Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings
| Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings | ||
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| Wargame published by Para Bellum Wargames |
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| No. of Players | 2+ | |
| Session Time | 1-2 hours | |
| Authors | Alessio Salvatore | |
| First Publication | 2018 | |
"Ultima ratio regum."
- – Cardinal Richelieu
"War is simply the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means."
- – Carl von Clausewitz
"I am a king and I have one last argument."
- – King Fredrik "The Great" of Brandengrad
The game
Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings is a Rank and Flank tabletop strategy game in the style of Kings of War and Warhammer Fantasy, with the rules written by who else but Alessio Cavatore (Alessio has not created the rules system. He overcharges small companies, does none of the work and the companies are left developing the game on their own. He sells a name not a ruleset). I guess the guy has a type. Conquest's concept is basically revive a Warhammer Fantasy setting that doesn't exist currently while also not being generic Tolkien plagiarism. While also actually encouraging strategy outside of listbuilding.
The game has a few unique mechanics that create an experience which makes it quite different from other Fantasy and Rank 'n File games.
First: Alternating activations, the good shit. After a regiment activates, your opponent gets to activate one of theirs, its basic stuff but makes the game less of a "oops i killed your whole army on my turn" affair that is unfortunately present in other games.
Second: The command deck. You pick the order your regiments will activate at the start of the turn, then you stick to that order (Unless you're a cheating Spire motherfucker) via the command deck. This creates an element of prediction to the game, sometimes its better to activate a unit that might not be obvious first because you know your opponent's response is likely deep in their deck, and you could take advantage of that knowledge.
Third: Regiments have 2 actions. Your dudes get to pick from a list of actions (Move, Charge, Shoot, Reform are the basic ones) you can use these in any combination, you just can only use 2 unless a special rule is allowing you a third.
Fourth: Dynamic Deployment, your furthest forward unit creates a line, you can deploy units on the edges of the battlefield as far as this line goes. Meaning giving your opponent lots of ground can be very dangerous, UP YOURS GUNLINES! However you can counter this by moving units past their line, which pushes their line back that far
Fifth: Unit weight classes. Lights, Mediums, and Heavies. Your scouts actually matter! You don't start out with any of your army on the table actually, you start rolling for reinforcements turn 1, Lights can come on as quick as turn one or as late as turn 3, while heavies might not show up into the 5th turn. However because of this your Light units are usually either cheap scouts or very expensive special forces dudes. Mediums are line holders or pushers generally, while Heavies are line breakers and usually a bit undercosted due to them taking forever to get to the battle.
These things add up into what is a unique experience in wargaming, with listing building, positioning, and prediction equalling being important factors.
The Lore
Genesis of the World & the Four Horsemen
Originally there was Creation and Destruction. One aeon Destruction was sick of Creation creating stars and matter so they had a smackdown that ended in a tie: Creation was punched so hard he became the star and magic stuff of the universe whilst Destruction was slashed so badly he decided to have a nap. With both bros out of action and the cycle of creation and destruction broken, their sister Balance came into being. Balance struck a deal with what was left with Creation. She would imprison Destruction on the condition that Creation would never try to reform. He agreed and so Balance hugged the napping Destruction until she covered him with herself and he became the hot core of a new world called Ea.
Destruction had some pretty bad dreams though that manifested into 3 horsemen: Famine (an entity that ironically just wanted to eat everything), War and Death. In a weird proxy war, Creation manifested his own horseman called Conquest and the four duked it out, with the magical space entities later called 'Dragons' stepping in. In the end, War was buried in a cage of his own essence deep in the earth close to Destruction with the others banished or 'killed'. Balance, watching all this, was so sad with this conflict she cried tears, which swept over Ea, and eventually became life. Life turned out to be pretty damn good and the Dragons decided they wanted in on this. Being incorporeal space gods apparently wasn't enough. So 2 Space Dragons remained as they were while the rest eventually formed fleshy bodies to live in, sacrificing more and more of their superpowers as they tried to become more natty. Biggest problem with this though was that any offspring they had a 100% autism rate. Second biggest problem was that they never died. So those that became fleshy first formed a Boomer ruling class and those below never moved up the social ladder, forced to hear how easy they had it from their elders for eternity.
Effectively blocked from political life, the zoomer Dragons became more materialistic with their Nintendos and Fidget Spinners but they saw an opportunity in the war against the recently arrived Exiles. In the peace treaty they added a demand that the Exiles teach them how to bio-engineer life. From that spawned the first of the Dwarves, a slave caste, made to serve the Dragons and empty their piss jars.
The Exiles
The exiles are Elves from another planet, originally just colonists on Eä using magical portals they've created to explore new worlds. However after UNSPEAKABLE EVIL did something to their homeworld they fled to avoid bad things. However after the first of the lowerclass nobles arrived they decided to be huge cunts and seal off the gate they used to get there. Killing off millions of fellow Elves. This unsurprisingly, pissed off everybody. Which resulted in the 3 way civil war that split the Exiles into the Spires (the guys who did the whole self genocide thing), The Weavers (hippie elves), and The Quiet, who presumably listen to emo music and dye their hair black and neon blue.
The Spire are dedicated to Returning home, and willing to do anything to get back because they're cutthroat psychopaths.
The Weavers want to Terraform Eä because they're presumably scared to try and get back/don't think they can get back.
The Quiet are edgelords who do mysterious stuff that we don't know about because thats their job.
The Spire and Weavers tried to make up after the civil war by coming together to try and cosplay as Norse gods. This resulted in the Nords and their Einherjar demi-god daddies. However the Spire fucked it all up because thats their job and some dickhead named "Loki" killed the guy who was supposed to alert the Einherjar of the Ragnarök about to happen. This resulted in the death of pretty much all of the Exiles in the process of pretending to be a god. Thus the Weavers and Spire had a second bad breakup after their terrible makeup sex and absolutely refuse to work with eachother.
The Fall
As the Dweghorn infused themselves with the essence of War itself and the Exiles played God, far to the east a tribe of humans started worshipping a magic battery and invented religion. Something that would totally not have any negative consequences. Trying to find shelter from the elements, this tribe started exploring an abandoned Dweghorn hold and began gathering around an old furnace for warmth. Soon enough, they discovered that the power source for the furnace was a tiny of sliver of Creation, fractured from the big guy during his fight with Destruction. The more it was worshipped, the stronger it became, in time becoming a full on deity named Hazlia who led his people out of the ground and into the world to found a civilisation called the Old Dominion.
For a while, things were pretty good and in time, humanity under Hazlia was starting to match the elder races in power. A government was formed with Hazlia at its head, who created a pantheon of his own budding personalities and a couple older deities who were invited to join him. Hazlia built a floating celestial palace above the Dominion's capital from which he would occasionally trot down and do a magic trick or two for his fans. A breed of half-humans were designed by the Exiles to do the Dominion's general labour, leaving citizens time to do other things, such as worship Hazlia.
Then one day Hazlia decided that the humans in the far north, the Nords, should be conquered for....reasons? Tens of thousands of men were thrown into the snowy wastes for no gain and three entire legions were wiped out in the Dominion's land war in Asia. For the Nords this was their Ragnarok, the ultimate war, and even without their superpower Exile-enhanced Einherjar, they fought the Dominion to a standstill. Then Hazlia decided to go to war against the Spires for....reasons. The Dweghorn, needing no real excuse to fight, jumped in as well and now the Dominion found itself fighting a three front war. Sure enough things started getting crazy: leaders blamed the half-human workers for their woes and the resulting progroms meant no-one could work the fields. Crop yields dropped, people starved and any 'criminals' were rounded up as slave labour to try to fix the labour shortage meaning more legions had to be taken off the front lines to deal with the constant slave uprisings.
The XII Legion however refused the call back to the capital. Longtime worshippers of Cleon, the God of Soldiers and Honour, they had been effectively banished to guard the western passes of the Dominion's frontier. The first clue that things back home weren't right was the growing hordes of refugees fleeing the Dominion. A trickle became a flood and anyone with brains that could see the end coming had taken the gamble to cross the Wastelands and over the mountains. The XII took on the job of protecting the refugees, majorly pissing off Hazlia. Out of spite more than anything, another two legions were sent to deal with them, only for one of the legions to join the XII and betray the other.
Back at the capital, the human government figured out pretty quickly that Hazlia had, for some reason, gone mad. Two initiatives were made: first was to get all men of science and knowledge out of the Dominion ASAP, down towards the southwest. The second was to kill God. Operation Kill God worked but Hazlia was so triggered by the whole thing he had a tantrum and crashed his palace into the earth, wiping out the Old Dominion and bringing on a mini Ice Age, henceforth known as 'The Fall.'
For the lucky refugees that had fled west and crossed the mountains, they would eventually settle in the expanse beyond, founding what would become the Hundred Kingdoms. The XII Legion, now the Last Legion, stayed in the mountain passes, fighting back whatever nightmares were creeping out of the magical radiation from The Fall. This was apparently so traumatic, no survivors would say what happened during that winter. Instead they would form 'Orders' to help guide the survivors and try to stop them from murdering each other.
The Dragons and the Dweghoms
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The Nords awakening
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Nepenthe remembers
Factions & army list
Conquest has 4 factions currently, while 4 are known to be in development, there are as many as 18 planned.
The Hundred Kingdoms
Basically the Holy Roman Empire, but less like The Empire more like "Oh shit the Emperor is dead and now everyone is killing eachother." Think lots of tiny nations vying for control constantly, hence the name. Armies consist of tons of ranged infantry, lots of MIGHTY HORSES, with The remnants of the Empire (read as platemail wearing heavy infantry) backing them up. Oh yeah, there's also the almost superhuman Orders. Basically Knights who were blessed BY GOD... and maybe related to the Spire enhanced Nords.
Spires
The Spires Are space Elves that are essentially a mix of Dark Eldar and Skaven. Murdered 99% of their race as a power grab which immediately resulted in a civil war. On the battlefield they don't fight directly prefering to use clones and drones for all of the menial stuff like warfare and manual labor. Able to use a horde army of drones, a elite army of clones, or a monster mash army.
Dweghoms
FUCKASSMAD DWARVES. Sold their souls to escape slavery, and now are obsessed with war on a level that would make a Greenskin blush. Plays like a grindy melee army with lots of heavy infantry, bullshit OP wizards, and Drakes with cannons!
Nords
Glass cannon vikings who fugged demigods and got Werewolves. Armies consist of MANLY vikings, deformed monster babies, and JÖTNAR! Are mad at the sons of the fire giants for eating their gods during Ragnarök. Enjoy nice walks on the 100 Kingdoms coastline to grab as much loot as they can.
