I played a lot of Commands and Colors: Ancients in college - I convinced the board game society to buy the base game and its first two expansions and for my enthusiasm I was tasked with stickering all three boxes! Luckily I love putting stickers on wooden blocks, so I didn’t mind in the slightest. After I graduated, though, I didn’t play it nearly as much because I didn’t own my own copy and it was harder to borrow the society’s copy when I was no longer an undergraduate (as a post-grad I could be a member but I rarely had the time for hanging around that I used to).
Over December 2022 and January 2023 I got a chance to revisit Commands and Colors as a system thanks to the Homo Ludens Club de Jeu, and it was a blast. While discovering that I could play Memoir ‘44 on my phone via Board Game Arena was definitely the most distracting revelation, I really wanted to make time to play some of the more complex entries in the series. As such, I made an appointment with Joe from the YouTube channel What Does That Piece Do (who had previously served as my opponent for Imperial Struggle) to teach him how to play Ancients since he had only played Memoir before. Joe then had the idea that we should hijack the Homo Ludens YouTube channel for our teach and play, and so we did. You can see the result of that below:
I think it must have been around ten years since I last played C&C Ancients and I had a blast revisiting it. This was always one of my favourite games in the series and I think that remains true. I really want to play more and I’m seriously eyeing up copies so that I can add this to my shelf and hopefully get it played more regularly.