Commands&Colors: Ancients – Travel Edition
Posted by | Posted in Boardgames, Projects | Posted on 16-02-2010
Commands and Colors: Ancients is a great game and system by Richard Borg available from GMT Games. It depicts battles in the ancient world from 3000BC to 400AD of varying scale. Much more can be said and is at BoardGameGeek.com, so I’ll let the great content there speak for the game.
For me the only real downside to C&C:Ancients for me is the portability: the base game has over 340 5/8″ wooden blocks, and there are currently 6 expansions for the base game. While not horrible to carry, it is a touch on the heavy side so it’s only likely to make it to the away table if pre-planned.
Looking at an example game
The result? Shown above is my attempt to make a C&C:Ancients Travel Edition.
The board is hand-made in Photoshop, the pieces are scanned from the originals and shrunk in Photoshop. For scale the hexes are 1.5″ wide making the whole map 8″x12″. The map is laser printed and mounted to flexible sheet steel available from Litko Aerosystems, makers of many find gaming bits and pieces. The terrain hexes are mounted on flexible sheet magnet.
Looking at the details of the game pieces.
For the counters I had to go a slightly different direction because the magnets have only so much strength and stacking too many of them can have unwanted results..
The game uses a number of blocks to measure the current unit strength: 4 blocks equals a 4 strength unit. In order to accomodate the same function in a travel edition I had to employ the method used in many other block games: each side of the counter represents the current strength, the side facing the opponent being the current strength. For example the Medium (blue triangle) horseman above is strength 3. In order to make it easier to handle the counters I affixed them to artboard before affixing that to the magnet.
For more information on C&C: Ancients try the following links:
C&C:Ancients Living Rules (the latest and greatest)
Postscript: Unfortunately the completed board, terrain, units for the base game, and my spare pair of wooden dice were lost while out gaming. Ironic, but still sad. I have all the files to re-create the set but probably won’t for some time.