does suggest that there is some place for very niche releases. Para Bellum must have great confidence in theirs to make it incompatible with anything else.

I'm, to say the least, ambivalent about the figures myself, as much because of the oversized weapons and grotesque / baroque styling - neither exclusive to this manufacturer - as their sheer size. My eventual decision whether or not to buy the starter set will be more influenced by an assessment of the strength of the rules.

Yeah, I don't think we can compare to GW as they're a massive company - probably the only 'massive' gaming company if we exclude collectible card games.  They create the market that they sell to and have a massive captive audience.  An upstart company/new game does not...hence why I find it really silly to just blow everyone out with scale.

There's scale-creep which occurs quite slowly, and then there's scale explosion.  Don't get me wrong...I think the minis look great, I think the story sounds good, but these are easily 40mm miniatures and nothing approaching the 25/28/32mm style of other companies.



This is a normal human fighter being shown against a 40mm(ish) Primaris marine, and an already heroic 28mm guardsman on the right side, etc.  I really hope this game survives and takes off, but I can't help feeling it'll show up at 60% off on Miniature Market within a year or two.

[Andrew_McGuire]

I'm still not playing, but have just downloaded and printed the quick start rules, having received my first expansion pack (Steel Legion) today, essentially to see what they're like. (I don't have the core set, or anything else as yet, but having read reviews on Board Game Geek, I believe the game is definitely worth looking into).

I've just discovered there is a quasi-skirmish version of the rules, which I won't be printing as it's 143 pages long:

https://www.para-bellum.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/FirstBlood.pdf

With regard to the models, I'm not put off by their size as so many appear to be, but they do seem a bit fiddly to put together, particularly as no instructions are provided, though these can also be found on the website.

[Elbows]

I'm not put off by their size on their own merit, but rather...they'd be utterly useless with the other hundreds of fantasy miniatures I own, and absolutely wouldn't fit at all in my 25mm squared dungeons, etc.

If someone is fully interested in just Conquest, I'm sure that's not a problem at all.  But having an entire second line of miniatures which are 20-30% larger than the rest of my miniatures puts this at a complete "nope" for me.  The beauty of fantasy miniatures, for me at least, is how many different things you can use them for.  Thus, these not fitting with any other companies' fantasy miniatures is an issue for me, too big of an issue.

Shame as I rather love the look/lore of the game!

[Mammoth miniatures]

I've just discovered there is a quasi-skirmish version of the rules, which I won't be printing as it's 143 pages long:

And here i was worried about changing my rules from 3 pages to 16...

[jetengine]

Just seems like another attempt at taking WFBs "Rank and Flank" crown but with some changes to the races and making the miniatures at an odd scale for propietary reasons.