Commands & Colors: Ancients has been out for a long time and it's climbed the ranks to 21 on BGG for the top war games and 180 overall. This uses a similar system to Memoir 44 where players control different groups, in this case Romans vs Carthaginians. On your turns, you'll play a card from your hand and do what it says. These can be simple, like control 3 units on the left side of the map, or they can be more complex or opportunistic depending on what your opponent plays. You'll move your units and carry out any battles. This is done by rolling a certain amount of dice based on the unit and assign any damage. Several scenarios require you to wipe out the opponents units completely from a hex in order to take an enemy banner. Heres the kicker though, some units can't just hit any unit and you may need to roll their exact symbol or they may retreat. There's also units that can simply evade an attack. Whichever player meets the requirements of the scenario will win.
The Good: The C&C system is so well done. It's about as accessible of a war game as you can get and there are a lot of scenarios in the base game. You can also find hundreds of other scenarios online. The replay value is through the roof on this one. Basing all of the scenarios on real historic battles is really nicely done. Obviously you can't recreate a full battle on a board but its still cool to let you imagination take over a bit with this.
The Okay: As accessible of a system as C&C is, you're still gonna need to have the right person to play with. War games, similar to 18XX are hard sells for most casual gamers. You'll also want to consider some sort of organization system with this game. Sifting through all of the blocks to find the units you're looking for can be somewhat of a pain but the general setup is surprisingly quick. You can set up/tear down within about 10 minutes.
The Not So Good: Stickers. So many stickers. If you're unfamiliar with the system, it uses different shaped blocks for units and each block has a sticker on each side. It took me an extremely long time and I had probably one month between doing the first and second factions because this is a complete descent into madness. Thankfully, you're only doing this once through the life of the game.
Final Thoughts: I absolutely understand the praise for C&C: Ancients. It's a very well made game with a ton of strategy and planning involved. Normally, I don't like dice for damage, but it works perfectly with this one. Weaker units shouldn't be able to steamroll like a stronger one could. This was my first venture into the C&C system and I don't think it'll be my last. I highly recommend this if you're interested in war games but they intimidate you. It's the perfect introduction to the genre. If you want to avoid the stickers, Memoir 44 may be the safer play.
Thanks to GMT Games for providing me with a review copy.