News: Athens and Sparta

If you're interested in block games the latest Columbia Games offering Athens and Sparta is due for release next month. Using a combination of traditional block mechanics and a card driven approach it looks interesting, through not revolutionary. But as it's a period I'm interested in (and one I'm not likely ever to collect enough miniatures to play on the table top) I'm probably going to pre-order it.

The game has an odd back story, this release is by Tom Dalgliesh rather than the originally touted game by Craig Besinque. There appears to have been a parting of the ways some time during the development process and Carig has taken his game to GMT Games to be published as Hellenes: Athens vs. Sparta. Superficially the games seems pretty similar with the Columbia offering seeming slightly simpler/shorter (which is what I was looking for anyway). But it will be interesting to see how they compare when the GMT game comes out (it's still on the P500 list).