Blade & Bow is a moderately complex game depicting combat between ancient armies with the goal of showing the evolution of infantry combat from the adoption of the Greek hoplite formation through the Roman maniple and cohort. Two players take control of historical armies to see how well they might fare as compared to their historical counterparts. In what will hopefully be the first in a series of volumes covering this evolution, four battles are included: Marathon (490 BCE), Thermopylae (480 BCE), Plataea (479 BCE), and Mycale (479 BCE). Each battle takes two to three hours to complete.