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