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Monday, March 1, 2010 9:40 pm

Game Review - Command and Colors: Ancients
Posted by: Foo_Guevara

Up for review this week is GMT Game's Command and Colors: Ancients. CCA is most definitely a war game, but to be more precise, it's a card-driven block war game. This is a breed apart from the standard grognard staple of hex and chit. This is not the first game to employ either blocks, or card-driven mechanics, but it's definitely my personal favorite of the genre. CCA is expanded by an entire line of similarly titled games that hope to recreate ancient battles on the tabletop, all within a reasonable amount of play time, and with a very simple set of core rules that will apply across all of the expansions.

Within the game box, you will find a clearly written rule book, a book full of scenarios that cover the time period of the battles between the Romans and Carthaginians, two well designed quick reference folios, a game board, some terrain overlays, and enough wooden blocks to choke a warhorse. Oh, and a couple of sheets of stickers. More on that later.

Game play is simple. Quickly glance over the rules (they're not difficult by any means), pick a scenario out of the scenario booklet, pick out your wooden block units, and commence to throwing down. Each scenario has a good historical writeup (which I never read unless I lose, just to vindicate myself in the off chance that the army I'm commanding didn't fare any better). The scenario book will tell you how to line up your army, where to place terrain, who goes first, and most importantly what the command rating of your army is. The command rating determines how many cards you will hold in your hand.

Once the armies are on the board, command cards are dealt (as per your command rating), and then you can start to formulate your plan. The command cards, as their name implies, are commands that you can issue to your troops. The game board is divided into three sections, from left to right, so as to give you left flank, center, and right flank. A typical card will be be something along the lines of 'Order two units left flank', which means you can pick any of two hexes that you have on your left flank and perform an action with them. Other cards, you can play immediately as a reaction to a card that your opponent plays.

As an action, depending on unit type, they may both move and attack. Units are divided between foot, cavalry, elephant, and war machine. Further subdivisions are made between those of light, medium, and heavy. Each subdivision has their own characteristics of movement distance, ranged attack, and ultimately the amount of dice they deal in an attack. Each wooden block also has a colored symbol on it, either a circle, a triangle or a square. These denote light, medium and heavy, respectively.

Dice are something unique in this one. They are six sided to be sure, but each side contains a different symbol (circle, triangle, square, sword, flag, and helmet). When an attack is rolled, you compare the resulting roll against the type of unit you are attacking, i.e. if you have three attack dice in close combat and you roll two circles and a flag against light infantry, they would take two casualties (remove two wooden blocks from their full strength number of four), and would retreat one time (because of the flag). If that sounds confusing, don't worry, because by the second time you roll dice and look at the handy quick reference chart, you pretty much have the whole system down.

Some things will become readily apparent to you during the first couple of times you play. Large scale tactics that work in real life work in this game. Units play out just like their historical counterparts, i.e. light cavalry is excellent at chasing down and decimating routed units, but is highly susceptible to retreat in the face of opposition. Card driven games, which I initially wrote off as gamey and unrealistic, do impose a certain amount of hard choices that you have to make as a commander, such as do I continue to press against a weak flank, knowing that I may not draw a card on my next turn to continue the effort, or do I go where the strength of my cards lay?

If I had to get my wargame fix, and I only had an hour to do so, I would hands down choose Command and Colors: Ancients. The other expansions in the series (I own the 1st expansion which adds the Greeks and Persians) complement the game very well, and things flow very smoothly between them. I have, of course, over simplified this review because I've mentioned nothing of the effect of command, the use of terrain, or any of the other minutiae. That said, the biggest drawback is the stickers (I said I'd mention them). If you don't buy the game used, which is hard to find because everyone loves this game, you're going to spend the first three hours of ownership peeling stickers and placing them on blocks. Small price to pay, small price indeed. Also, it's worth noting that you should invest in Plano boxes to organize all of your units. I went to Dick's Sporting Goods and bought a nylon case and 4 Plano boxes (in the fishing supplies section) to store both my CCA and expansion number one pieces. Works like a charm.

Get out from behind the keyboard and game. It's worth it.

Images (expcept of my worthy opponent Morgan) are lifted liberally from boardgamegeek.com

Most Recent Comments (Add Your Own or View All)

Thursday, March 4 2010 - 12:14 AM

Foo_Guevara

I taught Nad/Nutty/Skeeze how to play this game tonight and we fought the Battle of Akragas. I gave him the advantage of playing the Syracusan's, and I the Carthaginians. I eked out a victory, though at great cost. By all rights it was a draw, but I was able to secure five victory points by evading direct contact with his many heavy troops and picking away at his weaker units on the flanks.

Syracuse 4 - Carthage 5

Fucking rocks.

Great game.

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