Hi, everyone! I am a novice wargame player and translator in China, this is my 1st English game review. Plus English is not my native language, so if there is any grammar or spelling mistake, please forgive me. I just purchased a full set of this game and really enjoy it! Now let's rock and roll.
<Ancient Battles Deluxe> (it is referred as ABD hereinafter for short) is wargame published by VPG whose subject is mainly about ancient battles, the ages covered in this game is from ancient to the time before the involvement of gunpowder (early gunpowder battles are added by the 3rd Expansion of this game ). With such a broad age coverage, so the design of all the units in this game is in a universal style, such as Light Infantry, Middle Infantry or Heavy Infantry etc.. When actual playing the campaigns of this game, the games need some imagination to consider these universal unit into the corresponding one of the certain age. I would rather to say this is more a generic system than a specific game. Therefore after playing several games, the games can call the "formula" of this game and create any ancient or medieval battles by themselves. Currently ABD already get 6 expansions: 1st Exp Elephant, 2nd Exp Hell Horseman, 3rd Exp Gunpowder, 4th Exp Arts of the War, 5th Exp Create Your Own, 5.1 Exp Samurai; there are total 84 battles published officially by VPG now, some of them are originated from ancient China which makes Chinese gamer fresh about it. The range of the battles is also very wild, not along some classic battles by Caesar, Richard or Oda in Japan. It's a really meaty game considering such a huge number of battles.
Thus how does this system work? Let's have a look at its Game Sequence: every turn is divided into 8 phases, don't be scared by that, in fact there are only 4 phases which are relatively complicated, the gamer can grasp that with a short time of learning. Firstly, the player in both sides shall roll 1D6 and refer to a command table to get the basic command points (for short it will be called CP afterwards), then combined the CP generated by the leaders who are still alive in that battle to obtain the final CP of that turn. Secondly, each player shall place his available leaders on the map to stack them with any units they like; this stacking status will be continuously in effect until the end of turn. Thirdly, both sides roll 1D6 for determination of initiative, but the loser can spend 1 CP to seize the initiative back, and then the other side can also do the same until one side give up or exhaust all the CP. Then the battle moves in to core action phases, each player shall spend this remaining CP to activate the single unit or a group of eligible units (called formation in the game) to conduct MOVE, FIRE, and RALLY action.
Because normally the available CP is 3~6, after expenditure in initiative phase, the remaining CP are very precious. Therefore to utilize the formation effect generated by Leaders stacking with unit, i.e. group activation is very effective and significant, that's the reason why the player should have deep contemplation about the leader's placement.
As I have mentioned in above, both players can activate units by expending CP, but this process is done in a alternate way, and the other side can select to pass, if continuous pass happened, all the unspent CP will be ignored and the battle proceeds into the next turn, we could say it's a simple variation of IgoUgo system but very smooth and fast. After the action phase is the melee phase where all the eligible units can initiate melee attack to its object with expenditure of CP, this process is conduct similarly as action phase where both plays declear and resolve the melee combat alternately and end after continuous pass. Then the battle will move into next turn. When any unit is eliminated, it will result a certain level of panic to the army, the value is equal to its normal combat rating. When the panic level is accumulated to the specified level in the scenario, that side will plunge into a panic status with short term and long term negative effect. The short term effect is that all the good order units will flip to its disorder side, the long term effect is more frightening, your opponent can spend CP to command your disordered units to conduct a panic move, in which the disordered units will try to escape from the battle and incur disorder of other units on its route. I think this design is strikingly interesting.
It is said in another article from the forum that the melee resolution method is changed from odd based CRT into a 1D6 calculation. Don't take it for granted that the new resolution method is more on luck basis, it's totally not like that. For melee resolution, the units will compare its Final Melee Value (FMV). The FMV of attacker = 1D6 + Combat Advantage + Terrain Effect + Attacking Vector, the FMV of defender = 1D6 + Combat Advantage + Terrain Effect; for combat advantage, it an odd between the modified combat value of the fighting units, normally 1~3. Let me take an example for an easy explanation: assume there is MI unit with 4 combat rating and stacked with Combat +1 leader and combat X 2leader, then attack a LI unit from the rear who is garrisoned in forest and stacked with a combat X 1 leader, the attacker 1D6 = 4, defender 1D6 = 3, thus we can know that the modified combat value of the MI is (4+1)* 3 = 15；the modified combat value of the LI is 2*2 = 4, so the combat advantage earned by attacker is 15/4=3.75 and rounded down to 3. Finally, the FMV of attacker is 4 + 3 + 4 (bonus of attacking from rear ) = 11, the FMV of defender is 3 + 1 (terrain effect of forest) = 4. After resulting to the combat formula, we get to know the result is Defender Disorder! The whole process only requires a 1D6 plus 2 very easy calculations, what a clever and fast method! The other advantage of the battle resolution in this game is its possibility also conforms to the actual situation in ancient battles.
At last, I think the biggest feature of this game is: flexible, simple, fast-paced and interactive. Lots of scenarios for selection and customized campaign make the game very flexible; the gamer can experience any of his favorite age or battles as his own wish. The game flow is not complex, the resolution of fire and melee is also simple, although it looks like that there are 12 pages of rules need to be understood, in fact when the player get familiar with the system, the only thing he required for playing is a small piece of player aid, so this game is very suitable for the introductory purpose. Normally one game can be completed within 1 hour that means the player can use some small piece of time to play one scenario. In addition, the varied IgoUgo system reduces the waiting time of non-phasing player dramatically which is very interactive and engaging. As for the disadvantage, I would say that covers too large eras so that it has too compromise between the compatibility and simulation effect, that means maybe some campaign is not played exactly as the actual condition. I heard one sentence review game: it's a player oriented game rather than a simulation oriented game, I can't accept that any further.
Finally, I really would like to recommend this game to the novice wargame player, let's enjoy this excellent system. If any other fans of this game want to play this game, we can play together by Vassal! Thank you all!
发表于 2016-8-23 16:21:41
