Rome at War: Fading Legions

Well recently I returned to my wargaming roots a little bit. I grew up playing various board games, mainly those published by Avalon Hill. Lately I had my eye on this "Rome at War: Fading Legions" game because it looked like it might be an easy way to play out some ancient wargame battles without a lot of complicated rules and stacks of small pieces of carboard cluttered on a board laid out in hexagons.

I stopped playing board games quite a while ago because I got tired of dealing with stacks of cardboard and overly detailed rules, charts, etc. So I decided to take a chance and give Fading Legions a try. I'm glad I did! I have to say that I like it and find it to be a nice change of pace.

To begin with the pieces are extremely attractive. Many of them are long double length pieces; these represent the heavy infantry units. The rules allow only one heavy infantry unit per square so there are no large stacks to push around. Also, if there are any light infantry and cavalry in the same square as the heavy infantry unit there is room in the square to lay them alongside the heavy infantry unit. Same goes for leader pieces. So there really is no need to any stacking of pieces at all! This is a nice feature because it makes for a nice tidy playing area and you can see everything on the board without constantly picking through the little stacks to remind yourself what is there. And the graphics printed on the pieces actually make the game appear to be somewhat like a miniatures game. So with all the pieces laid out on the board it actually looks, dare I say it, somewhat realistic?! At least to me it does, but then maybe I just have a vivid imagination.

I have more to say about this game, but I will cover that later.