Commands and Colors: Ancients (Impressions)
I recently got in some quality play time with the new Richard Borg game, Commands and Colors: Ancients from GMT Games, and since I’m sure there are a few of you out there interested in it I thought you may want to hear about it…
Commands and Colors: Ancients (henceforth simply referred to as Ancients) is the third iteration of Borg’s card driven system of wargaming, the first two games being Battlecry and Memoir ’44. While the first two games focused on more modern conflicts, the American Civil War (Battlecry) and World War Two (Memoir ’44), Ancients takes the gamer back about two thousand years to the Punic Wars (and a couple battles between Carthage and Syracuse). And while the subject matter may be different the system in Ancients is very similar to the earlier games, so if you’re one of the hardcore grogs who are totally turned off by the gaminess of Borg’s system, you’ll be turned off here. For folks who enjoy a solid beer and pretzels good time though, Ancients delivers.
GMT Games has always been a company that produces superbly produced games and Ancients is no different, although gamers used to the plastic pieces and mounted mapboards found in Battlecry and M44 will be somewhat disappointed. Instead of commanding a legion of sculpted figs gamers command blocks, a la Columbia Games, or GMT’s own Europe Engulfed. Unlike those games the blocks are not meant for a fog-of-war effect, but simple aesthetics, as both sides have stickers to show what they represent. With about 345 blocks in the game, each double-sided, this entails devoting practically an entire day to prepping the game. Creative gamers can con their gaming buddies into a sticker party with lots of beer and pizza to cut down on the time, or maybe just grab some day laborers. They’ll probably do it for a six-pack of Old Milwaukee and maybe you can even get your lawn mowed at the same time.
Originally GMT was going to do the game with stand up counters (plastic figures were deemed too expensive by all companies Borg approached with the idea apparently, a shame, but somewhat understandable). The blocks are nice, and provide the game with a nice heft, but stand up counters would have meant they could have expanded the army lists in C3I by providing new pieces. As it stands now any new expansions will mean producing more blocks and stickers, a much more costlier option, which in turn means hopefully there’s enough interest to warrant expansions.
The map is a heavy cardstock map, like the one found in Europe Engulfed, and is the same size as the Battlecry map. In fact, with the same number of hexes found in all three games, one can easily sub out the Battlecry map, or any of the Memoir ’44 maps, if you don’t mind things like Iron Crosses on your Roman map. The Ancients map works just fine though.
The manual and player aid charts are in both in color, and are clean and crisp. Ancients is probably the most complicated game of the trio, and so the rules are somewhat denser than the previous games, but that’s still relative to other games (but more on the gameplay in a moment). There are ten scenarios included in the game, all laid out in the familiar Borg system scenario format, and already more can be found online.
Finally the heart of the game system, the command cards, are well-done. Graphically they’re more like the Battlecry cards than the colorful Memoir cards. There’s the usual mixture of maneuver cards and special action cards, with a nice emphasis on period tactics.
Ancients’ gameplay will be instantly familiar to players of Borg’s previous games, and is quite easy to pick up (which is one of the strengths of his designs) if you’re not familiar, and if you’re not here’s a rundown. The hexbased gameboard is divided into three sectors: left, center, and right. The left and right delineating lines are smack dab down one row of hexes allowing anyone occupying them to be either considered in the center or the left or right.
Each player is given a number of cards drawn from a common deck. The number of cards a player holds is a general representation of their forces command structure, and so a better army will have more cards. On a player’s turn one card is played, allowing the activation of units. Typically this will be based on a section, such as the ability to activate three units on the right section. Sometimes it’s based on the composition of units, such as only mounted units, and sometimes it’s a strict special case, like activating all foot troops in four adjacent hexes. Some cards also provide unique events, like the ability to attack first when your opponent declares an assault.
During the activation phase you can engage in combat, which is decided by a set of iconic dice, instead of a CRT. In Ancients there are three troop types: light, medium, and heavy. Each is represented by a colored icon. Green circles for light, blue triangles for medium, and red squares for heavy. One icon of each can be found on the custom dice, along with a crossed sword symbol (used in close combat, otherwise considered a miss in ranged combat if rolled), a flag (signals the unit must retreat), and a general icon (miss unless a general is attached to a unit). Combat is done by creating a dice pool based on the unit type and applying possible hits. Units are sorted into groupings, such as an infantry unit is comprised of four individual units. Hits are applied to these groupings, although there is no difference in combat strength between a four sized unit and a one sized unit.
Play alternates between two gamers, each one playing a single card on their turn, performing the action associated with the card, and drawing a new one. Instead of turn limits victory is determined by a set number of victory flags per scenario, with flags being earned by the destruction of whole units.
From my description obviously Borg has taken the “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” approach, as Ancients plays out like his earlier games. Yet, there’s plenty of differences so it feels like an ancients game, and not Battlecry with guys in togas.
One of the most obvious differences lays in the unit count. Battlecry featured four unit types (infantry, cavalry, artillery, and generals) and Memoir ’44 has three (infantry, artillery, and armor). Ancients has about fourteen different unit types, with four types of light infantry alone! Not only that, each unit is rated for a substantially greater number of game effects than the other games. There’s range combat (based both on not moving and moving), close combat, evasion, morale effects, momentum (basically how a unit handles advance after clearing a hex in combat), and some special rules (i.e. elephant panic).
All these factors make the army compositions in Ancients truly interesting, with a wide range of options for the player to consider. At the same time it’s the same factor—the large number of varying abilities—that makes Ancients a little harder to get into than the other games. By no means is it really more complicated; it’s just more to keep track of. During play we found ourselves needing to constantly look on the aid charts, while after one game of Battlecry or Memoir ’44 all unit abilities were pretty much memorized. As time progresses I’m sure that the need to look up information will become less, but at least in the beginning don’t expect to simply jump into a scenario and finish it up in thirty minutes. Another by product of the number of unit types means that set up is a tad slower, as typically a scenario will have at least five to six different unit types featured per side.
Likewise expect your initial gameplay to go a little slower, as there are definitely more moving parts in Ancients than previous titles. For example, most adjacent units can provide a unit being attacked a morale boost, allowing it to ignore the first retreat flag. This is something that we constantly forgot about, and as such our lines were prone to being more fragile than they should have been.
For vets of the series what are some of the other differences? Well, now some units can battle back in close combat, meaning that immediately after one player attacks the defender gets to respond in kind, if they have not been forced out of the hex.
Speaking of being forced out of hexes retreating can now be quite the bitch, as instead of retreating one hex per flag rolled a unit retreats the length of its movement per flag. So a heavy infantry unit that moves one, would retreat two hexes for two flags, while a light infantry unit that moves three hexes per turn would move back six hexes with that same result. Ouch! And if you can’t retreat back for each hex you can’t move you lose one unit per hex that you’re unable to complete, making boxed-in light units especially prone to destruction. As a side note it’s neat design effect, as heavy units that have better cohesion are less likely to lose combat effectiveness in a retreat than a light, loose, unit.
Generals are now pretty damn deadly. An attached general allows the general icon on the combat dice to be counted as a hit. When you consider that in close combat an infantry unit now hits on 50% of the time with a general, these units are deadly whirlwinds. Why, a heavy infantry unit with a general will be throwing five dice during close combat (hitting on 50% of those dice at least), and since chances are they’ll destroy whatever they’re attacking, or at least force a retreat, they’ll get a momentum attack with another five dice hitting 50% of the time. Wicked.
The cards do a good job of emphasizing using actual tactics, such as holding a solid line. Many cards reward players who keep their troops in line, and when a line is broken it definitely makes a big difference. Heavy infantry, while slow, are great for a spear point, while light infantry are perfect for attempting to break up said spear point, and mounted units are good for hitting the flanks. All told, while Ancients is still first and foremost a game, rather than a simulation, gameplay seems to be a tad more ground in reality than Battlecry and Memoir ’44, allowing more logical tactics and less gamey moves.
Ancients also seems to be fairly balanced, at least from my initial impression. All our games ran quite close, with victory coming down to a difference of one or two flags. Granted, maybe we just played well balanced scenarios, or we’re so close in skill which accounted for the nailbiting games, but so far it looks good. You can’t say the same for Memoir ’44 when the Allies clobber the Germans in Market-Garden like five to one, repeatedly (just check out the AARs on the Days of Wonder site). Market-Garden!!
All in all, Ancients is another winner from Borg. The subject matter probably won’t attract the number of gamers as WWII or the Civil War does, which is a shame because the sheer variety of units in the game presents a lot of interesting possibilities. In fact, the system could probably handle everything from its current ancient warfare up to medieval battles. Heck, my wheels have been turning on trying to add a little fantasy to it. Commands and Colors: Lord of the Rings anyone?
As mentioned, there are more moving parts, so expect a slight learning curve. While still beer and pretzels in nature, there are a number of nuances to the Ancients systems that takes getting used to. Still, this is definitely a game that can be enjoyed by one and all, and with a relatively quick play time, a perfect game to pull out while waiting for dinner to cook.
9 flaming skulls out of 10. 
-Scott
