Empires of the Ancient World

This new Martin Wallace design is receiving favorable comparisons to both History of the World and Vinci.  Of course, the variants are already surfacing.

This new Martin Wallace design, released by his own Warfrog label, seems to combine the flavor and tactics of more tradional American style games such as History of the World with the mechanics and simplicity of many German style games.  To a large extent, it succeeds. 

However, some have expressed concerns about various aspects of the game and, of course, the variants are already surfacing in droves.

Here,  offers the following variants:

·  Players may use trade blocks acquired through plunder.

·  Players can spend two trade blocks to cancel the effect of a revolt.

·  Players may discard one army card instead of rolling a die when attacking a neutral zone.

·  New Action:  Place one trade block from stock into your warehouse.

·  Fire Order:  When ranged units attack each other, the first unit to kill wins the combat.   
   Resolve the attack in the following order:  Artillery, Light Horse, Archer, Foot skirmishers

·  When moving through a mountain, the defender can declare an ambush without possessing
    a leader.

·  There is no die roll for moving.  Rather, you pay trade blocks utilizing the following table:

 

MOVEMENT	COST IN TRADE BLOCKS
Mountain	0 (Ambush)
Strait	0
Sea Lane in Controlled Sea Zone	0
Sea Lane in Uncontrolled Sea Zone	1
Uncontrolled Sea Zone with adjacent Controlled Sea Zone	1
Uncontrolled Sea Zone without adjacent Controlled Sea Zone