Commands & Colors: Ancients - Greece & Eastern Kingdoms Review

I'm wrapping up my second play through of all the scenarios for the first expansion to Commands & Colors: Ancients.  There is also a reprint of this expansion due any day now!  So I figured it would be a great time for a review.  I won't lie, I may have some rose tinted glasses for this game.  I'm quite open that Commands & Colors: Ancients is nothing short of my favorite game ever.  From the moment I first played it, I absolutely fell in love with it, and every game I play just brings me new appreciation for the system.

Greece & Eastern Kingdoms is published by GMT Games, and was originally released in 2006.  It adds 2 new armies, the titular Greece and the Eastern Kingdoms.  It also includes 21 scenarios, covering a span of time from roughly 500 BC to 200 BC.

Commands & Colors: Ancients, Part 2

Long term strategy, short term strategy, both or neither?

In terms of trying to concretely plan ahead, I'd have to say this game rewards thinking ahead about two or three turns.  Three turns is just the most you can really count on.  One turn to prepare.  One turn to launch the attack.  Then one more turn to try to follow up with that attack if they aren't destroyed or driven off in a counter attack.

Longer term planning can be helpful.  Getting all your troops into a mutually supporting formation or good terrain for the assault you know must be coming never hurts.  And it always helps to have a vague awareness of how many troops you want in each section, and trying to maintain cards in your hand to command them.  But that comes down to more of an intuitive feel for the game than anything you can discretely logic out.

In the short term, the positioning of your troops and the order in which you attack can have profound implications.  I'd say the bulk of the strategy is in the short term pairing up of troops to assault one another, the order you choose to execute their attacks.  I've seen even the best laid plans fall apart because someone allowed the enemy to escape before their strongest attacks could be brought to bare.  Which often results in a crushing counter attack.

Commands & Colors: Ancients, Part 1

Commands & Colors: Ancients came out in 2006 from GMT Games, and was designed by Richard Borg as part of his ever growing Commands & Colors series.  It is one of my favorite games.  I suppose I shouldn't qualify that.  It is my favorite game.  No exceptions.  I've logged over 50 plays, and I can perceive of no point in time where I will have gotten board with it.  But that does not spare it from my critical eye.