“I stand steadfast with my fellow Triarii. We are older more seasoned Legionaries, we have families back in Rome, we stand resolute behind the Principes, veteran soldiers, ready to wear the enemy down. In front of all the Hastati, young and fiery warriors keen to make a name for themselves in battle – or die trying”
Battalion: War of the Ancients from publishers Osprey, noted for their military acumen, gives you the chance to recreate such battle lines of old yet in an approachable and entertaining way. To emphasise their Military History smarts you are referred in a note to no less than 12 Osprey publictaions giving further details of the forces involved. Yet the designers Paolo Mori and Francesco Sirocchi point out their take on the Units is based on fact but fictionalised somewhat to create a better game experience. Have they achieved this? In my view, yes.
Old and Gold
The four Factions in Battalion: War of the Ancients: Rome, Carthage, Han and the snappily titled Greco-Bactrians are said to represent forces active around 200 BCE so that puts Rome and Cartage at loggerheads in the 2nd Punic War. The Han and the Greco Bactrians fought the poetically titled War of the Heavenly Horses a hundred years later – 104 and 102 BCE. But either way you can pit any of these forces against any other.
“I stand steadfast with my fellow Triarii. We are older more seasoned Legionaries, we have families back in Rome, we stand resolute behind the Principes, veteran soldiers, ready to wear the enemy down. In front of all the Hastati, young and fiery warriors keen to make a name for themselves in battle – or die trying”
Battalion: War of the Ancients from publishers Osprey, noted for their military acumen, gives you the chance to recreate such battle lines of old yet in an approachable and entertaining way. To emphasise their Military History smarts you are referred in a note to no less than 12 Osprey publictaions giving further details of the forces involved. Yet the designers Paolo Mori and Francesco Sirocchi point out their take on the Units is based on fact but fictionalised somewhat to create a better game experience. Have they achieved this? In my view, yes.
Old and Gold
The four Factions in Battalion: War of the Ancients: Rome, Carthage, Han and the snappily titled Greco-Bactrians are said to represent forces active around 200 BCE so that puts Rome and Cartage at loggerheads in the 2nd Punic War. The Han and the Greco Bactrians fought the poetically titled War of the Heavenly Horses a hundred years later – 104 and 102 BCE. But either way you can pit any of these forces against any other.
Each Faction has its own distinct troop types: various aspects of the Legion for the Romans and Elephants for Carthage; Hoplites and Peltasts for the Greeks and Crossbows and Conscripts for the Chinese. In all there are 36 different types represented from the unpronouncable Thureophoroi of the Greeks to the romantic sounding Sacred Band of Carthage. I feel we are likely to see further factions offered as expansions in the future: Huns, Gauls, Celts, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks anyone?
Formation
Units are formed of a number of Ranks. Each Rank depicts a troop type on a shaped cardboard counter that slots together with others to build a Unit. Battles see an equal number of Units on each side from 6-12.
There are 4 Classes of Units:
Regular Infantry, Skirmish Infantry, Cavalry and Special (Chariots and Elephants).
Regulars have up to 3 Ranks in a Unit, Skirmishers, Cavalry and Elephants have 2 Ranks and Chariots just 1.
Ranks can have Traits. There are 13 different Traits giving some sort of advantage and 1, Slow for Heavy Crossbows and Elephants, giving a disadvantage. The whole Unit will benefit from any Trait in any of its Ranks.
Ranks have Cohesion levels fom 1 to 4 representing the hits they can take before being eliminated. A unit’s Cohesion is the sum of all the Cohesion of its Ranks.
They also have Attack Values, the number you must reach on the D8 to score a hit. These can be Melee or Ranged and there may be more than one. When attacking you score a hit for any 8 plus any you can allocate to printed Attack Values. Note whilst you may be able to roll up to 6 dice you may not be able to allocate all as hits.
The Battlefield is divided into 3 Sectors and your Units are split across them. Units can only fight Units in the same Sector or an adjacent Sector if there are no enemy Units in their Secor. Within a Sector, positioning is not important and attacks can be made against any enemy in that Sector.
Apart from the pre-set scenarios it is up to the Player how the Units are laid out though bear in mind that some Units, cavalry, have an advantage from being on the flank.
Behind your 3 Sectors is your Camp. Here are kept your Command Tokens, Tactic Cards and any Units in Reserve. If your Camp is left undefended by having no Units in your central Sector it is instant defeat if your opponent has any Units in the cenral Secor.
Orders
Units are controlled by the double sided Command Tokens showing Order on one side and Disorder on the other. You only have a small amount of these – number of Command Tokens equal to the number of Units you start with.
These are used in two ways: to Order your Units or to absorb casualties.
An ordered Unit can shoot BARAGE or move to attack CHARGE or stay fighting hand-to-hand ASSAULT. This last is misnamed in my mind as assault sounds more like a charge and it should be considered as MELEE and it is often referred to in the rules as a melee attack.
A Unit will need 1 Order for an action plus another 1 if it has Ranks of different types. Also you have to match any orders already on the Unit.
You also use Order to absorb casualties rather than removing Ranks and Units from the table though doing so reduces the Orders you can give your Units.
Tactics
Each player aslo starts with a number of Tactic cards equal to the number of their Units. Whilst they give advantages they also act as an overall timer to the game. Each turn you can Command a Unit or Rally to get your Command Tokens back. If you Rally you draw a new Tactic Card. You also have to draw one if you have a Unit eliminated. If you are obliged to draw a Tactic Card and there are none left you instantly lose.
So there you have the crux of the game using your Orders up means having to Rally and draw another Tactic Card but losing a Unit by taking the casualties will also mean drawing a Tactic Card. You have very few of these in your deck. Considering 2 are effectively pre-drawn to give you your opening hand then in a 6 Unit game you will only be able to Rally a maximum of 4 times and that’s if you don’t lose any Units!
Tactic Cards do have their uses however, three uses in fact:
· Give you various buffs in the form of special actions
· Add 1 die to an attack for each card discarded
· Discard a card to redeploy a Unit from 1 Sector to another (I appreciate I haven’t mentioned Redeployment before! This can be done prior to deciding whether to Command or Rally)
Please note it is the drawing of the Tactic Cards that can end your game. Once you have them in your hand you might as well use them the small bonuses can make all the difference particularly when things are getting tight at the end.
Each Faction has 18 Tactic Cards available consisting of 3 copies of 6 different types. Whilst each deck is different there are only 13 different Tactic Card Types and only Rome with Surge and Han with Rain Of Arrows have an unique type.
B:WOTA game!
There are a lot of lovely balances and checks in Battalion: War of the Ancients. Notably trying to spend your Orders wisely and split them between issuing commands and absorbing casualties. It’s a constant battle (pun intended) to try and avoid having to Rally before your opponent. Using Order for that one last key attack but still keep something back for counter attack etc.
Also in a Muster scenario when you build your own units do you keep them homogenous for simple ordering or mix the ranks to bring extra traits or bodies for cohesion. Look too at their Attack Values and any Traits they bring to the party.
As noted before with all these variables, Ranks and Factions can definitely have a distinctive feel, added to by Roland MacDonald’s excellent artwork. I fully expect new army expansions down the line.
You can also add your own modifications by increasing the number of Command Tokens and/or Tactic Cards for a longer game with more manoeuvres.
One small gripe some of the typeface used is extremely small and hard to distinguish even with good eyesight. Whilst the Faction symbol is hard to make out It is irrelevant anyway as they each have a different colour, though the Han and the Greco-Bactrians are a bit too similar. The Unit Class however is important to distinguish for the Ranks it can have. Given the artwork and the type of Attack Value you can work out the Class but it would be nice to be able to see it. This is not helped by the rulebook saying a Rank may have multiple classes. Do they? I didn’t see any.
And finally it would be nice at some point to have a single player variant so I could play the Han solo! There I said it!
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