Hannibal arrived!

A member of our game group received his copy of Hannibal Rome vs. Carthage on Monday of this week. We had a chance to sit down with it last night and go through the rules and play about 2 turns of a learning game.

First let me talk about the components. The counter stock is really thick and all the counters fell right out of the frames, so very little to no "flashing" on the edges. All of the cardboard components are top notch. The game board comes in 10 jigsaw puzzle style pieces that when put together make for a very nice looking map of the Mediterranean area. The board has lots of charts on it that help speed up game play, although the attrition chart has a misprinted die roll modifier on it. All the city spots on the board have names printed on both sides so that both players can see the names. The biggest problem I have with the board is that each province on the map is made up of several cities, and in order to be in "control" of a province you must have a minimum number of the cities within it under your control. The only problem is that number is not printed on the board. So you have to keep looking in the rulebook to see if you have enough or not.

The cards which are the most the used component of the game are made of very high quality linen stock and seem like they will hold up to years of play. Which is good because they will be shuffled quite a bit. The artwork is very well done on them, and the text is very readable.

The rule book is laid out fairly well. The names of all the components are laid out at the beginning of the book and then those terms are used throughout the rulebook. This helps to keep everything consistent. There is also a player aid that I'm assuming is to highlight important details related to the actual game play in order to keep rulebook thumbing to a minimum. Well you might as well just throw that player aid away, it has no turn order chart. It lacks pretty much all the information you need to look up, and yet it is so cluttered with text you can't find the few useful things that it does have on it. One other little problem that bugs me a bit more than most I'm sure. The game comes with two custom six sided dice, one with Roman numerals on the faces for the Roman player. The other with Phoenician numerals for the Carthaginian player. The Roman die has proper numbers on the faces, meaning the sum of any two opposite faces is 7. Well the Carthaginian die has the faces laid completely randomly. That kind of bugs me, you go through all the trouble to make this special die, which forces the printing of chart so that you know which number is which. And you can't be bothered to get the faces right. Grrrr

Now for the game play, for anyone that has played We the People, or Twilight Struggle, or Paths of Glory, or any of the other "card driven war games" you will find the game play very familiar. Each side is given a hand of cards, these cards have an event printed on them that works for either the Roman, the Carthaginian, or both. The cards also have a number value from one to three. You may play a card for the number and use it to move a general with some troops, or place some political control markers on the map, or for some reinforcements. You may also play the card for it's event if it applies to your side. Pretty simple stuff, the goal of the game is to have the more provinces under your control at the end of the game than your opponent. Or if you are Carthage to conquer Rome, and for Rome you need to conquer Carthage, these are instant win conditions if either of those cities fall Rome or Carthage will win.

So as far as the few turns of learning I did last night. Well, I chose to play Carthage, I decided based on the hand of good cards that I had that I would take Hannibal who starts in Spain all the way through France and cross the Alps into northern Italy. And as I was making my way I would try to seize some of the northern Italian provinces and gain a little on the Romans. Well Hannibal had a couple of very strong victories just after crossing the Alps and with Rome in sight I got greedy. I decided to launch a siege on Rome, which as you might think can be quite hard. I managed to get a siege going though, but on the next turn the Italian consular army came and wiped out Hannibal and his men. It was all very downhill from there. But I have gained a bit from these two turns and they served the purpose of seeing the system in work and getting an idea of how all the game mechanics work together, and next time we should be able to play the whole war.