Dick Shay - 10:11am Jul 10, 2001 PST (#6889 of 7006)

Developing Marlborough for Miranda/S&T.

At Origins I tried out a Euro that tries to be a wargame: Empires of the
Ancient World by War Frog. I tought it was really good and bought a
copy. 2 to 5 players (tried 3 and 5 so far). Colored wooden disks
represent control (black disks for fortificaion) and colored wooden
cubes for trade presence. The Ancient western world is cut into
provinces with victory point values. The highest points are for the 3
sections of the Mediterranean Sea(8 each). The lowest for the edges of
northern Europe(2). The game has 4 turns of 10 to 7 rounds each. Each
player starts with some contiguous areas and a home army (that can't be
lost). Each of these is slightly different in unit composition.

For his round, a player may take a card (recruit), play trade influence
or try to grab territory through combat or diplomacy. At the end of
turns 2 to 4, victory points are counted at full value for control and
half value for most trade influence. A player can have either or both in
a province.

Recruited cards are military units (including naval and siege) and
military, diplomatic and trade leaders. 6 of these are on display at any
time. Some cards, the better ones, cost 1 to 3 victory points each turn
you have them.

Leader cards give you advantages in their area. Combat is done by each
player building a 5 (or 3 for siege) card deck of combat units. In naval
combat you can have only one each of a limited number of land units and
ships. In land combat, light units and cavalry must be 'first' in the
stack and heavy infantry at the bottom (generals can change this). The
units are matched singly and the winner moves one of the 3 tokens on the
battle board in his direcion. Winner is the one with the most tokens in
his box at the end of the battle. Units can be lost, by random
selection. Only the recruited units actually go away.

This would be a moderately interesting game of moving blocks around, but
the card combat system is really interesting (and fun if your army
doesn't suck). Its much faster than History of the World, but at least
as much fun.

The two criticisms are that the rules are not as clear as they should be
(no problem for grognards, but a little hard on others) which is not
what Americans expect of people with British accents (heh, didn't youse
guys invent da language?) The round counters for control try to roll off
the table when you pick them up.

I liked it a bunch and so did the other players I talked to/played with.