Ancient Pub Battles

A quick playing, beautiful, simple war game which nonetheless allows for depth and strategy, and reflects historical conditions well. This set makes an excellent introduction to the Pub Battles system, which features settings in the American Revolutionary and Civil Wars, as well as Napoleonics.

Modern kriegspiel system Pub Battles, no map needed

A lovely little game, with a simple rule set that belies more complex strategy. Lots of replay-ability and easy to home-brew.

Arguably a bit pricey for what you get - and could benefit from a little more production values; but all that said, it’s well worth buying it you like Ancient warfare and wooden block / kriegspiel games

After two plays I'm very impressed with this game. The chit system used for commands is the star of the show and allows for quite a bit of flexibility and drama as the game unfolds. A little on the pricey side for what it is, but the core mechanics are solid and the components are well done.

The Pub Battles system lends itself easily to its transcription in antiquity. What do we have?

• The pleasure of playing with wooden pieces (Kriegspiel style, but which could have been used in the tent of the Carthaginian Hannibal)
• specific units (weak detachments for war tricks, heavy infantry - light-heavy cavalry - units with low morale, high morale...) - ELEPHANTS OF WAR!
• A fog of war, we play blind: who is standing behind this piece of wood? 1000 men, 2500 legionnaires?
• A command system based on generals, realistic and intuitive: you command a battle line (units side by side) or a sector.
• a game that easily underlines the quality of the generals: the talent of each one allows to anticipate the action or to delay it.
• a simple combat system that does not unnecessarily accumulate bonuses and malus.
• a simple system that allows you to create your own army.

Of course, this is not a simulation game that goes into every detail: like all Pub Battles games, the scale used synthesizes the data to focus on the orders to be given to the upper level. The essential without however neglecting tactical aspects (flanking, moral forces, units of different nature...) In summary, in 8 turns, it will take a good command to hit the enemy without suffering, keep the initiative, break through his lines and finally win.

The correlate is the gameplay: easy to set up, fast to play (1 hour), tactical, surprising, going to the essential, plastic enough to adapt to the scenarios or scale.

There may be some things to improve, to modify: but the whole is good. I can't wait for the Gallic, Germanic, Greek and Persian extensions.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Just ordered this along with the update kits for my Merrengo and Brandywine along with the Monmouth expansion map (which for some reason is not listed on BGG). Arrived today 10/02/20!! :-)

This could be a GREAT game, simple and strategic ancient's battles with a small footprint. But the price for what you get, and the lack of ranged units reduces the score for me. They say the scale of the game doesn't allow for ranged units but that's a bunch of hooey imo. This is pretty much a simple version of DBA and those games have ranged units.