Interesting discovery

The ram of an ancient warship discovered recently near Sicily could help establish where the famous last battle of the first Punic War took place. Credit: RPM Nautical Foundation

An interesting discovery was recently made off Sicily that may have pinpointed the site of a naval battle from the First Punic War, according to this article.

So far three rams have been found from the area. According to the article one was inscribed in Latin and was therefore definitely Roman, but the other two, includingt he latest, were plaina nd showed signs of being hastily made, pointing to a probable Carthagenian origin.

The article isn't clear, but it seems to refer to the Battle of the Aegates Islands, which is a scenario in War Galley and a notable Roman victory. This was the famous occasion where the Roamns constructed a fleet of 200 war galleys through patriotic efforts by wealthy citizens and groups of the less wealthy.

The abbreviated reign of King Hammursethi of Babylon

The privately published King of Kings is probably best known for one of the truly awful boardgame covers in wargame history, but underlying it was a pretty decent little strategic rule and conquest ancients game. It was by Bill Good, the designer of Ancients and there were rules for using that tactical game to resolve the battles, although every time I've played King of Kings I've used the higher level battle system included with the strategic game.

Turns represnt three month seasons, with various economic, poliutcal and military activities taking place in each turn. While best payed as amultiplayer game, most of the 15 sceanrios can be played solitaire, with the various nonplayer and neutral states acting under s et of straightforward rules.

The game, despite the military elements, is not really a wargame per se, in that military conquests are not the most efficient way to accumulate victory points. There's a good payoff from trade and an even bigger payoff for purchasing "achievements" such as Religion or Roads.

The game was later published by 32W as Imperator as an area-movement game instead of the hexes used in King of Kings, but I preferred the hexes and never bought the later game.

So I hauled out this hoary old veteran for a little amusement the other day and decided to play the first scenario, called Hammurabi, set circa 1700 BCE. As a solitaire game one plays Babylon, with the other potential player poweres (Egypt, Hittities and Larsa being neutrals instead. There are also several other neutral states. Because i was the only active player, all the game action occurred within the few hexes around Babylon and Larsa., shown here:


Year One of the reign of King Hammursethi turned out to be one of the more active of his entire reign. The year started off amidst a trade boom that boosted the treasury by 100 talents, or two years normal income. Tragedy struck later in that same years, though as a devastating plague ripped through the kingdom, decimating the army and completely disrupting trade.

The following year saw court intrigues, no doubt encouraged by the stress of the plague, surrounding the young king with enemies. The economy began to recover from the plague year and a mutually beneficial trade arrangement was made with Larsa where Babylon supplied its neighbor with Wool, while the Larsans downriver supplied Grain.

The next two years passed without incident while King Hammursethi spent lavishly on temples and other aspects of Religion to achieve a wide reputation for piety. Perhaps sensing an opportunity to take advantage of Babylon's depleted treasury, the Elamites over in Susa prepared for war. (Baghdad doesn't exist as yet). Receiving word of the Elamite plans, King Hammursethi mobilized his army and marched out to the river to meet the invaders. The larger. but lower quality Elamite army soon appeared. The core of both armies was made up of about 1,000 chariots and their crews, but the rest of the Elamite force was little more than a mob. some 20,000 light infantry and 4,000 light archers. In contrast the Babylonian army was much better equipped, with 4,000 heavy infantry, 4,000 heavy archers and about 10,000 light troops filling out the ranks.

The ensuing battle was a great victory for our king, who refused one flank while the Elamites charged recklessly and broke again st his best troops. The fighting was hard, with 5,000 Babylonians falling, but 10,000 Elamites were slain, resulting in their rout. The pursuit saw another 12,000 Elamites lost as they retreated back to their city. The Babylonians began a year-long siege of Susa that finally captured the city in the fifth year of Hammursethi's reign.

In the sixth year of his reign, King Hammursethi decided to celebrate his victory with magnificent Monuments and also quiet the discontented faction in his court with a strategic marriage to the middle-aged and fat sister of his leading rival. While annoying spoiled, the woman actually liked young Hammursethi as became a good and loyal friend for the short time he had left.

The next four years also passed quietly, as King Hammursethi amassed a large treasury for his next project. But before he could act, the king died in the 11th year of his reign. Overall it was a reasonably successful, but not extraordinary reign. Hammursethi dies with a larger and richer kingdom than he inherited, and earned a reputation for advancing Religion (helped by his magnificent Monuments), but his 806 victory points were not what he might have had had he lived a little longer. (I earned 226 VPs for talents in my treasury, 30 VPs for the value of my cities Babylon and Susa, and 550 for my achievements Religion and Monuments).

The game

EllisCon XXI report with a Mark Perry Memorial Caesar's Gallic war session

Gamers at Ellis Con XXI playing in Vic Gregoire's Omaha Beachhead game

Ellis Con is a small regional game convention that's been running for more than 20 years at Harvard H. Ellis Technical School in Danielson, Conn., sponsored by the H.H. Ellis Tech Simulation Club. Despite the fact that I've lived less than 30 miles away for the last five years, this Saturday was the first time I haven't had a schedule conflict, so I finally got to go.

It looked to me like around a hundred or so people took part over the course of the day, which seems like a good turnout. The games were an eclectic mix of genres, types and eras. Among the games I saw being played were Magic: The Gathering, Fire & Fury American Civil War miniatures, Drive of Metz, Crokinole, Axis & Allies, Samurai Swords, Axis & Allies: War at Sea and more.

Perhaps the most impressive game visually was Vic Gregoire's fantastic Omaha Beachhead game, shown above and in a detail below:


Among the other notable features was a pretty extensive game auction (several dozen items) and vendors The Time Machine of Manchester, Silver Eagle Wargame Supplies and Ice Imports.

I kibitzed a bit on games of Drive on Metz and A&A: War at Sea but spent a good chunk of the afternoon playing the new Worthington Games' wargame Caesar's Gallic War with Mark Kalina. Mark mentioned that he and our late mutual friend Mark Perry used to play a game every year at Ellis Con, so we agreed to call this game a Mark Perry Memorial Match.

The game is a pretty wild and woolly one, which is no surprise if you no anything at all about the Caesar''s conquest of Gaul. The game is a strategic level block game. Each Roman block represents a single legion, while the various Gallic and German tribes each have from 1 to 3 blocks. The overall game system is similar to Columbia Games' Hammer of the Scots, especially because the Gallic tribes can switch sides.

Troop quality is represented by letter grades, with the A troops fighting before B troops, who, in turn fight before C troops. Each block rolls as many attack dice as its strength in steps, with most blocks hitting on a die roll of 1 or 2, although a couple of elite units like Caesar's Tenth Legion hit on a 1-3. Similar to Hammer of the Scots and Crusader Rex, each player has a hand of cards. Some cards are random events, most have the name of a tribe and all have a number. The cards can be used to trigger the named random event, automatically recruit the named tribe, conduct a "political action," generate supply or move a number of groups according to the number on the card (which ranges from 1 to 3).

It was a very entertaining game, and although I ended up losing, I would definitely play it again -- hopefully better.

I started off well as the Roman juggernaut swept through central Gaul. Mark later said that he wasn't sure what he'd be able to do to stop me, as it seemed like the Romans were unstoppable. Of course, it only seemed that way, and eventually he won some battles, inflicted some losses (including eliminating one legion for 3 victory points) and the Roman supply ran short.

So around the fourth turn I spent a turn regrouping instead of campaigning. I was able to rebuild the strength of all my remaining legions to a full 4 steps, restock the supply larders to 15 points and had a lucky roll to get the second pair of reinforcement legions at the earliest opportunity. I lost a little ground politically as my 9 controlled tribes fell to 7 and the German-allied tribes grew to about 9, but I was confident I'd be able to repeat my earlier success.

However, when Caesar drew cards for the new year, it turned out to be a very weak hand that had all "1s," severely limiting his options. So I set out with a more limited goal of placing Caesar in the center of Gaul with the intention of wintering there with most of the army and hopefully drawing a more powerful offensive hand the next turn. Mark's Germans had other plans. He played the Massive Revolt Card, which brings in Vercingetorix, flips the allegiance of four tribes and provides the ability to activate three groups! It was a bad turn for the Romans. The Germans ended up in control of 16 tribes, while the Romans were down to 5.

And I never really recovered from that setback. I made some minor progress over the remaining few turns, but the hole was too deep to crawl out of and the final score was 17 VPs for Mark's Germans (dead legion 3 VPs, 14 Vps for tribes under control) and 7 VPs for my Romans, (all for controlled tribes). Definitely a setback for my Caesar complex.

Which Borg not to resist

Star Trek's Borg famous claim "resistance is futile," and I think the same is probably true for wargame designer Richard Borg's creations. I know I haven't been able to resist buying anything related to his Commands & Colors system. I'm not alone in the collective, either, as Borg's designs are among the most popular wargames ever published.

Still, sometimes you have to choose and prospective purchasers may wonder which is the best choice for them. Each game has its vehement fans, but here is what I believe is a fairly objective rundown of their strengths and weaknesses.

Really, they are close enough in quality and game play (with the possible exception of Battle Cry) that I think the main consideration should be which theme a player finds the most interesting. pick that first.

From purely a game play perspective they each have strengths and weaknesses.

Battle Cry (American Civil War) is the weakest of the lot, simply because it was the first, and the subsequent designs have all refined the concept. If Battle Cry had expansions like the others I'm sure it would have kept up, but it's a one-off design.

Command & Colors: Ancients (Ancient battles of the Classical Era) matches its era well and is probably the most tactically intricate because of all the different troop types, which often have fairly subtle differences between them. Terrain plays a smaller role in this game than the others as ancient armies tended to fight on the flattest and clearest terrain available.

BattleLore (fantasy but also historical medieval) is similar to C&C:A, especially when played with the Medieval Rules. Adding Lore adds some interesting new twists to the game system. The fantasy aspects of the game are not overpowering and it is still an army-level game and not a sort of role-playing experience.

Memoir '44 (World War II) is a lot more about terrain and combined arms effects. The interaction between the units is more subtle than it is in C&C:A because of the long ranges involved. Just because units are not near each other doesn't mean they don't affect each other. And the air pack adds a new dimension of course. There's more variety in the scenarios compared to the other games, which are almost all line-them-up-and-fight battles, with a few notable exceptions.

You may also want to consider how they are marketed.

Battle Cry (Hasbro/Avalon Hill) is a single, self-contained game, but it's out of print.

BattleLore (originally Days of Wonder, now Fantasy Flight Games) and Memoir '44 (Days of Wonder) each start with a self-contained base game that you can add to as finances and interests allow, although that may change for BattleLore as it is moving to a new publisher. While some of the expansions require parts from other expansions there are always scenarios that require nothing more than the base game and that particular expansion to play.

C&A:A (GMT Games) has a self-contained starter and then each of the expansions is a major purchase as well. These expansion tend to build on each other, so I would say this series is something you'd want to commit to in a serious way to get the most out of it.

C&C Ancients: The hoplon box

There have been many laudable influences on wargaming from eurogames, among them shorter playing times, a move towards more elegant rules and an overall improvement in graphics.

Pulling out my copy of Command and Colors: Ancients, however, reminds me another one: better game boxes.

I've been a wargamer for almost 40 years now, and played games in general for almost 50. (I'm pretty sure I started with Milton Bradley's Go to the Head of the Class). And one consistent problem with games published by American publishers over those decades was flimsy boxes. It was also something I noticed back in the 1980s when I spent some time in Germany while in the Army. This was before the rise of the Eurogame, but Germans have always been big game fans and companies such as Ravensburger were publishing nice versions of traditional games, and these came in nice sturdy boxes.

The tradition of flimsy boxes pioneered by the lies of Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers was taken up by Avalon Hill, which wanted nothing more than to be considered a serious game company. The classic Avalon Hill box was a "flat box" similar in dimensions to its MB and Parker contemporaries. There was at least one edition of Stalingrad that came in an oversized flat box in a bid for more attention on store shelves.

This brings up the central contradiction in game box design between the interest of the publisher and the interests of the player. For the publisher, the success of the game box is measured by its success in selling the game. For this purpose the flat box is ideal, especially a lightly constructed one. It's big, has a lot of room for attention-grabbing art and for lots of informative ad copy describing all the game's features in nice big type. Being light it's easy to pick up from the shelf and spin around in the consumer's hands while the potential purchaser soaks up the add copy and the pretty pictures.

The player, however, wants a box that will hold all the game's components after the game has been assembled for play, will stand up to being carried around and won't take up an unnecessary amount of storage space in the home.

Until fairly recently, the publisher's interests tended to prevail over the players. Except for the 3M-introduced Bookcase game box (later adopted by Avalon Hill for some, but not all its games) and the corrugated box and sleeve used by Columbia Games and a few others, most wargame publishers, like most American game publishers in general, stuck to flimsy boxes. In some cases the boxes were exceptionally light and would fall apart almost immediately, but every flat box design is a problem for players. They don't hold up well to being transported, they won't fit well on most common bookshelves and sometimes they won't even hold all the game parts.

I, for one, always liked the AH bookcase boxes the best. They held up well to the wear and tear of life. I have more than a half dozen of the 3M games in their original boxes. Over the years I've rarely had to replace any bookcase boxes. On the other hand, I regularly found it necessary to replace flat boxes. I'm on my second Afrika Corps box and my third Midway box. although now, of course, they can't be replaced except by cannibalising from eBay purchases.

One of the first thing I noticed about the eurogames, in contrast is that they almost always come in a nice compact and sturdy box. The Euro-ized edition of A House Divided, for example, while in very large box, is also in a very tough box. Evidently Euro game publishers are more interested in building up goodwill among customers and a reputation for quality than short-term gains from quick sales.

The Columbia-style boxes have their advantages, although the sleeves tend to rip, so I considers it somewhat inferior to bookcase and euro-style boxes, although much better than any others.

So I was pleased to see that GMT has, at least for Commands & Colors: Ancients, gone with a very sturdy box. This was somewhat of a surprise, because GMT isn't averse to going flimsier. While some of their games are in bookcase style boxes they also have used flat box designs.

Some other American game makers are following the Euro lead. The newest games from Worthington are definitively Euro-standard and even many recent Hasbro games are in a more compact and player-friendly square box that takes up less space and is sturdier, although this isn't universal. The Axis & Allies games, in particular, still have too much air in them.

I hope that GMT goes C&C-style for more new titles, along with other gamemakers. I'm tired of split ends.

I Am Spartacus review

I Am Spartacus is an area movement-and-counter wargame depicting the slave revolt of 73 BC that shook Rome and inspired the Kirk Douglas movie "Sparatcus."

The game, which was the issue game in Command Magazine No. 15, covers the revolt from beginning to end in monthly turns. Units are Roman legions and groups of rebellious slaves of similar size. The counters are the larger 5/8-inch size that Command Magazine often used with full-color iconic warriors. Each unit is rated for its combat strength. Nearly all the slave units and some Roman units are two steps, with a weaker value on the reverse side that is generally half the value. Some units have just one step. Roman legions, on the other hand, have multiple counters each, as each step loss reduces their combat value by just one. This gives the 6- and 8-factor legions considerable staying power.

Based on the earlier Alexandros game, the 13-page rule book describes a game of low to moderate complexity by wargame standards. The colorful Mark Simonitch map is attractive and functional, depicting all of Italy and adjacent areas. Most provinces are clear terrain with some mountain areas, including the five making up the spine of Italy. There is one swamp area around where Venice would appear later in history. In addition there are three in-area rebel sanctuary locations (the Pontine Marsh, Mt. Vesuvius and the Sila Forest) where small groups of rebels can hide.

Unlike Alexandros, I Am Spartacus is a chaotic game where both sides will be forced into opportunistic play. The rebels have to raise rebellion across Italy while avoiding getting caught in a pitched battle with superior Roman forces. The Romans, on the other hand, start with few forces and have to be careful during the early stages of the revolt about getting defeated in detail. The Roman player has an overwhelming amount of force available, eventually, but pays a considerable cost in victory points if he calls on too much of it. The revolt came while Rome was in the midst of some foreign wars and troops recalled to home hurt the war effort abroad.

The biggest change from Alexandros is the combat system. Instead of the odds-based CRT system in its predecessor, I Am Spartacus uses a firepower-based system where each unit rolls a die against its combat strength to score a hit. This means that a full-strength 6-factor Roman legion is guaranteed a hit and also means that the Romans will win any battle of attrition.

Battles are handled schematically, similar to Alexandros, except without the strict division into left, right, center and reserve. Now each player simply lines up his units against their opposite numbers. Units that defeat their opposite numbers can breakthrough and fight at increased effectiveness against enemy units to either side of the breakthrough. This is another advantage for the multi-step Roman legions, as they are the most likely to survive long enough to achieve a break through.

All the major leaders are present, including Spartacus, Pompey and Crassus. The core of the slave army is the 7-factor, four-step Gladiator unit, which is the only Spartacist unit that can recover strength. If eliminated it is gone for good, so naturally it is a prime Roman target. Slaves that revolt start off as 2-factor, one-step slave gangs of limited value. Spartacus can attempt to train up the slave gangs to real fighting men. Trained slaves are replaced with randomly drawn units of slingers or ethnic fighters including Gall-Germans, Greeks and others.

As the slave revolt had little chance of overthrowing the Roman state, the game assesses victory at a more modest level. Essentially, the more extensive and longer-lasting the revolt, the better for Spartacus. The Roman player is trying to suppress the revolt as quickly as possible while using as few troops as he can. Spartacus earns VPs for killing Roman legions and leaders, for slaves who escape off the map (only certain types are eligible) and for having an ongoing rebellion at game end (turn 17). The Romans get points for killing rebels and leaders and lose points for calling on the substantial forces they have available. If Spartacus captures Rome he wins instantly. If the Romans kill Spartacus before turn 17, they win immediately.

The game is playable in one sitting and only takes about a quarter hour to set up. There is just one scenario.

There is also a major variant called "Pyrrhic Victory" from Command No. 19, that uses the same map and many of the same units.

Recommendations

(Yes) For Wargamers: An unusual ancient campaign with a dramatic theme.

(No) For Collectors: No remarkable collectibility.

(No) For Euro gamers: As a hex-and-counter wargame the game play is intricate and detailed and play balance a secondary consideration.

Successors review

Successors is the second major variant for Command Magazine's issue 10 Alexandros game. Like Xenophon, Successors appeared in Command No. 14.I've discussed the game mechanics and materials in previous reviews on Alexandros and Xenophon, so this time I'll just make some comments of the differences between this game and the others.

First, while there is a two-player game, most players won't bother hauling this out unless they have three or four players. In the three-player game players represent the main Successor factions founded by Antigonis, Ptolomy and Seleucus. If present a fourth player controls various barbarians and other small states and acts as a "spoiler."

This is a very long game, going on for as many as 96 turns. The historical result was a draw as none of the successors was able to reunite Alexander's conquest and instead each settled for carving out a new kingdom. Players are forewarned that the game appears very historical!
On the other hand, the original Alexandros game is a bit boring for the Persians because the Macedonians are so powerful. And Xenophon is short.

In Successors all the various unit types, including the incomparable 8-8 Macedonian pike phalanxes, are available to all the players and therefore Successors is the best-balanced big game in the system.

Set up takes 20-30 minutes, including picking through the Alexandros counters. The game itself will probably take more than one sitting.

Recommendations:

Yes for Wargamers: Most even scenario in the system.

No for collectors: Nothing special.

No for Eurogamers: Too intricate and slow-moving for the taste of more casual players.

War Galley -- Do the command control rules go far enough?

Perhaps the hardest thing for wargames to replicate (aside from the fear of death, naturally) are the problems of command and control. By nature the little cardboard counters, blocks or toy soldiers do as they are told. Where they are is generally pretty clear and their overall status known.

In addition, the wargamer has a bird's eye or map's eye view of the action in real time.

This isn't too big a problem for 20th and 21st Century wargames, outside the very tactical level. Even fairly low-level commanders at battalion and regimental levels are often fighting their battles on the map, as it were. The modern battlefield is often far too expansive for anyone other than a company commander to see his whole fight. At sea and in the air the same is true. The captain fights his ship from the computer screens in the Combat Information Center, not from the salt-sprayed bridge. The fighter pilot relies on his head-up display at least as much as his eyes.

Even in the black powder era, top level commanders were familiar with maps and probably imagined their battle plans from that perspective, although exercising anything other than the most general command was difficult. A lot depends on the man on the spot. The problems of command at sea were similar, with flag signals being a very crude level of control, barely adequate with the stately pace of sailing warships and breaking down completely under the quickened pace of steamships. The wireless set came not a moment too soon.

But in ancient times maps were few and crude and there's little evidence they were used much by leaders. Everything was seen from ground level. There's not a lot of evidence for exactly how commands were transmitted, but couriers, musical instruments and visual signals were probably used.

War Galley makes stab at reflecting the problems of command control, and deserves kudos for the attempt, but battles in the game system usually degenerate into a confused melee. This is a problem in other games, too such as the age of sail wargame Close Action.

The wargamer, able to look down from above, is much more aware of the tactical possibilities than any real-life captain could have been from his sea-level vantage point. The turn-based temporal system of wargames also provides opportunities that wouldn't occur in the swirling midst of battle.

In any era, the thing commanders fear most of all is disorder, but this fear was particularly salient in earlier times. In ancient warfare the first army or fleet to fall into disorder was usually defeated and in the wake of defeat the slaughter would begin.

It's unreasonable to ask gamers in the heat of battle to forgo tactical advantages, but there needs to be a greater incentive for keeping formation. Perhaps all ships not facing the same way as the flagship should be considered "independent squadrons." It's hard to imagine a squadron commander coordinating the actions of a dozen triremes in the middle of a melee from the deck of his own ship that's busy dodging rams.

Ancients: minimalist design

I picked up a copy of Ancients in 1986 when it was still published privately by William Banks, based on a magazine review.
What appealed to me then is what I still like about the game: It manages to depict the most salient features of pre-gunpowder warfare accurately with a minimum of fuss.
While a simple game, it's not a simplistic one and by a careful selection of combat factors and a minimal amount of rules the game works as a simulation and a game.
These days most of the boardgame action is in the Commands & Colors: Ancients series, which provides a more colorful and enjoyable game, although not necessarily a more accurate simulation than Ancients.
The original game had just a dozen different types of units and those proved enough to cover all the bases. When 3W republished the game they added some naval units and rules and tweaked the land rules a bit, but made no substantive changes to the land game.
Banks released the design into the public realm a few years back so now anybody can make their own copy and it's still well-worth adding to anyone's collection.

Featured game: Sticks and Stones, 30th anniversary

There are dozens or scores of wargames on some topics: Battle of the Bulge, Gettysburg, The Eastern Front. But despite the passage of 30 years since Sticks & Stones, Microgame No. 11, was published, it's apparently the only wargame to explicitly depict warfare in Neolithic times.
While the popular imagination sometimes imagines that humans once lived in more peaceful times before civilization, archeological evidence suggests that humans have died violently at the hands of their own species for a very long time. A graveyard in Egypt dating back some 12,000 years contains the remains of dozens who died from multiple wounds by stone-tipped weapons.
Whether humans are naturally violent may be unanswerable, but once humans developed weapons -- such as bows -- that enabled them to kill other men with relative safety, they got to it. There's ample evidence for fortified settlements dating back thousands of years and by the time the first battles were recorded in history after the development of writing it was clear that the military arts were already far advanced.
Sticks & Stones depicts the very early age of organized fighting using the typical techniques of a 1970s-era wargame. Units, which appear to represent small groups of warriors (a dozen or so) maneuver on a hex-gridded battlefield. Their military abilities are quantified with attack, defense and movement factors and battles are resolved via a D6 roll on an odds-based Combat Results Table. Units move and then fight in alternating player-turns. Aside from the uncommon, but not unique, rule allowing in-hex melee combat, it's a fairly standard wargame.
Various special rules give the game period flavor. There are dependents (women), goats and goods to be fought over. Newly domesticated dogs to help the warriors. And a straightforward scenario-development system that allows playrs to customize their tribal armies with reasonable historical accuracy.
Warriors come in two basic defense-styles, armored with a defense value of 3 and unarmored with a value of 2. Armor, at this early date, should be understood to be merely thicker clothes, extra animal skins or perhaps leather.
Weapons come in four varieties. There are "hands" with an attack value of 2. As it's against human nature to engage in deadly combat with just bare hands, I'd interpret "hands" to mean being armed with sticks, primitive clubs and rocks, not just fists. Men armed with stone axes have an attack value of 3. Spearmen have an attack value of 4, plus the abaility to attack from a distance of one hex away up to three times per game. The deadliest weapon is the bow, which can attack up to 3 hexes away with a value of 6 up to six times per game. The rules inform us that "bows" can also represent blowguns or throwing spears as well as bows and arrows.
Warriors can come in any mix of weapon and armor style, within the countermix and available "weapons points" running from 0 for an unarmored and weaponless man to 7 for an armored archer.
The game includes five scenarios which do a good job of covering the gamut of likely stone age fighting. There's a small raid on an unprotected village, a territorial ritual battle (which ends when someone is actually killed), a mastadon hunt (solitaire), a bigger raid on a protected village and a full-scale war between two neighboring villages.
In the last scenario there is a slight problem because the countermix doesn't include the two fortified villages required. One could either make another fortified village or alternately let one side use a protected village and give them 6 extra weapon points to make up the difference.
There are some optional rules including setting fires, running warriors, extended range for missile weapons and poisone weapons.
Considering the game has just a couple dozen small pages the game manages to cover a lot of ground and present what seems like a good simulation of prehistoric fighting within the limits of our knowledge.
The presentation is good considering the limits of the microgame format and 1970s printing. The map is functional, if undecorative. The counters have to be cut out and feature a rather idealized and buff view of cave men, but they work. The only color in the rules is the cover, but the body of the rules are clearly written and very well-illustrated for the era and format.
All-in-all it's a good and still unique wargame and well-worth picking up out of historical interest as well as an interesting game challenge.