UGG's Assyrian Wars

Today four players played the Assyrian Wars for the first time. It's said that this is a long game but we have (quite surprisingly) managed to finish the game in one session. Here is a brief after action report.  We played the "Rise and Fall" scenario, in which the four powers are Assyria, Mede, Babylonia and Elam. In the beginning, Babylonia and Elam are at war with Assyria while Mede is neutral, and Mede shows her good will to Assyria by paying Tributes to the latter.  Assyria turns her attention to Uratu in the north, while Elam and Babylonia start building up forces. When Assyria's main force is far from her home country, Elam and Babylonia attack the southern part of Assyria.  After taking a city in Assyria, Babylonia's king lays siege to a major city with fortress of Assyria. However, Assyria has just completed her conquest of Uratu and starts moving southward.  She sends her vanguard as a relief force to the major city but is intercepted by the sieging force; therefore, a field battle is fought.  Although the Babylonians win and make the Assyrians retreat, they suffer some damage in the process.  Assyria then sends another main army group to give the Babylonians a finishing blow.  The Babylonians have something up their sleeves and play a battle card (with the best luck) to remove the best leader of the Assyrians.  However, this does not change the outcome. Babylonia loses the battle and her army routs with her king.  Then Assyria combines the victory force with her King's force and creates a "killer stack", which continues to take back all the cities lost to Babylonia and Elam previously.  Moreover, during this process, Assyria accumulates a lot of Victory Points, to a total of eight VPs.
At the end of the round, trading VPs are awarded to the largest traders Babylonia and Elam, which ends in 4 VPs and 2 VPs respectively.  Mede has taken a minor city by hunger siege for 1 VP. In the end, Assyrian VP of eight is greater than the combination of all the other powers, so she wins a sudden victory!  As an after thought, Mede should refuse to pay the tribute to Assyria to make her oblige to divert her efforts to attack Mede, then probably Elam and Babylonia could possibly hold out a bit longer in the south.  Anyway, it is a good game and I look forward to playing it again in the near future.                                                                                                                       Angus Lee