Below is an article featuring Commands & Colors: Ancients insights and first impressions from first time player and InsideGMT contributor David Wiley of Cardboard Clash and Swords & Chit. You can also find this article on David’s blog. Enjoy! -Rachel

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Welcome to Swords and Chit! (Note: You can follow me on Twitter at @swordsandchit.) My aim is to focus on discussing and reviewing wargames. There are two primary reasons I wanted to start blogging about my wargaming experience: as a relatively new wargamer coming from a background of euro games, a lot of things in the wargaming hobby are going to be new to me and I hope to provide a fresh voice for those who might be on a similar journey into this area of gaming. Second, I have a very strong preference for games set in the Medieval period or earlier – although that isn’t where I’ll exclusively play, it is what I will focus on more than anything else. So I am glad you discovered this blog, and I hope you stick around for future posts!

I have a little bit of a recent history with Commands & Colors: Ancients. My friend has a copy of the game, and it was quickly decided to be among the early batch of games to learn and play. It was about two months ago that we played this for the first time, and by played it I mean I failed miserably to catch one key rule as it was explained. That led to a complete annihilation of my Carthaginian army in the first scenario of the book. What did I miss? I wasn’t drawing a new card after playing my card on the turn, thinking we played them all and then would get new ones. Oops. Well, let’s just say that my hand was not very good (I can confirm that now that we’ve played a few more times) and ended up getting the kiss of death from “I Am Spartacus” where his Heavy Infantry mowed down my forces with unnaturally good dice rolls. It left a bad feeling for me, but I wanted to play it again to give the game a second chance. I didn’t realize we’d be waiting until May for that chance, thanks to everything that’s happened in the past two months.

We played it three more times last week, keeping the same sides but doing different scenarios. And, well, here are my insights and impressions from four two plays of the game.

Insight #1: Read the rules, you dummy.

This is not at all directed at anyone but myself. I love to dive into rulebooks, to learn new games, and I enjoy teaching those games to others. Do I get a rule or two wrong? Usually, but we catch them. What I like to try and do, if we plan our next new game ahead of time, is to read the rules prior to playing the game so that it accelerates the entry into playing and helps us both be prepared (most of the Wargames are in his collection so far, which means most of the time I’m learning something he owns). I didn’t read the rules prior to that first play, and you’d think I would have learned a lesson there and read them, knowing a rematch would happen eventually. I was so prepared for a rematch on The Great Heathen Army that I didn’t expect to get easily persuaded into a Commands & Colors rematch but I really did want to right that first impression. But it took almost nothing on his part to get me to forget about the one and be ready to dive into the other. I even skimmed some of the rules while he set his army up in order to refresh myself. And then, halfway through another beatdown, I was looking in the rules to find out the correct process for when an army dies but its leader remains and, lo and behold, I found a game changer staring back at me in the rules: if the defending army survives an attack, they get to attack back. I think at the time it was 4-1 in points, and the writing was on the wall so we reset the scenario. And what a difference that little rule made – for the better! Not just because I was losing yet again, but because it added tension to the decision of attacking. Suddenly that pathetic ranged attempt sounded a little better at times, because it prevented that counter attack. The two battles we played after that were so refreshingly tense and exciting, that I didn’t mind losing a third time before winning a somewhat close one in the following scenario where my Elephant trio were there and could have wrecked havoc.

So this ultimately leads me to a reminder that I should be a good opponent and also read the rules for a game ahead of time (and probably even read them again after we play that first time) so that I don’t screw things up – and if we have two pairs of eyes learning how to play, we have a lower chance of missing something important like this when the game hits the table. And I am so, so glad I didn’t let the first two games color my experience for this one, pressing on to play it correct because this ends up being a fun system and I have C&C Medieval, as well as the upcoming Samurai Battles, to be excited about playing.

Insight #2: Plan your next move with the assumption that your hand isn’t going to change.

I fell into a trap far too often: If I draw X, then I can do Y next round. And almost every time I was disappointed with my card draw and had to backpedal to figure out what to do next. Of course, since my opponent takes a turn between each of mine, things on the map can and will change to a point where I might need to reevaluate my own plans. My own card play might end up more, or less, successful than I expect and also cause me to rethink the best thing to do. But playing a card to “set up” the next play if the next card I draw does what I want is a recipe for failure. I need to start planning around what I know I can do on the next turn and make my tactics revolve around that, rather than hope for the optimal situation. After all, it isn’t like that deck is small or anything. Case in point, the second scenario is the Battle of Crimissos River has my best troops, rating-wise, on the right half of the board with my only commander. Do you know how many times I was able to activate troops over there during that loss? Once, and a little later I was able to activate troops connected to my leader. Two activations total for the entire battle. Yet I continued to want to plan around bringing in those Heavy Infantry and the Chariots for effective strikes that never materialized while the center of my army fell to pieces, leaving me forced to use the left troops and try to cross the river or use a dwindling number of troops in the center. Smarter me would have used that first Right activation to shift them center, rather than keep them on the Right for a single effective strike before they fell to the slaughter, too.

Insight #3: Red means dead via buckets of dice.

To be on the side of the battle with fewer Red units is a terrible position to be. How great is it to march up and swing with two dice, only to get smacked back with five? Well, it’s the difference between a guaranteed counter attack and a chance to wipe the entire opposing army in one roll. The Heavy Infantry have already been the early MVP in the games, even though they move slowly, because once they get next to a unit the blood starts to flow heavy upon the ground. Especially dangerous are cards like the one letting you move an entire adjacent line, and cards letting an army move twice and attack. Those really bring the pain when paired with the Heavy units on the battlefield.

Insight #4: Water sucks. It really, really sucks.

The Battle of Crimissos River was the first and only scenario so far with terrain and, well, the river was a terrible thing to work around as the Carthaginians. Not familiar with it’s effects? Okay, let me just lay it out: half the Carthaginian army is on the wrong side of the river, meaning it needs crossed in order to attack the enemy. Stepping into the water ends movement, so it takes two turns to get across the river and into position. There are only a handful of spots where crossing is possible, meaning it is easy to keep things pinned down, too. And attacks going into or out of the river are capped at two dice rolled. Even with an early push of Medium Infantry across the river, my central line fell without being able to have adequate support because of the terrain barrier and the inability to draw the right cards to bring my best units on the right into play.

Insight #5: It still counts as one!

Mainly talking elephants here, but it applies to everything, really. Certain units, like the Elephant, can really wreck things when unleashed with the right series of cards. I saw first-hand how it could roll, and then reroll, and then reroll again into a series of hits that could wipe out an entire group of troops in one attack when things go right. And I am not sure if my opponent was wrong to divert his attention the next turn to try and take it out. But ultimately, that unit was worth one point. Same as the weak Light units. The game, at least in scenarios so far, doesn’t make you wipe out specific units. There isn’t any need to target the biggest, nastiest guys on the board, especially given how devastating a single counter attack could be from them if you don’t finish the job. Somehow I think pairing strong units near weak ones could be a good way of making the opponent pay for trying to pick off weakened parts of the line. Assuming you even have the right cards to strike back on your turn…

Insight #6: Ranged is a support tactic, not a winning one. Leadership is a winning tactic, not a support one.

I don’t know why, but my first instinct is usually to move forward and take a few shots with arrows at the opposing army. Every single time, I’ve walked away with maybe a casualty or two at best on the other side, no matter how many arrows are being fired. I mean, they have a 1-in-6 chance of hitting, and are usually rolling either 1 or 2 dice. It isn’t like I’m setting myself up for success here. And almost every time, the next turn my opponent advances forward and slices them down in melee, doing far more damage.

Then a new thing emerged in the Battle of Crimissos River: his leaders were causing mass destruction. Not because of the leader themselves hitting me, but because they give a benefit to all adjacent friendly armies to make the Leader symbol on the die be a success. And let me tell you, that battle my opponent probably rolled 50 of that stupid symbol, doing devastating hits where he’d only do 1 without that leader present/adjacent. If you don’t think it sounds like a big deal, that leader takes each die from a 33% chance of a hit to a 50% chance. That’s a huge boost, especially when calculated across 3-5 dice for your unit taking a swing. Centering movement around keeping that adjacency is definitely one way to cause mass destruction.

Wrap-Up

As the plays continued with this one, the game system itself finally started to shine through for me. In spite of the early hiccups, I enjoyed this one a lot. I think that was pretty apparent to my opponent when, after the first accurate play of the Battle of Crimissos River, I suggested we should just go ahead and set up and play the next scenario instead of switching to The Great Heathen Army. No offense to the latter game, it was mostly a convenience thing of having things out for this, combined with a desire to reaffirm what I was already beginning to see: I like this one a lot. Which has me excited, not only to return to more Ancients gameplay, but to eventually graduate up to Medieval as well and bring that one into the circle of Wargames we play. It is tough, as we’ve stretched ourselves pretty thin by doing an early rush of playing new ones and acquiring new titles to explore, and now we’re looking back and wanting to revisit the games we’ve played a few more times to really explore them. And if I have my way, this might just be the first one we wrap up enough plays for in order to actually review the game.

Higher praise I cannot write. I want to play this again, and again, and again right now.

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