Last season they looked like they were tweaking the show evey week. They only introduced the top-down general's table computer map in the last episode.

All-in-all I thought it was an improvement.

Format
- Liked the meeting engagement, gives the team a chance to get to grips with it all
- The pauses are good, would be nice if the experts could take advantage of them to point out particular critical points in the battle or show an action replay
- Personally not too bothered about losing the explanation of the units, but it would not have been so important for this battle – largely generic Romans vs largely generic Germans – but would be needed for more exotic factions.
- Not so keen about the experts picking the generals, I want to see a team at its best, I don’t want to see a psychological study of conflicts in power status
- Yes definitely agree would be nice to have a better view of the entire battle, we had shots of entire cavalry units being chopped down by axemen then a shot of the team saying they were doing rather well and it was all going to plan. The experts were doing some of this but not enough – they just mentioned the couple of units that were getting wasted at the back
- Experts were a bit over-dramatic, but that’s just comedy.

Episode
- Surprised to see the ‘fantasy’ German phalanx and wailing women, it provoked a virulent reaction from one of my friends who knows about such things.
- I missed the first few minutes so can someone tell me whether there were victory conditions or something? It seemed that once they’d taken the Spear warbands all the Germans who’d been munching on their rear just disappeared.
- Similarly, did they have to take one of the two paths? I’m wondering why they didn’t just plough straight through the forest. Or indeed why did they move at all? Why couldn’t they wait for the Germans to come to them?
- Was there a bit of model confusion with the Roman cavalry? I thought they were supposed to be unarmoured javalineers, but from what I could see they looked like they were wearing chainmail.

Team
- Same old medieval sensibilities when it came to cavalry, thinking they can ride down blocks of infantry.
- Command structure was again abysmal. I swear, a team actually has a tougher time fighting a battle than a single player. The shouty guy was a nightmare – talking over people, not listening them, micromanaging – I barely even saw the other general. It was my experience in the first season that the generals who did best were the ones that stayed behind their table and kept relatively quiet. They let the captains deal with the unit-level stuff, while they only acted as an extra pair of eyes for the captains and dealt with any battle plan changes. It’s when the battle’s getting away from them that they come forward and start acting like captains. This guy was striding around on the floor with the captains and bellowing to urge his soldiers on. I mean, they’re computer sprites, they can’t hear you! And then he gets milk & cookies from the experts for “imposing” his plan on the others and getting his cavalry killed because they were most likely Germans anyway…

But as I say, format etc.-wise better than last season. Just wish they had contestants who had some idea of ancient warfare. Still, didn’t I hear that The Battle of Stamford Bridge was coming up?