Battalion: War of the Ancients Review
The sun glints off the enemy’s helmets as you squint across the field, gripping your spear and shield, knowing that soon they will be all that stands between you and death. A moment of calm, then the cry of battle as the enemy advances. Your archers release a counter-fire, sending a rain of arrows and taking down the front line of cavalry. Your unit receives the orders to advance and meet the enemy head-on. You march through the dust, and with a clash of metal and leather and the drumming of hooves, you go to meet your fate.
Battalion: War of the Ancients brings the great armies of old to your tabletop in a clash between two or four players, with a playtime of 20-45 minutes.
The standard setup for the game is designed for two players. First, choose whether you’ll use the setup for one of the set battles in the rulebook, or create your own armies with the ranks available in the game. A “rank” represents one group of soldiers of a specific discipline, such as Infantry, while a “unit” is made up of multiple rank tiles placed together on the battlefield and may consist of identical or different types of rank.
Each side chooses an army to command from Roman, Han, Greco-Bactrian, or Carthaginian. The battlefield is divided into three sectors. The assembled armies are placed into each player’s formation zone and space is left between the players’ assembled armies for the engagement zone. Players set their camp board behind their formation zone; this is where their battle deck and order tokens are stored. Each army’s deck is made up of a number of cards equal to the number of ranks (6-12) in that army, and they take the same number of order tokens, returning any extras to the box, then draw a hand of two cards.
On your turn, after a possible redeployment action, you can choose one of three options:
In all cases, commanding a unit costs order tokens, which are placed on the unit at the start of the action. The cost is at least one order, but can be higher.
Alternatively, you
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