OverPower Cards for Robert E. Howard Characters (Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane,etc.)

[Karmanal of Zert]

I will be making Kull cards next but for now here are my Conan card ideas. Anyone who is a fan of any Robert E. Howard should please feel free to use this thread to share their ideas for REH OP cards! I'll explain the ideas behind the Specials as I go along. I discussed a lot of the reasons why I gave Conan the Power Grid rankings I did in this thread: http://www.beenhereandthere.com/SMF/index.php?topic=32.0 A cool Conan Hero card made by CCTelander of these very boards can be found here: http://justabgkid.com/emporium/sm-conan.html

*** Disclaimer: These cards are meant to be played with modified rules that alter normally unusable cards to make them usable, so that there are more, better usable characters in OverPower. If you are playing with official cards and by official rules only, you will likely find that this character has an overwhelming amount of good, usable cards. For balanced gameplay, simply pick 1-3 non-OPD's and 1-2 OPD's you like, or whatever you think is fairest, and play with those. Or experiment with alternate rules that improve your favorite characters' most worthless Specials, and you may find them to be quite competitive with these home-mades. I put effort into making individual cards that make sense given characters' abilities and the precedents laid down by the several official OverPower Expansions while deliberately avoiding what I see as their pitfall of having made many, many worthless Special cards, which leads to the inevitable outcome of my characters having a much larger quantity of good/usable Specials than most official ones wound up with. It's up to you to decide the fairest way to integrate these cards into your house rules and playing styles and strategies. Above all: do what you want, and have fun playing OverPower! ***

Conan
1 Energy
7 Fighting
6 Strength
4 Intellect

King By His Own Hand - EN

Play on your turn to concede battle. Conan's Mission cards Ventured this battle return to pile Ventured from. Opponent's advance as normal.

One of the existing OP characters I looked at to help me come up with card ideas for Conan was Ka-Zar, who has this very same card for being "King of the Savage Land". It seemed fitting for Conan, not only as King of Aquilonia for a time but also as someone who in fact made himself into a king, to have the same ability. The phrase "King By His Own Hand" is used a lot in reference to Conan in the Marvel comics and though I'm quite sure Robert E. Howard used the same exact wording more than once, I do need to double check that and find an original source to cite. Either way, I think as a homemade OverPower card this one makes about as much sense as possible. The same exact card for the same exact character trait.

Thief - EM

Acts as a level 4 Intellect attack. If successful, opponent must discard 1 card of opponent's choice from hand.

The original idea for this card was for it to be the same as Catwoman's Cunning Thief OPD, which makes opponent discard 5 cards from the top of draw pile into dead pile. This card idea is more original because I'm pretty sure the Catwoman card is the only precedent for a "Thief" Special card in OP, but I think the logic of it still works out - if the thieving is successful, you lose something you had; if not, you don't. So I admit it's a bit of a stretch as far as precedent goes, but certainly not a power grab. I think it makes sense. I got the idea for it doing it this way from Eradicator's similar card. The Robert E. Howard quote I cite for this can be found in The Phoenix on the Sword (originally published in 1932): "Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet." Thanks to Wikipedia for that one!

Spring-Steel Quickness - AD

Conan or teammate may avoid 1 attack of 9 or less.

At first I admit my plan was to make this work for an attack of 6 or less, but after seeing the previews list for the Marvels set and how Daredevil and similar characters got this and similar cards (there was a new card idea for that set for a non-OPD Special that acted as a level 9 Power card that could only be used to defend character or any front-line teammate) it seemed to make sense that Conan's physical prowess would warrant him having the same ability. The term "spring-steel quickness" is taken directly out of Robert E. Howard's The People of the Black Circle (1934).

Deadly Aim -EJ

Acts as a level 2 Fighting attack. If successful, acts as a level 8 Strength Power card.

This card idea came to me purely from the multiple instances in Robert E. Howard's Beyond the Black River (1935) in which "Conan hurled his axe with deadly aim" (that's right, another direct quote!   ) - in one instance REH even specifies that "all the weight of arm and shoulder was behind the throw" - at someone's head with the result that it splits clean in half. 2 Fighting for the aim, 8 Strength once it hits because to me it seems the Strength is what gives the throw that kind of impact once it hits. Also the fact that Hawkeye has this card (same types and everything) for one of his arrows tells me this isn't an over-reach. I put effort into making the cards make sense for OverPower as well as making sense for the original REH character!

Cimmerian Slayer - NK

Acts as a level 4 Any-Power attack (might change this to 3 Fighting or 3 Strength). If attack is defended, Conan may draw 1 card from top of draw pile. Discard duplicates.

Thunderbird got this card (as a 3 Fighting) in the X-Men set for being an "Apache Warrior". Therefore it didn't seem too much a stretch for Conan to have the same card for his native heritage and fighting ability. I originally was going to name the card "Cimmerian Warrior", but Robert E. Howard refers to Conan as a "slayer" multiple times in multiple tales, including in the quote I already gave for the Thief card, and frankly I think "Cimmerian Slayer" has a much nicer ring to it. I also thought it would've made sense to name this card "Barbarian of a Thousand Generations of Barbarians" from a precise quote to that effect also found in Beyond the Black River, but I thought it better to save that for a future OPD or other Special card idea.

Amra (The Lion) - JB (OPD)

Remove all hits from Conan's Permanent Record and Current Battle, and switch places with Reserve.

Earlier in OP this card was very rarely given to someone and only with obvious reason. In later Marvel expansions, they seemed to start giving this card (and ones similar to it) to heroes with their real name (as opposed to their super-hero name) as the "title" of the card if you will, which gave me the impression that the card represented "going home," wherever that may be for that character, and recuperating. This is a small twist on that concept. Conan was called Amra by the black corsairs, a group he eventually became a chief of. In their language Amra means "The Lion", and they sometimes call him that too. References to all this can be found in "The Return of the Corsair" and other chapters in Robert E. Howard's The Hour of the Dragon (1936), the only full-length Conan novel he wrote before dying at age 30. So I see the card as being similar to aforementioned official cards because I think of it as Conan going back among allies to recuperate for a little bit (or to be more precise, the rest of the battle). Same concept with slightly different application for a character with a more unusual background than most. I really had a lot of options with this one, because the fact that Conan has been a mercenary, a thief, a pirate/corsair, a nomad, a king, etc. is a big part of his character as portrayed by Robert E. Howard, but since Amra was actually an alternate name and therefore somewhat of an alter-identity for Conan, I think it's a perfect match.

Born on the Battlefield - BF (OPD)

Conan's hits to K.O. number is increased to 30.

This card and ones like it (specifically, cards that make the hero immune to Spectrum K.O.) seem to have gone mostly to Fighting- and Strength-oriented characters, and like most of the better cards for those type of characters the only explanation given in the "title" of the card is something that sounds cool and may or may not have something directly to do with stamina (or whatever the Special may happen to do). For that reason I decided not to go with one of many quotes I could have about Conan's barbaric stamina for this card (or making this the Barbarian of a Thousand Generations of Barbarians card), but instead something a little more flavorful that is more connected to the card's ability in spirit than anything else. For this one I have to quote a letter Mr. Howard wrote to a friend of his, which can be found here: http://www.amrathelion.com/cimmerian/the-cimmerian/robert-e-howard.html

"There's Nothing In The Universe Cold Steel Won't Cut" - AS (OPD)

Acts as a level 9 Any-Power attack +1 for each hit on Conan's permanent record.

A not great but not bad old school OPD they gave Hulk and Wolverine in the original OverPower set but then forgot about all the way till the X-Men expansion (I think). Other than what type to make Cimmerian Slayer, the title of this card is basically the only other thing I don't want to say I've finalized with these card ideas yet. It's kind of long and this card could just as easily be Barbarian of a Thousand Generations of Barbarians, although that's pretty long too and this is a quote Conan actually says, which is something I really wanted to do! Also I'm not sure if and what Inherent Ability Conan's Hero card should have. I like the idea CCTelander has for Conan's IA, but I also think having it something akin to Ka-Zar's would make sense as well.

I need to find good pictures for all of these which will be easier with some than others, but once I find the pictures I can make the cards lickity-split with a handy OP-card-making computer program my brother made a few years back. The cards don't look nearly as refined as the homemades I'm used to seeing linked to around here (*a-hem CCTelander and Bios) but they can be made fast and they get the job done. In the (hopefully near) future I'll also be making new threads for OverPower card ideas for Edgar Rice Burroughs characters (John Carter), Michael Moorcock characters (Corum), and Star Trek teams (the original series and The Next Generation). I was originally just going to make these to play against my brother, but I think it's great that there's an OP forum for me to post them on for fellow OP addicts to check out! Long live OP!

[Karmanal of Zert]

I am still yet to make a Hero card, but I've decided to not give Conan any Inherent Ability because I'm giving him a 6 and a 7 and pretty good specials. There are some there are alternate versions of, which you can figure out for yourself; let me know which of the alternates you like better!

*** Disclaimer: These cards are meant to be played with modified rules that alter normally unusable cards to make them usable, so that there are more, better usable characters in OverPower. If you are playing with official cards and by official rules only, you will likely find that this character has an overwhelming amount of good, usable cards. For balanced gameplay, simply pick 1-3 non-OPD's and 1-2 OPD's you like, or whatever you think is fairest, and play with those. Or experiment with alternate rules that improve your favorite characters' most worthless Specials, and you may find them to be quite competitive with these home-mades. I put effort into making individual cards that make sense given characters' abilities and the precedents laid down by the several official OverPower Expansions while deliberately avoiding what I see as their pitfall of having made many, many worthless Special cards, which leads to the inevitable outcome of my characters having a much larger quantity of good/usable Specials than most official ones wound up with. It's up to you to decide the fairest way to integrate these cards into your house rules and playing styles and strategies. Above all: do what you want, and have fun playing OverPower! ***


art by Frank Frazetta

art by Dave Stewart

art by John Buscema in both cases (I made a special point to include his art on at least one card)

art by Chris Quilliams

art by Frank Frazetta

art by Frank Frazetta

art by Frank Frazetta

art by Frank Frazetta

As I warned in my previous post, they don't look as polished as CCTelander's or Bios' work, but they get the job done. If anyone wants the really easy-to-use computer program my brother made that I used to make these just let me know and I'm sure he'll be able and willing to hook you up. I got really lucky in some areas and managed to use classic Frazetta art for a lot of the cards, but for others like Thief and Deadly Aim I had to look elsewhere and wound up finding some stuff that I think works really well also. I found exactly what I was looking for for both of those. The only one that doesn't make all that much sense is the Amra (The Lion) picture, but when I first had the idea for that card I envisioned it having that exact picture of him so I admittedly couldn't bring myself to look for something different or better.

Almost all of my John Carter: Warlord of Mars and Star Trek OverPower ideas are down on paper (Star Trek: The Next Generation still needs some work) so I'll probably have new threads soon detailing all of that and hopefully pictures up to match within a couple of weeks. Obviously the Conan Hero is a priority for now, and it may take me some time to find a picture I think is just right. Feel free to let me know any thoughts you may have on these cards, and contribute your own ideas! Just in case anyone wants to use these I'm pretty sure they don't print out to scale, but if you have MS Word I can email you a word file that lets you print 4 to-scale cards per page you can cut out and slip into your card sleeves or simply glue-stick onto some useless cards you have an absurd amount of doubles of.

[Karmanal of Zert]

I used the pic from Dark Horse's Conan the Cimmerian #1, an excellent comics series and the only one still-running that I collect. I highly recommend it! I feel it is much more true to Robert E. Howard's Conan than the Marvel comics were.


art by Joe Kubert

*** Disclaimer: These cards are meant to be played with modified rules that alter normally unusable cards to make them usable, so that there are more, better usable characters in OverPower. If you are playing with official cards and by official rules only, you will likely find that this character has an overwhelming amount of good, usable cards. For balanced gameplay, simply pick 1-3 non-OPD's and 1-2 OPD's you like, or whatever you think is fairest, and play with those. Or experiment with alternate rules that improve your favorite characters' most worthless Specials, and you may find them to be quite competitive with these home-mades. I put effort into making individual cards that make sense given characters' abilities and the precedents laid down by the several official OverPower Expansions while deliberately avoiding what I see as their pitfall of having made many, many worthless Special cards, which leads to the inevitable outcome of my characters having a much larger quantity of good/usable Specials than most official ones wound up with. It's up to you to decide the fairest way to integrate these cards into your house rules and playing styles and strategies. Above all: do what you want, and have fun playing OverPower! ***