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Osprey Games, the doyen of wargames and military publishing, have announced the launch of Battalion: War of the Ancients this coming November.
It is a stylised 2-player wargame played with card tiles representing troop types ranked in groups facing off against each other in 3 sectors across the “battlefield”. Lined up in the Formation zone they will move forward into melêe contact with the enemy in the Engagement zone. Behind this is your camp holding tactics cards and command tokens via which you control your army.
You win a game by destroying your opponents centre sector leaving their camp open or be getting them to use up all their Tactics cards. Essentially a war of attrition. Combat is by rolling D10s and each unit gets a certain number of base dice and then can get additions in a variety of ways: support troops, flanking etc.
Attacks can either physically reduce and remove units or they may be disordered represented by tokens. You can re-order units in your turn by conducting a Rally turn and burning a Tactics card. This dis-ordering and using cards was reminiscent to me of Undaunted. This is reinforced by the fact that they share the same artist in Roland (Not Ronald!) MacDonald.
In the box you get four different dynasties Rome and Carthage for the Punic Wars and also the Han Dynasty and the Greco-Bactrians of the Dayuan for the War of the Heavenly Horses. The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom was a Hellenistic Greek state at the East end of Persia roughly where Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are now. It’s interesting to have an alternative to the classic Western fighting factions.
There are a whole heap of different units available for the four factions including Hannibal’s legendary elephants – can be tricky to manage but devasting handled well. The famed Roman Legions and their allies. The Han dynasty have crossbowmen as their backbone and presumably not a lot of horses.
If you consider the Romans you get: Praetorian Guard, Hastatii and Velites which given the historical accuracy you expect from Osprey will get benefits from being played in realistic positions these are backed up by auxiliaries such as Cretan Archers and Roman Cavalry (when they’re not busy singing for Coldplay! ) So you can chose to replicate historical set ups or muster your army how you want and if you want to fight the Romans against the Han go for it.
Gameplay seems not too complex or long for a wargame and there’s a nice balance of playing with familiar faction like the Romans and Carthaginians and the less well known Eastern armies of the Han and the Greco-Bactrians.
Can’t wait to try these out against my favourite opponents but maybe save the Han for a Solo variant! (Sorry).
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