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I'm a bit of a born-again wargamer! I played many of the Games Workshop games when I was in my teens and early twenties, but left the hobby behind when I went to University. Over the last few years I have gradually got back into it and am literally having a ball! I'll play pretty much anything now, ranging from ancient historical to the far future! I think that I get more out of the painting side of things than actually playing, but that might just be because I get more opportunity. Hence the title...this blog is all about the colour of war!!

Saturday 17 April 2010

No time like the past!

Every now and again I find I come to an impasse in painting. Usually it's because I end up getting too much stuff for too many projects and none of it ends up getting done. I recently sold some old GW stuff on eBay that I found in my mum's loft and went a bit berserk buying stuff, from some 15mm Magister Militum Romans to a couple of 28mm Grand Manner buildings for the Crete project. On top of all this I have a pile of Battlefront FoW stuff to do, as well as the 28s I posted about before. Did I mention the bag of cowboys that George at the club loaned out to me?! The end result is a lot of lead and resin and a brain-block on what to do next!

So progress is very slow on the painting front, but gaming continues apace. One in particular is standing out for me at the moment...Commands and Colours : Ancients. As hinted at above, I quite want to get into some ancients gaming, but the massive variety of figures, rules and periods is a little bedazzling, not to mention the time involved in getting it all together. So I thought I'd pick this game up to allow me and my gaming friends learn something about ancient warfare without comitting masses of time and money.

So, C&C; I have to say, I have found the game to be most entertainting and also somewhat aesthetic! There's something about the little wooden blocks that looks old fashioned, but I actually quite like it. The combat system is extraordinarily simple, but the combat rules coupled with the command card system actually add some real subtelty to the game. OK, you may not have the cars in your hand that you want, but this is essentially a boardgame and that is just one mechanism. To be honest, you can almost always do something that you would have wanted to anyway and the card system adds a little uncertainty that a lot of traditional games also apply, such as the TFL system of card actication. In many ways, the C&C way is no different.

I was quite curious when I first played C&C about how it would play and whether historical tactics would apply and I was quite happy with the results. Heavy infantry formed in line can literally blow away whole units in one turn, but this line can be broken up, or delayed by lightning fast skirmish attacks. Or the end units can be picked off by coordinated attacks and the line rolled up. Certainly light units do not last long at all in close combat, but there are evade rules to mitigate this. One unit I haven't used yet is elephants, but I can't wait to have fun with the 'rampage' rule!

All in all, I'm really enjoying C&C. I think it gives a good flavour of ancient combat while being playable in an hour, plus it all packs into a box!! I'll certainly be trying to work through the scenario book at every opportunity and will no doubt be eyeing up the Alaxander expansion pack after that!

1 comment:

  1. It's interesting that you went for Commands & Colours. There's a guy called Simon who has a blog:

    http://bigredbat.blogspot.com/

    He spent the last year putting together a massive C&C game for Zama as part of the Society of Ancients Battle Day, which was held yesterday. He is also taking it to the Salute show in London next weekend. he has quite a lot of info on the game, the rules, and some battle reports.

    Good luck with the ancients!

    Paul

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