From: Roberto Chiavini Subject: Game Reviews ANCIENTS (Good Games Industry) 1986 Designer: Bill Banks Games played: 12 (different scenarios) Review: I don't have very good feelings about this game, even after so many plays. It's too simple (and simplistic) for my taste, not very funny in solitaire (but playable anyway). Ancients try to reproduce (simulate is a word inadequate for such a game) every ancient and medieval battle of history, with a system that take in account movement, fire and melee, with very few chrome rules for the "exotic" units (like chariots or elephants). And this objective it achieve without doubt. And so it remains. The game (remade a few years after by 3W, but I dont' know that version) has at least a few arrows on its bow: it's very easy, it's very fast (less than 30' most of the scenario, if you play solo), it's graphics are adequate if not shiny (for a game 13 years old it was better than several contemporaries, for my taste), it has many, many scenarios (and other can be made easily with a rapid bibliographic research). But it has even more negative points: it's map(s) is (are) too tiny to made interesting manouvers (but this is an ancient wargame, so it could be objected that there weren't many spectacular movements in an ancient battles; indeed, but try GBoH and talk again), the units in play are too few to make the battle interesting for the historian, rules are too simple (even if well written and easy to understand). The game is good for novices, for people without time to play GBoH series, for people who wants to try his hand in making a scenario for a game without much effort. The other may stay away from it and don't lose nothing important.