The Conquistadors: The Spanish Conquest of the Americas 1518-1548

I have complained before about Compass's quality control when it comes to player experience, and The Conquistadors is the clearest case of “what a shame.” This is not a game that prettifies the Spanish conquest: rape, massacre, and plunder are present, with no attempt to soften the subject. And while its treatment is certainly politically incorrect, the game's underlying structure is interesting enough that I cannot simply toss it aside along with its infuriating flaws.

Each player takes charge of one or more organised expeditions of Spanish conquerors and sends them across unexplored America in search of wealth and glory. What matters is that this is a genuine sandbox: I can act as a friend to the indigenous peoples, as an Indiana Jones of the era, or as a vulture waiting for a rival expedition to get beaten up by the locals so that I can swoop in and loot it afterwards. There are plenty of rules, but for the most part they make sense and can be taught in a reasonable amount of time.

The trouble begins in the flow of actions, especially with the dice. Diplomacy uses 2d6, Discovery uses 1d6, plunder uses 1d6, plunder exhaustion uses 2d6: the constant switching adds nothing meaningful and merely makes me stop to check what I am supposed to roll. Over four hours of play, I said “wrong dice” more than two hundred times, which is absurd. The player aids do not help nearly as much as they should, so looking up information becomes part of the contest. Thankfully, the interaction is worth it: the cards have a merciless take-that quality, on the level of Forged in Steel, and let you fling garbage—and radiation—at your fellow players with very little politeness.

If the design normalised the probabilities around 2d6 and provided genuinely useful aids, I would be talking about a far more complete game. As it stands, it carries a major and irrational development failure, yet it has enough personality, freedom, and nastiness to make me want to give it more time. In an age full of care-bear politeness, sometimes I need exactly this: a game that opens the pressure valve. And, naturally, a game in which I can sing Running Wild without it being my fault that the group loses its patience.

“Conquistadores / Hungry for gold, doing as the religious madman told…”