Wargame review — C&C: Medieval

Forge Ahead

Designer: Richard Borg
Player count: 2
Publisher: GMT Games

When the Roman Empire reinvented itself in the east (a vast power known today as the Byzantine Empire), the 6^th century never looked so bright and promising. But Persia had other ideas, and the two forces would repeatedly meet on bloody battlefields for the better part of six decades.

C&C: Medieval is the latest incarnation of Richard Borg’s Commands & Colors system—a system the designer has molded and twisted to simulate a variety of conflicts, from the American Civil War to hypothetical skirmishes in the far reaches of intergalactic space.

Medieval stands as GMT’s third foray into the system, starting with Ancients back in 2006 and following up with Napoleonics in 2010. Both previous publications spawned large numbers of expansion modules, adding new battles to ponder and new factions with which to resolve them. There’s no reason to believe this new family member won’t be treated the same way—after all, the Middle Ages lasted a thousand years!

The basic system remains unchanged: stickered blocks represent various units, which are deployed on a grid of hexagons divided into three sections. Command cards allow players to activate a number of units in the left, center or right section (and sometimes across multiple sections). Movement follows; battle oftentimes ensues.

Each type of unit has its own movement and battle capabilities, perhaps allowing it to fire from a distance (as is the case for archers, amongst others) or engage the enemy with awesome power (like the heavy cavalry). Leaders provide support and enhance the performance of neighboring units; however, your commanders are not invincible, so make sure you guard them well.

Special six-siders are used to resolve combat, which sees players trying to roll the symbol associated with the unit type they are targeting. The more powerful the unit, the more dice it rolls in combat. But no matter its strengths or weaknesses, a unit is made up of exactly four blocks, and each hit suffered takes away one such block. Upon removal of a unit’s last block, the attacking player earns a banner. Accumulate the number of banners required by the historical scenario you’re playing, and you win the game.

HOW DOES IT COMPARE TO C&C: ANCIENTS?

Medieval is more or less an Ancients sequel. Leaders behave the same way, boosting units and preventing ill-timed retreats; units are back to consistently chucking the same number of dice, no matter how many blocks they have left. Yes, line combat is still a thing, and you’d do well to respect the doctrine.

In fact, the two games are so closely connected that the Medieval rulebook uses a special arrow icon to indicate where new or altered rules are introduced into the classic Ancients ruleset. (Although they missed one, the Parthian Shot, on page 16.)

• Superior Armor Class: In close combat, units with an armor class higher than that of their adversary can ignore one sword hit. (Red > Blue > Green)
• Superior Stature: In close combat, mounted units can ignore one sword hit inflicted by an infantry unit.
• Parthian Shot: Light bow cavalry units can shoot two dice at their attacker when they evade!

But the most significant, earthquake-inducing change introduced in Medieval is without a doubt the advent of Inspired Actions.

Each time you play a Leadership card (a card with the word “leadership” in its title), you can spend an Inspired Action token to activate one of your army’s Inspired Actions. Said actions vary from army to army but generally include powerful maneuvers such as Mounted Charge, Darken the Skies and Move Fire Move.

Essentially, the units activated by the Leadership card get to carry on whatever special action they are empowered with. (And if you don’t play an Inspired Action token with your leadership card, you earn one such token. Hoarders will have a field day.)

Inspired Action tokens can also be used to trigger Battlefield Actions, much like Inspired Actions, but without the need to play a specific card. Currently, three Battlefield Actions are available to both armies: Move a Leader (at the end of the turn), Battle Bonus (attack—or battle back!—with one additional die), and Bravery (ignore one flag).

Two things are important to state at this point, both of them red herrings.

First, the rules changes appear cosmetic; I mean, how much could a few lines of text really transform the gameplay experience? A lot more than one might think, it turns out.

Second, and given the previous statement, Medieval must feel significantly different from Ancients, right? Well, in a joyous paradox of cardboard and wood: not at all. If you’re a veteran of Ancients, you’ll feel right at home. And if you’re new to the whole shebang? Medieval is no more difficult to pick up than its predecessor.

(And I envy you the wondrous journey ahead.)

WAR PRODUCTION

Medieval ships in a deep box that harbors a tall deck of command cards, a large mounted board, all the Inspired Action tokens you might want, more terrain tiles than you can shake a long sword at, plus about a warhorse’s weight in wooden blocks and stickers.

The game also comes with printed dice whose solid, weighty plastic puts previous C&C stickered dice to shame. I love them and hope that GMT will keep using similar dice in the future.

Despite the fact that most cavalry units are pictured without a bow, several scenarios state that those units do, in fact, carry bows. No worries: bow tokens have been provided to help mark those units quickly and efficiently. (The marker also looks pretty cool, sitting atop that quartet of blocks on the battlefield.)

The Medieval board is one hex deeper than most of the other C&C boards, which might not seem like much of an alteration. Ah, but you can certainly feel the difference when your raiding cavalry units, operating deep into enemy territory, try to make their way home.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Only 18 pages of rules stand between you and victory on the battlefield.

And those pages are slightly better organized than the Ancients rulebook, with concepts like “Attach and Detach Leaders” being given their own section instead of ending up buried in a wall of text about movement. So get to it—you’ll be up and running in no time.

As usual within this family of games, the separate player aids contain all of the stats pertaining to individual unit types, so that you’ll never have to browse the rulebook for those in the heat of battle. But I do miss the terrain effects player aids that accompanied many of my other forays into the C&C world. Hopefully, GMT will equip us crusaders with those weapons in an expansion to come.

The back of the rulebook reveals a full card almanac (quite handy when it comes to assessing a few edge cases), as well as 19 challenging scenarios. Just like in Ancients, the Medieval battles start you off easy, without any terrain in sight. But just you wait. Can you hear the raging waters of the Euphrates in the distance? Or the furious wind barreling through the many passes of Petra Mountain?

Terrain will find you. What you accomplish with it is up to you.

FUN FACTOR

One of the nice surprises here is that the game supplies armies on both sides with light bow infantry units that can shoot adversaries at a distance of four hexes. That’s a range of more than a third of the board, which can wreak some serious havoc in your opponent’s line. Long-distance relationships have suddenly become a lot more tense.

I was a bit disappointed when I saw only one deck of cards sitting in the Medieval box. I had become accustomed to (spoiled by?) the tactician deck found in Napoleonics and some other games in the series. But when I started playing with the Inspired Action tokens, I quickly realized I didn’t want to go back.

Whenever you play a Leadership card, you can spend a token to morph that card into whatever Inspired Action you need. True, tactician cards meant you always had a handful of such actions at your disposal, but you might get stuck with stuff you didn’t need and wait an entire game for the one card you want to show up. With Inspired Action tokens, when you do draw that Leadership card, you can call it whatever you like.

Inspired indeed.

I would be remiss if I didn’t make a special mention of the cataphract cavalry. Not only can those super heavy cavalry units trample everything in their path with their 4-dice attacks, but their armor class is at the very top of the food chain, allowing them to ignore a sword hit from almost everyone, even other heavy units. With a leader at its head, the cataphract cavalry cannot be ignored for long. Flanked by a handful of friendly units, it becomes a veritable terror on the board.

PARTING SHOTS

Back in 2011, I wrote in a review [link] that Napoleonics was my favorite entry into the world of Commands & Colors. I loved the fact that units attacked with only as many dice as they had blocks left; that artillery could shoot over the heads of friendly units and join forces with infantry or cavalry in some impressive feats of combined arms; that infantry could go into a square formation and stand its ground against the most aggressive cavalry charge. I loved it all. And that sentiment went unchallenged for years… until I started missing Ancients.

Napoleonics remains a fascinating game, but there is a simplicity, a directness to Ancients that frees the mind to tackle the tactical problems that are the beating heart of the system. After over 150 plays of Ancients I felt ready for the next step, but Napoleonics might have gone just a tad too far in its sophistication—despite the fact that I couldn’t imagine myself ever again playing a C&C game without a tactician deck. So for a dedicated Ancients player, Medieval feels like a better “next step.” And it gives us the Inspired Actions mechanism, which I believe represents a fascinating evolution of the tactician deck of cards.

In the end, I’m getting the best of both worlds.

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