By mid-May, I have to have written a conference paper, two journal-article-length papers, and have read (or have "read") some 250 books...so what better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than playing a wargame?
I felt inspired to try another Victory Point Games title, so I brought out Ancient Battles Deluxe. It's a redesign of one of my favorite games, Ancients. Ancients was an attempt to make a fairly believable but very simple tactical game. It featured generic counters, generic maps, and a bajillion scenarios.
This one keeps the same look. The counters are Red Army vs Blue, the maps are just 18 x 12 hexes. The rules, however, are a notch or two up in complexity. That does not mean they are complex; it just takes a few goings-through before you internalize them, particularly the melee rules. There's a lot of adding, multiplying, and dividing going on here. However, by halfway through the battle, I was up and running nicely.
I chose Magnesia, mostly because it had elephants on both sides. The winner is the one with the most VPs. You get a VP for making the other army panic (losing a certain number of strength points), capturing the opposing camp, and one for having the most troops on the field at sunset. The Romans, in this scenario, have superior leadership (the Scipios) but fewer troops. They are given a 1 VP handicap.
I had Antiochus simply charge the Romans with his greater volume of soldiers, in the hopes of tying down the Romans and hopefully turning a flank or two. The Romans refused both flanks in time, but fought from a cramped position the whole game. The Seleucids took horrific casualties, but hoped to hang on until their phalanx caught up (it was left far behind in the initial charge)--and hoped to last just one turn longer than the Romans.
And, lo, they did. I eventually called it for the Seleucids; the Romans were on the verge of losing the last casualties before panic and rout set in--and weren't going to inflict it on the Seleucids simultaneously. The Romans missed a lot of die-roll breaks in the second half of the game, but their limited mobility told the tale.
I like the command and control system here. It's about as good as one can be that doesn't get completely bogged down. You have n leaders, and you allocate them to units each turn. They represent concerted efforts as much as anything. They can command multiple troops if they're part of a formation...and these formations tend to break apart as the battle progresses. Then, it becomes a matter of aiding local battles.
A worthy update and successor to the original model (which is still available here, for free). The homepage lists a third expansion coming out, covering (mostly) the first years of gunpowder in the west--which, naturally, I'm eagerly awaiting.
And now: Back to the reading.
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