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After failing to rescue some hostages, Patch and I went to our between-games round of Commands & Colors: Ancients, with the Battle of Pydna from Expansion #1. Unfortunately, I forgot to record a log of the bulk of the second game, so I won’t have as detailed writeup for that one. The Macedonians have a fairly Heavy army, with Lights and Aux out front, while the Romans are centered on Medium infantry with a pair of Elephants on one flank. Stretching across the middle of the map is a bunch of rough terrain, which makes this a very different battle.

For the first game I had the Macedonians, and I started by Ordering Four Left, and Patch countered with Four Right, with his Elephants doing one block to me. I Counter Attacked, driving off one Elephant, and doing a block to the other, in return for a Light and HC loss to rampage. Order Two Right destroyed the HC, even while evading, and his Mediums moved up to drive off my Lights. Three Left lost me a block on a LC to another rampage, but that unit also finished off the weakened Elephants, and then drove back his Lights on momentum. Out Flanked let the remaining Elephants to two hits to a medium, take a hit, and do a third to the Medium with rampage, and do an archery hit on the other flank. Leadership Any Section let my left keep moving, and finally pick off the remaining Elephant, and force back his Medium and Light.

Patch got his middle-right going with his own Leadership Any Section, doing three hits to a Heavy, but taking seven blocks across three units in the process. With both of our flanks exhausted, I Ordered Three Center to move up, with the depleted Heavy finishing off a Medium. Patch Ordered Lights to do another hit to a LB, and finished off a weak Medium. I used Line Command to move up, did a hit to a weak Medium, and finished off his LC. Patch Ordered Lights again to drive off my LB, do a block each to two other units, and finally finish off my Heavy.

Order Two Left drove off his LC with a loss, and he came back with Move-Fire-Move to do a block to a Light and drive it off, and then get much of his line up to the rough terrain. I used Order Two Right to kill an Aux, but it got two banners on an MC which drove it back to the baseline and reduced it to one block, and the other MC followed it to the baseline after a momentum attack. Patch used Inspired Left Leadership to get into the rough and do two blocks to an Aux in return for one block. I used Order Four Center to mostly pick on scattered units, but got nowhere. Coordinated Attack got him a couple hits, and Darken the Sky did no more than a single hit for me.

Patch announced that He Was Spartacus, but did no more than order a Medium and an Aux (the last on a wildcard), and finished off a Light and reduced an Aux to one block. I Ordered Three Right to drive back an Aux and reduce a Light to one block, and Patch used Mounted Charge to finish of a MC and kill Perseus. Line Command let me press forward, and I eliminated a blocked Light with two banners, reduced his HC to one block, and traded blocks between a Medium and my Heavy. Clash of Shields let patch activate three units, and nearly wiped out a Heavy while finishing off another, and I did one block in return. Order Three Right forced the HC to evade, but didn’t finish it off, and ranged fire got a block on his Aux. Double Time let him shift to his left and finished off my Heavy. 6-8

As mentioned, I don’t have a detailed writeup for most of the second game, but we kept a fairly even score (5-5 at the point my log picks up), with Perseus dying early in the action. Both sides lost a lot on the Roman left flank (the opposite side as all the early action last time), and the fight in the center rough got fairly fierce while the right did not really engage.

Patch then Out Flanked to reduce one of the Elephants a block, and I Ordered Heavies to pick off a Medium at the cost of the weakened Elephant, and then got a weakened Heavy, but failed to finish off a one-block HC on momentum, and took two hits instead. Another Heavy also missed in rough terrain, and lost a block in return. Patch Ordered Two Center and wiped out my weak Heavy and killed Paulus. 7-8

Afterword

Both games were pretty close and tense battles, the second one especially, since I’d had a very good chance of winning it on the previous turn. The rough terrain did a really good job of making it a very different battle as we struggled to maneuver and deal with the dice restrictions.

There’s also a Roman camp along their edge, but none of the action even got close to it, and in fact, most of the action stayed very close to the middle of the board. It’s a good fight, but a long one; we went two sessions both times, and even on the bigger scenarios, we usually have one of them only go one session in our limited time.