David Longworth  - Jul 8, 2007 1:26 am (#19115 Total: 19395)  
"What would be that feeling of a real blade entering another 
man's body? That initial resistance...and that sudden giving? 
The surprise on another man's face!" 	 

Ancient World: Carthage AAR (long)

Yesterday I finally had a chance to crack this one out and play it with
a live opponent. We started with Mercenary Wars scenario, one of the
shorter and simpler ones in the series. I was the evil Pune: George was
the evil and rapacious mercenary horde. 

There were many good points about the game. The physical presentation is
colourful and lavish, the map is beautiful and functional. The markers
and charts were adequate. Despite some comments I have come across, the
rules were comprehensive and not very difficult, although this scenario
does not use the political rules which generally seem to give people the
most aggro. Nevertheless the mechanics were straightforward enough given
the usual headscratching about new mechanics... 

Unfortunately the play of the game was less inspiring. The activation
chit system combined with the Continuation mechanic meant that there was
considerable randomness in play. Often I felt driven by the activation
chits to do something other than I would have done in other
circumstances eg "gee I want to use Hanno to besiege that city but
Hamilcar has been activated and if I don't use this activation chance
then the enemy could escape so I just have to use Hamilcar". If the
design intent was to recreate a large amount of randomness it definitely
succeedded: it may be realistic but was frustrating at times. 

Even when the activations were ok, the dice rolls and mechanics made it
virtually impossible to pin down the enemy. If the active general
continued and launched an attack, the enemy would invariably roll an
avoidance and scoot away. One sequence bordering on the farcical
involved Hanno pursuing Spendius through about eight successive swamp
and rough hexes before Hanno finally gacked his last continuation roll
and the enemy activated away (of course the interception failed) 

Decisive battles seemed to be particularly difficult to bring about as
well. Even when attacking with solid modifiers (eg +6) the result would
simply be a 10% vs 20% loss. The now slightly weaker merc force would
retreat and that was pretty much it. A couple of times leaders were
wounded only to be reborn at the start of the next turn hundreds of
miles away in a different province, but it seemed that a series of
combats was needed to seriously weaken an army. 

The end of the game turned into an ancient bug hunt with the mercenary
leaders hiding in cities while Hanno and Hamilcar raced around trying to
catch them. The mercs had captured a number of towns and stocked them
with 4 SP garrisons which left me no chance of recapturing them so I had
to go for the 'kill the merc leaders' victory condition. This phase at
least gave me a chance to try out the different siege mechanics, as I
used treachery on one city and starved out another one (I think it took
three LAMs to get two garrison SP but it worked). The third leader was a
different story as he took advantage of a rules 'feature'. If you
activate and do an Attack on a force in the open, and the force Avoids
away, at least you get to cancel the Attack and do something else - rock
after them presumably. If the force is in a city, and you place it Under
Siege, the defending leader can Avoid away, but the activated leader is
forced to lay Siege and becomes finished! No option to abandon the siege
and lay chase. 

Hence the last turn became of sequence of - rush to the town - continue
- lay siege - Matho avoids away - leader becomes finished. After a few
rinse-lather-repeats I conceded as I had insufficient activations left
to catch him. 

So ultimately the game was like fairy floss - tasty and inviting but not
completely satisfying. To be fair I am not sure that this scenario shows
the system in its best light. There are definitely good features, both
gaming and historical, and it deserves at least another playing or two
with more involved situations to get a better feel for it. I wanted to
love it. I really did. But on this first playing, colour me neutral.