Conan: The Book Of Set Kickstarter Now Live
September 6, 2017 by brennon
Monolith is now back on Kickstarter with more Conan goodness as they look to bring The Book Of Set to life.
The Book Of Set is a fantastic book which will contain all manner of extra scenarios (additional scenarios can be seen HERE too) for you to play in Conan. It also contains masses of artwork and descriptions for monsters and more from the Hyborian Age so you can get even more invested in the savage world of Conan.
It seems like the perfect book for a fan of Conan to delve into as it explores the background of the different characters and how they fit into the narrative.
Of course as well as the amazing artwork by Adrian Smith you also get to see the models that are present in the game too.
If you're looking to expand your collection or simply just delve deeper into the background and lore of Conan this seems like a good shout. However, that's not all that's up for grabs.
The Game & Expansions
For those that missed out first time round, they are looking to now deliver more Conan to your doorstep as well as the expansions for the game.
The core game is available, as you'll see above, with all of the goodness to get you going. But, if you're a die hard fan you can get all the extra stuff too by going All In.
Now that is a pretty penny to spend when it comes to Conan but if this is YOUR game of choice then more power to you for picking up everything you see there.
Where do you sit on the pledges for Conan?
"It seems like the perfect book for a fan of Conan to delve into as it explores the background of the different characters and how they fit into the narrative..."
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Backed but I can’t help but fell a little conned. I backed the original kickstarter and at the time I backed for the King Pledge plus all KS exclusive add-ons hoping to pick the rest gradually via retail. However it’s taken me the better part of a year to find the expansions at retail, several of the non-KS exclusive items have never made it to retail. Many of the additional miniatures don’t have any scenarios for them and those that do only have one (available as a download). The miniature boxes were released without the scenarios that they were supposed… Read more »
I agree, but it’s not like this collection is going to remedy the unusable model problem.
I think they intended that people would create their own scenarios, but without a balancing system, such as points, this is dofficult to get right unless you just want to have some fun and say screw symmetry!
It solves the issue by providing scenarios that should have been included with a product I already paid for in another product that I have to pay for. Creating your own scenarios for any game is difficult, with, Conan more so. For example if you take Imperial Assault, a similar type of game, there’s some very useful features in there that allows players to use any hero they like and the overlord has a mixture of predetermined baddies and some “open slots” where the overlord can select any unit that he has activation cards for. Conan is the opposite in… Read more »
Another concern that I have is that once I get the book that it will contain scenarios for models I don’t have (and by extension activation cards). When I backed I went for the King Pledge and all the Kickstarter Exclusive Add-Ons). I have since bought the Khitaiz Stygia and Nordheim expansions along with the Crossbowmen, Kushite Witch Hunters and Yogah of Yag. On top of that there are, as far as I can tell, two add ons I have been unable to obtain because they never made it to retail (Dragon and Black Ones); if the new book contains… Read more »
Did you know that there are two ways around this. There is the official site and an endorsed un-official site, where you can flick through scenarios and see which models are used. They are always adding more and the have all of the scenarios from the book.
All the scenarios are downloadable and free.
http://www.monolithedition.com/en/
https://the-overlord.net/
It’s the rules for the models that’s the problem. I don’t mind not being able to get the models, I don’t mind proxying, but to publish a book which costs money but which you can’t use 100% of because they aren’t also publishing rules for the models needed for it is, IMO, a failure by Monolith. I’m lucky I suppose, there’s only two scenarios in the book for which I don’t have the required models
That i might only be able to buy further expansions and/or miniatures, or even more copies of expansions and/or miniatures, is what puts me off a lot of kickstarters.
That i might only be able to buy further expansions and/or miniatures, or even more copies of expansions and/or miniatures, except via possible future kickstarters, is what puts me off a lot of kickstarters.
With Conan as it stands, you can’t even do that. I have managed to obtain some, but not all, of the items funded on the Kickstarter. If it made it to retail I have managed to get a hold of a copy although it hasn’t been easy trying to find them. There are several items that never made it to retail and it has been announced that there will be no further retail support meaning that they will never get there. As a result of that there are two scenarios in the new book that I won’t be able to… Read more »
Backed it, but i was only able to after they opened up a pledge for a second wave print run for a February delivery. They seriously underestimated the demand for the book, the original pledge levels for the short run were based off of Campaign Book sales.
it is a pretty penny. all those boxes and books covered in that fantastic art would be a good way to get you to part with it though.
This is a game campaign, the making of the book is nothing more than a way to offload their remaining Conan stock, the book is already being printed so funds are not actually required for the project. And charging $14 postage on one book is just taking the piss.
I said the same thing on their Facebook page. Aside from the campaign book, this feels very much like a stock clearance, which to me doesn’t bode well for the future of the game
I’ve had similar worries for a while. Although they plan a version 2 for 2019, using the tweaked system put into their upcoming Batman game.
I haven’t followed the Batman boardgame so I can’t really comment on whether that fixes all the issues with the game. If it allows people to be more flexible with what they use in any given scenario then for me that’s a massive improvement.
It’s still a good game, no doubts, but if they sort out some of those issues, give the game a little more replayability, it could be a fantastic game
Interesting – is that something they have announced?
They’ve said that in future all their products will be KS only. If there’s demand for more Conan then it’ll only be available on KS. Whether that’s new product or reprinting old.
They did announce something on Kickstarter that they would be running another Kickstarter in 2019 to allow players to explore new locations within the world of Conan; or at least that’s the way it seems to be worded. I personally don’t mind them moving to a Kickstarter only business model however if they’re doing that they need to look at smaller, more frequent kickstarters to make going “all in” more affordable. I couldn’t afford, at the time, to go all in on Conan and as a result there are items that I won’t ever be able to get (an eye… Read more »
Everything is now KSE. You either get it during the campaign, on the pledge manager, or hope for a reprint or overstock KS. They’re not moving away from big campaigns. Batman and Claustrophobia are 2018, and Conan is after that (as you say).
Sorry, I meant in the 2019 Kickstarter they need to be clear from the outset that everything will be KS exclusive.
They’ve been clear about their new policy for a little while now 🙂
Maybe they have, I haven’t backed anything since the first Conan game and, well, that wasn’t so clear.
Conan was intented to go into retail and did go into retail. It’s based on that experience that they then decided to go KS only. Batman is the first campaign they’ll run since changing policy.
And that’s part of the problem. They’re essentially withdrawing from retailer because their distributor didn’t think it was likely to be a commercial success and they haven’t been able to find another (or something like that; there was a vague statement from them on the Kickstarter comments page), which is fine. I don’t mind so much that it’s not been a success at retail or that Monolith will be running a Kickstarter only Business model from now on. What kid of bothers me is that a fair amount of stuff from the first Kickstarter never materialised (scenarios for the extra… Read more »
According to Fred Henry, the issue was the price they would have to sell it at to get retailers to take it meant they were taking a loss on each copy they sold. So the more successful it was, they worse it was for them. He reckons they had to sell the core box to Asmodee for $70, who would sell it to a US distributor for $100, who would sell it to retailers for $120, which would make the real MSRP $240. At that price no retailer would touch it.
When I lived in the US (back in the 90s) we were looking at bringing a range of UK figures to the US market. I don’t know if things have changed since then, but the situation (and markups) from the middlemen was absolutely crazy. Distributors would have exclusive deals, refuse to supply retailers “if” they dealt with other distributors in competition, and charge a pretty hefty markup. These days with the internet and all, I’m still not sure “why” the distributor hasn’t been squeezed out of the market to some extent. The issue is that the producer would need to… Read more »
Your LGS shouldn’t be building its business on KS products. They’re not where the retail money is. KS is a parallel market to retail and the two co-exist very happily.
There’s not many games from KS actually make it successfully to mainstream retail, I can only really think of Kings of War, Deadzone and maybe Warpath will as well. I’m sure there are others, these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Most KS products now seem to be highly self contained, occasionally they end up being sold via the creators’ own websites. The only real argument for Kickstarter affecting LGSs is that money spent on Kickstarter is money not spend in a different product from an LGS, but there’s no guarantee that… Read more »
Think the biggest sellers recently at my local store have been FFG games and various CMON (Zombicide rings a bell) games from the last chat I had with the owner. It all boils down to moving to a series of limited release runs, rather than a continual supply. Each method has its merits (and downfalls), but I have noticed at the local club we seem to go through a KS phase for a month or two of a game (then it rarely sees the light of day), and then a smaller gaming group playing stuff that’s in retail on a… Read more »
FFG don’t use Kickstarter as far as I know. Zombiecide was Kickstarted but, as popular as it is I would be surprised if it was the the top selling product. Unless of course your LGS isn’t stocking Warmachine, Hordes or 40k.
Correct on FFG. They haven’t used KS. Zombicide briefly got into the top 10 of ICv2’s best selling board games a few years back but hasn’t made an appearance since.
FFG doesn’t need KS. They have built themselves up over the years. KS has allowed Monolith, CMON and others, to jump straight to the same heights as FFG and they don’t have the same experience or size of team.
There are bound to be error and mistake. If you compare those 3 companies and the numbers of games they have produced and their staffing number, you will see a difference…