Commands & Colors Ancients solitaire challenge #1 – RESOLUTION

It has been three weeks from the initial publication of my first Commands & Colors Ancients solitaire challenge #1 and to keep up with the monthly cadence of new quizzes, today is the time to share the best resolution. Next week you can count on challenge #2 to appear.

But before presentation, I would like to thank everybody who showed interest in that type of entertainment – especially to those who actually sent their solutions. Hope I can count on you in future exercises.

The solution & winner

So the best score was achieved by g1ul10 (Giulio). Congrats to the winner! Giulio achieved 7 VPs, losing no block / unit to enemy. He used Order 4 Left Card which maximized the number of points scored.

The initial puzzle was not overly complicated – you can find it here as well as general challenge rules. The trick was to choose proper card which will give the most Victory Points. What is more, the important factor for the correct resolution of the puzzle was appropriate usage of special rule:

you can change – twice during the game – 1 dice in the roll. The change can be only to Leader symbol (once) and Flag (once). It can be done to any rolls: attack, battle back, leader check, evade, etc. Example: you rolled RED, BLUE, GREEN. You decide you need at least one flag so you can change it to RED, BLUE, FLAG. That was you used one potential dice switch, the one to FLAG. For the rest of the game you can switch one more dice, this time to LDR.

And now solution, in graphical form – one of few which scores 7 VPs (you can pause slide-show and watch it in your own tempo using arrows):

01. The best card, yielding most VPs will be “Order 4 Units Center”
02. Medium Cavalry attacks and eliminates Auxilia.
03. Momentum advance and bonus close combat – leader dies.
04. A very nuanced play – one dice changed to flag to push Medium Infantry away.
05. Another momentum advance and attack (2 dice!) on Auxilia.
06. Attack continues, with Cavalry defeating Medium Infantry.
07. Momentum advance and second successful attack, this time on enemy cavalry.
08. Time for light cavalry. Attacks with 2d and eliminates first…
09. …and second cavalry.
10. The end result is 7 VPs, zero blocks lost.