Command and Colors: Ancients
Commands & Colors: Ancients allows you to re-fight epic battles of the ancient world. Here the focus is on the two rivals for power in the Western Mediterranean – Carthage and Rome. Will you, as Hannibal, triumph over larger Roman armies; or as Scipio Africanus, will you beat Hannibal with newer tactics of your own?
Units in both armies can only move and fight when ordered. The command playing cards supply those orders, providing an element of luck that creates a fog of war and presents players with both challenges and opportunities. You must maximize your opportunities by playing your command cards judiciously. How well you handle the diverse units, their weapons, and the terrain, will determine victory.
Commands & Colors: Ancients contains the battles of Akragas, Crimissos River, Ticinus River, Lake Trasimenus, Cannae, Dertosa, Castulo, Baecula, Ilipa, and Zama.
AGE 12+
NUMBER OF PLAYERS 2
PLAYING TIME 1 hour per battle
Combat Commander: Europe
Combat Commander is a card-driven board game series covering tactical infantry combat in the European and North African Theaters of World War II. One player takes the role of the Axis (Germany in this first game; Italy & the Axis Minors in later installments) while another player commands the Allies (Russia & America here; Britain, France & the Allied Minors in future expansions).
This first game of Combat Commander will include units, cards, and historical scenarios depicting the American, German, and Russian forces. The second game in the series will provide cards, counters, and historical scenarios for British, French, and Italian forces.
Each game will include 6-12 historical scenarios as well as a "roll your own" scenario system that provides an almost unending variety of map configurations, force structures, and combat situations. Replayability value for Combat Commander is very high.
A game of Combat Commander has no strict sequence of play. Each turn is divided into a variable number of Player Turns, each of which may consist of either: the active player expending one or more Fate cards from their hand for their Actions; or passing, which allows the discarding of one or more Fate cards. Players redraw up to their maximum hand size at the end of each of their own Player Turns. Additionally, Reactions may be played by either player at any time, so long as the prerequisite listed is met.
FATE CARDS: Players will take turns playing one or more “Fate” cards from their hands in order to activate their units on the mapboard for various military functions. Each nationality has its own 72-card Fate deck highlighting its historical strengths and weaknesses (lots of Smoke for the US; marksmanship bonuses for Britain; commissar events for the Soviets; broken Italian units will surrender more often; etc.). Each Fate card contains one Action and one Reaction: only one of which may be declared when the card is played. The bottom portion of each Fate card contains an Event, a random hex symbol, and a 2d6 die roll – these can never be ‘played’ from the hand, only ‘revealed’ from the top of the draw pile when a game situation instructs a player to do so.
ACTIONS include: Fire, Move, Advance, Rally, Rout, Artillery Request and Artillery Denied. Each nationality also has a varying number of Command Confusion Actions which act as duds while in hand – these cards are useless except for any possible Reaction on the card. Actions, when played, generally activate a single unit to perform that Action, unless a Leader is activated: in which case it can further activate any or all non-leaders within its Command Radius to perform the same Action. There are 15 different REACTIONS. For example:
Sustained Fire – Add +2 when firing a Mortar or Machine Gun. If the fire roll is “doubles”, break it.
Smoke – If a unit with boxed Movement is activated to Move or Advance, place Smoke in or adjacent to its hex.
Grenades – Add +2 when firing at an adjacent hex.
Dig In – Place foxholes in a friendly hex.
There are 36 different EVENTS – both good and bad – that will occur at random intervals to add much chaos and uncertainty to each player’s perfect plan. Event examples:
Walking Wounded – Select one eliminated unit. Return that unit to play in a random hex, broken.
Hero – If not already in play, place the Hero in a friendly hex. Rally one broken unit there.
Reinforcements - Roll on the Support Table. Select one available unit then place it along your map edge.
Battle Harden - One unit becomes Veteran.
Units and weapons are rated for their Firepower and Range, while units also have a Movement allowance and a Morale number. Most importantly, Leaders have a Command number as well. Command has two functions in Combat Commander. First, it allows a leader that has been activated to perform an Action the ability to further activate any friendly non-leaders up to X hexes away, where X is its Command number (or “Command Radius”). Second, a leader’s Command number is added directly to every stat on every non-leader currently occupying the same hex. So, for example, a 5-FP, 5-Rg, 5-Mv Squad with 7-Morale in the same hex as a Leader with a Command of 2 would have stats of 7-7-7 and 9 for all purposes as long as that condition existed.
Average playing time is about 90 minutes per scenario. A scenario is played on one of several mapsheets, each with a 10x15 hexgrid depicting various terrain at a scale of 100 feet per hex. In addition to playing one of the many pre-generated scenarios included with the game, players can roll up random situations, as well. Playtesters described both types of scenarios as “fast, furious, and addictive.”
Replayability for Combat Commander is high. Our core group of four testers has logged over 230 roll-your-own scenarios and still ask to play on most game nights. And with unlimited possibilities as far as additional scenarios, maps, units, weapons, variants, etc. that can be released in the months and years to come (as well as the new games covering the British, French, Italians, and the Pacific Theater now in the design stage), Combat Commander is one of those rare exceptional values in wargaming – one that can be revisited time and time again, each with a new tale to tell.
Twilight Struggle
TWILIGHT STRUGGLE is my all-time favorite game. It is a brilliant first design by the team of Jason Matthews and Ananda Gupta. It takes the card-driven genre of games like WE THE PEOPLE, HANNIBAL; ROME VS. CARTHAGE, and WILDERNESS WAR to its highest peak. Every game is different and the game gets better and better as become more familiar with the individual cards. You are surprised as hidden combos are revealed game after game. Every turn is filled with tension as you try to figure out the best way to play the hand of cards you've been dealt. Gaming simply doesn't get any better than this. -Alan R. Moon
"Now the trumpet summons us again, not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are – but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle." – John F. Kennedy
In 1945, unlikely allies toppled Hitler's war machine, while humanity's most devastating weapons forced the Japanese Empire to its knees in a storm of fire. Where once there stood many great powers, there now stood only two – the United States and the Soviet Union. The world had scant months to collectively sigh in relief before a new conflict threatened. Unlike the titanic struggles of the preceding decades, this conflict would be waged not primarily by soldiers and tanks, but by spies and politicians, scientists and intellectuals, artists and traitors. Twilight Struggle is a two-player game simulating the 45 year dance of intrigue, prestige, and occasional flares of warfare between the USSR and the USA. The entire world is the stage on which these two titans fight. The game begins amidst the ruins of Europe as the two new superpowers scramble over the wreckage of WWII and ends in 1989, when only the United States remained standing.
Twilight Struggle inherits its fundamental systems from the card-driven classics We the People and Hannibal. It is a quick-playing, low-complexity game in that same tradition. The game map is a world map of the period, whereon players move units and exert influence in attempts to gain allies and control for their superpower.
Twilight Struggle's Event cards add detail and flavor to the game. They cover a vast array of historical happenings: the Arab-Israeli conflicts, Vietnam, the peace movement, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and other such incidents that brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Subsystems capture the prestige-laden Space Race as well as nuclear tensions, with the possibility of game-ending nuclear war. Can you, as the U.S. President or Soviet Premier, lead your nation to victory? Play Twilight Struggle and find out.
Washington's War
Washington’s War is a card-driven game on the American Revolution. It pits the forces of King George III against the American colonists as they fight for their independence. In Washington’s War, you assume the role of either:
• The King of Great Britain as he tries to bring his rebellious colonies back into the Empire, while at the same time dealing with a global war against ancient enemies bent on revenge for their losses in the Seven Years War; OR
• The Continental Congress as they battle the forces of Britain, while trying to rally their countrymen to the cause of liberty.
Washington’s War is not just a re-tread of my earlier design on the same subject, but a true re-design that is keeping the basic feel while simplifying and speeding up what was already a fast paced game. Washington’s War features a dice-driven combat system that quickly resolves combat and is very friendly to internet play. The game also features a new CDG discard mechanic that enables a player to play a discarded event for the cost of an operations card. Now unusual card distributions create challenges and not insurmountable barriers to push your strategy forward. Washington’s War is being broadly tested on the internet to give players a voice and a source of input prior to publication. What was old is new again…. Be the man on the white horse and forge a nation or save an empire.
Washington’s War winner of the 2011 Charles S. Roberts Award for Best Pre-Napoleonic Wargame and the Walter Luc Haas Award for the best 2011 Wargame.
