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Patch and I did another round of Commands & Colors: Ancients this Tuesday, with the Battle of Tanagra from Expansion #6 being the subject (though there were no walls to fall). Both armies are roughly equal, with the Spartans perhaps positioned better, and there is a special rule that turns the one Greek MC unit into a Spartan one if they play a Mounted Charge.

I had the Greeks the first time, and we both started moving parts of our lines forward. I manged to cut off the Light at the left end of his line and kill it mostly with banner results. I then Double Timed my lagging center up into contact with his line, Patch lost slightly more blocks than I did, but I also forced a Spartan MH back two hexes. Patch reshuffled his line a little, and I came in with a Line Command.

And that’s where things went wrong. On one end, three attacks on two Spartan MHs cost him three blocks, but eliminated one of my MHs and reduced two other units to one block each. On the other end, I reduced an Aux to 1 block, but they got two hits on each of three units and a MH-MH fight cost me two blocks for one of his.

Then Patch played Mounted Charge. He finished off two units with that, and forced another MH to retreat after taking two hits. With nothing in my hand for my left, where my only intact units were, I couldn’t really do anything before he finished me off next turn. 1-6

In the second round, after a couple turns of maneuvering, I used Double Time to send in much of the center. We mostly exchanged blocks, but I got a lucky four-block hit to wipe out one of his MH on a momentum battle (I had really been wondering if I wanted to push my luck that far). Patch reshuffled his line, and finished off an Aux that had taken three hits before, and knocked a Spartan MH down to one block. My line was broken up, but an Order Two Center finished off an Aux, allowed me to momentum battle a 1-block MH Patch had hidden behind his line to finish it off, and kill his leader.

Patch returned the favor with Order Two Center killing a three block MH and killing my leader. Not having much else I could do, I Ordered Two Center to start walking an unused MH forward, and attack the unraveling line, with a three block hit finishing the game. 6-3

Afterword: Nice, fairly balanced feeling scenario. Our luck was high, with games tending to turn on lucky four-block hits. In fact, they were fast games. We usually do one of these in an hour on Vassal, and the first game only took fifty minutes. The second one was only thirty.