Antike

Back in April I briefly mentioned we had played a couple of games of Antike. And as always here is my late list of things we played wrong during the game.

It appears that we did not play the movement and combat portion of Antike correctly after reading the rules and looking at some conquest combat examples on BGG. Some of the things I caught:
1. There are two phases to a Maneuver on the Rondel, a Movement Action and a Conquest Action. Each one requires a movement "point" to conduct. During Movement Actions you can move units but then you may also battle enemy units (Legions and Galleys) in the region you just moved into. These movement/battles are not simultaneous so you could clear a region of enemy units first to allow further movement through that region with other units in the same Maneuver action. Secondly you may conduct a Conquest Action following the Movement Action. This is how you convert enemy cities. This is important as in the beginning, before anyone has purchased Wheel, Roads, Sailing, and Navigation, it would take you two Maneuvers to convert an enemy city; the first one to move into it and battle any enemy units and then the second maneuver to conquer the city itself provided you had any survivors and sufficient strength! This makes researching the bonus movement type Know-Hows very important!

2. When not trying to Conquer an enemy city (during the Conquest Action of the Maneuver), ie battles after Movement - Legions only eliminate Legions and Galleys only eliminate Galleys. This is another important subtle distinction especially for coastal cities. For example, if an enemy city is occupied by both Legions and Galleys (only possible in coastal regions) and you move a fleet of Galleys into the region the subsequent battle will only eliminate enemy Galleys and leave all Legions unaffected. Provided you had any Galleys remaining from the battle and suffcient strength you could then conquer the city during a later Maneuver or during this Maneuver provided you had movement points left over for your surviving Galleys. When doing a Conquest Action, the restriction of "Galleys eliminate Galleys" and "Legions eliminate Legions" doesn't apply.

3. I don't think we violated this one but it could have come up. Legions may not be built in regions that are completly bordered in blue, ie Islands. At first thought one may think I would never do that since they would not be able to leave the island (Galleys don't transport Legions in the game) but you may do it to add more defenders to an island especially if all your Galleys have been built and are on the map elsewhere.

That's about it but these little rules discoveries just made the Maneuver portion of the game a little bit more interesting.