wood for sheep

Commands and Colors: Ancients

So, for my birthday, my crazy-ass inlaws got me a very generous gift certificate to the local game store -- which, like a lot of stores staffed by obsessive nerds, is well-stocked and the staff is super-friendly.  Or at least they're willing to talk to me while I babble on about this or that game, and why I like it or not, apropos of nothing.  However, I bet 90% of their clientele is like that, or worse.

Anyway, they didn't have Ancients in stock, but the clerk was willing to get it for me and ship it to my new address for free.  Since I knew in advance that this box is one heavy fucker, the shipping offer seemed quite generous.

Anyway, the package arrived and I opened it, only to find that it contained the expected rulebook and scenario book, some terrain tiles, about 5 sticker sheets and A METRIC ASSLOAD of wooden square counters.  Holy crap.  Yes -- another game where you are required to do the busywork of putting the pieces together yourself.  It just so happened that I had a weekend at the inlaws coming up -- however,  the time required to put 5 sheets of stickers on wooden blocks happens to be exactly one weekend.  Armed with tweezers -- because I'm just that kind of nerd.  And every last one of those stickers was as perfectly positioned as I could make them.

I plan on getting some small tackle boxes to organize the pieces soon, but here are the various Carthaginian and Roman units in Ziploc bags, just to show you how damn many of them there are:

The yellow and red markers at the top, as M44 players will be familiar with, are victory flags for Carthaginians and Romans. The game company includes a few extra wooden pieces and stickers as spares.

Disappointingly, in addition to having to put stickers on a number of dead trees like some twisted practical joke, Ancients' board isn't mounted on mapboard like many games.  It's on thin cardboard, which means it won't fold flat out of the box.  So I had to go to Home Depot and get something that finally signals my crossing over into Final Nerd Dorkitude: a sheet of Plexiglas.  From the pictures, you'll see that it solves the problem quite nicely.

I went ahead and set up the Battle of Metaurus from the Second Punic War.  As you can see, it immediately gives the impression of large hosts of soldiers facing off in the middle of nowhere.  Also, this is a scenario that uses a lot of terrain tiles (for this game) -- there are more than a few scenarios out of the book that simply use a featureless map.

Hasdrubal's secret weapon

Hail Caesar!

The battle from above, seen from the Roman side

Hasdrubal, brother of Hannibal

Hopefully soon I'll be able to introduce Mudge to this game, as he's nuts for M44 already but doesn't have any of the expansions.  Soon I'll set up a scenario out of M44, possibly Stalingrad or Peleiu, for comparison with C&C:A.

first night of gaming in the New World

So Mudge and Zombiegrrrl kicked off our Tuesday night gaming nights in grand style, with Cleopatra and the Society of Architects.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the action, but the gameplay looks a lot like this.

The game itself is a Days of Wonder production (the same people who make Ticket to Ride and Memoir '44), and has the same sort of gorgeous production values that make all their games fairly fun to play.  The fact that you build an entire Egyptian temple complex out of the box itself was a selling point for me in addition to all those pounds of plastic architectural bits.

As for how the game plays out, it has a very fleeting similarity to Ticket to Ride in that you're collecting cards to make sets to turn in later; however, the similarity ends there as you're up against 1) a very finite set of pieces to build; 2) being forced to take cards you don't want some of the time; 3) managing a hand limit vs. the "corruption" you have to take if you go over that limit; 4) keeping tabs on how corrupt your opponents are; 5) judging when, and where, to use cards that confer advantages but require you to take more corruption.

The player with the most corruption will automatically be fed to Cleo's crocs at the end of the game, and the winner is the richest player out of the survivors.

In our game, we had a first for this game: Mer and Zombiegrrrl both tied for the title of most corrupt, so both were therefore executed.  MJ hadn't been able to amass quite the wealth that I did (about 10 talents or so) and so I won this game for the first time.  It's a game that I don't have the best record in, but it's simple and fun enough that I'm always willing to play it.

Just make sure you have a big table to play it on -- the thing takes up an amazing level of table real estate.

After they left, I completely geeked out and set up a sample scenario from Commands & Colors: Ancients.  And damn, is it pretty -- and I took pictures.  Another post tomorrow after I rescue the camera USB cable from wherever we packed it.

old skool gaming!

this blog is so making me move up to "middle class'. or is that down...

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