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Sunday 21 November 2010

A day of wargaming

Today was the monthly informal wargames gathering that I try to go to whenever I can. As usual, it was held in Central London in the offices of one of the members of Wargame Developments.

Today could best be described as being a 'Richard Borg' day; in the morning we played the epic version of COMMAND AND COLORS: ANCIENTS (the Battle of Cannae, which the Carthaginians won ... just!) and in the afternoon we managed two games using MEMOIR '44.

The Battle of Cannae is underway. The Romans have their backs to the camera, and are facing their Carthaginian enemies, who are sitting across the table from them.
It was generally felt that MEMOIR '44 was not as good a game as COMMAND AND COLORS: ANCIENTS, but that had we been playing the larger, multi-player version of the former, it might have been more enjoyable.

4 comments:

  1. Interesting. Our group tends to enjoy Memoir '44 much more than Command & Colors: Ancients. Perhaps it has to do with preference for the period?

    The Overlord scenarios for Memoir '44 are incredible, especially if you can get the six players. We have gotten up to four so far, and found it interesting. More so than two player. And games tend to move fast enough for players not to get bored.

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  2. Dale,

    I suspect that there are several reasons why most of the players preferred 'Command & Colors: Ancients' to 'Memoir '44'.

    The first is the presence of at least two people who have studied Classics and one who plays a lot of wargames set in the Ancient period.

    Secondly, the version of 'Command & Colors: Ancients' we used was the epic version, which is designed for multi-player games, whereas we used the normal face-to-face, two player version of ‘Memoir ‘44’. This meant that in the first game of ‘Memoir ‘44’, some players we sat doing very little for some of the time. In the second game we made a few minor changes (i.e. handing out two or three Command Cards per turn) and all the players were much more involved … and agreed that it was a better game for the changes that we had made.

    All the best,

    Bob

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  3. Bob
    The feedback on C&C is interesting. I wonder of I prefer it to Memoir largely because I am more familiar with and have a (relatively) greater knowledge of WW2. I'm planning to play C&C again this wednesday.
    Tim

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  4. Tim Gow,

    I suspect that you might be right. 'Command & Colors: Ancients' seems to be a much better game than, for example, DBA or BBDBA, whereas there are lots of World War II games/sets of rules that one can compare 'Memoir '44' with ... and think that it is not quite as good for a variety of reasons.

    My own opinion is that the basic elements of both rules systems are good, but that they seem to work better with 'Command & Colors: Ancients'.

    All the best,

    Bob

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