Commands & Colors: Ancients is a board wargame designed by Richard Borg, Pat Kurivial, and Roy Grider, and published by GMT Games in 2006. It is based...
Commands & Colors: Ancients is a board wargame designed by Richard Borg, Pat Kurivial, and Roy Grider, and published by GMT Games in 2006. It is based on Borg's Commands & Colors system using some elements similar to his other games such as Commands & Colours: Napoleonics, The Great War, Memoir '44 and Battle Cry designed to simulate the "fog of war" and uncertainty encountered on real battlefields.
Commands & Colors: Ancients focuses on the historic period of 3000 BC - 400 AD.
The core game includes several hundred wood blocks in two colors for the Roman/Syracusan armies and Carthaginian army. Sheets of stickers representing different unit types must be affixed to the blocks prior to initial play. 16 small wooden blocks representing "victory banners" and 7 larger plastic dice must also have stickers applied. Extra stickers are included for use as replacements. The game also contains a full-color rule book, color scenario book, and two color two-page double-sided "cheat sheets" for players to reference during play for dice results and unit statistics. The board is folded card stock laid flat for play. Hexagonal terrain pieces are laid on the board when called for by a scenario. A deck of command cards is included.
Units are arranged on the board according to maps and scenario descriptions in the scenario book. Players are dealt a number of command cards equal to their "command value" for the chosen scenario. Often players have different command values and therefore different numbers of cards. Players take turns playing their cards to "order" units, generally allowing the ordered units to move and conduct combat. Cards often refer to a section of the battlefield, either left, center, or right, or some combination of these. There are also many special cards that allow very specific actions. Play continues until one player earns the requisite number of victory banners for the scenario. Victory banners are earned each time a player completely eliminates an enemy unit or leader.
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OUK-KHMER
Ouk-Khmer (also known as Cambodian Chess) is a chess variant which D. B. Pritchard claimed was played in Cambodia although its actual origins appear t...
Ouk-Khmer (also known as Cambodian Chess) is a chess variant which D. B. Pritchard claimed was played in Cambodia although its actual origins appear to be unknown. Pritchard gives the source as P. A. Hill. It combines elements of makruk and xiangqi. Similar to xiangqi, it is played on the intersections of an 8×8 monotone board (instead of 8×9). Contrary to Pritchard's claim, the actual variety of chess played in Cambodia today, known as "Ok" or "Ouk Chatrang", is nearly identical to makruk. The authenticity of the game described by Pritchard remains doubtful.
Pritchard (The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, 1994) described this game as "an old variant displaying elements of Burmese Chess, Chaturanga and Makruk". However, the rules provided appear to be a hybrid of Makruk and Xiangqi. For example, play on the intersections and the movement of the fish (pawn) follow Xiangqi rules. The advanced placement of the full line of pawns resembles the initial setup of makruk. The naming of the "boat" also follows makruk. John Gollon, the author of "Chess Variations: Ancient, Regional, and Modern", received a description of a chess game in 1969 from a U.S. serviceman who claimed to have obtained the details from a Cambodian born guerrilla officer he was questioning. The serviceman expressed concern that he may have been mistaken about some of the details and Gollon stated that he was never able to confirm the details with an official Cambodian source. He admitted in his letter: “The correspondent later expressed some concern that he may have been mistaken in some details.”
In 2007, the English chess specialist John Beasley published a revised edition of late D.B.Pritchard's book (The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants), in which more details from Gollon's letter were given (such as the local names of the chessmen, not included in the 1st edition) and where Beasley expressed his strong doubt about the authenticity of this kind of chess.
In reaction to this publication, Beasley was sent information that a set of this chess had made an apparition in an exhibition in Tokyo in 2002 as well as in several Japanese books that preceded or followed, written by Umebayashi Isao and Okano Shin. They could have rediscovered these rules by translating a book bought in Cambodia, where the Elephant could not capture sideways. The names they gave for the chessmen were somewhat different from Gollon (Kwon, Neamahn, Kwo, Seh, Tuuk, Trey as for the table). Umebayashi and Okano designated that game as "shattrong". A photo of a complete set was available showing the 18 pieces on a board with marked diagonals. Beasley published a corrective note in the British specialized magazine Variant Chess (Issue 55, September 2007 and issue 64, August 2010 ) to acknowledge this second “evidence”. He acknowledged that the game is apparently absent "from the streets of Phnom Penh in 2003" and stated that Peter suggested "that this may have been a minor consequence of the mass killings of the Pol Pot era.".
The situation has been cleared out in 2012 with the help of a Japanese chess researcher, Yasuji Shimuzu who got in touch with Umebayashi Isao. First, it has been now understood that Umebayashi and Okano's books were simply presenting a reconstruction of the “Cambodian” chess which they had discovered in Pritchard's first edition. As Pritchard didn't name the chessmen in his first edition, the Japanese authors extrapolated the names with the help of a dictionary. No Cambodian books had been consulted and even found. The difference in Elephant's move was simply a misreading. Finally, looking for an illustration, they just set up a set of makruk with additional Fishes and Officials over a facsimile Burmese board that they had and fitted well the size of his chessmen.
John Beasley published a corrective note on his website http://www.jsbeasley.co.uk/. His conclusion is that the game described to P. A. Hill in 1969 appeared once more to reduce to a single informant whose statements were at variance with all other known testimony. Moreover, John Beasley has found and proven that the game is flawed if played seriously.
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