I note the continued interest and debate about the Hannibal - Rome vs Carthage game, and its bias towards the Romans. I do not believe that the game follows the struggle correctly. In Italy Hannibal was continually trying to tie the Romans down to battle, whilst the Romans avoided battle very successfully, at least after Cannae. In the game the opposite seems to happen, Rome builds armies and then attacks late in the turn knowing that it will receive 5 CUs soon, whilst Hannibal tries to avoid battle due to his small army. Rome knows that eventually it will get lucky and wear Hannibal down. To attempt to both offset Hannibal's weakness and to make Rome more cautious in Italy I have added possible after battle reinforcements to the winners. These are I believe an important occurrence during the Punic Wars as whole tribes were influenced by victories. In Spain both sides gained allies when winning, Hannibal gained Gauls in Italy and Scipio gained Numidians in Africa. Obviously a more realistic would be to award reinforcements according to Political Influence, but this would be far more complicated and spoil the flow of the game. I have also made Rome's reinforcements more random. In a battle that has gone for 2 or more rounds the winner may gain allies/reinforcements depending on the place of the battle. (Carthage anywhere in Europe, Rome in Spain and Africa). Throw D6 1 = 0 CUs 2-4 = 1 CUs 5-6 = 2 CUs Roman Reinforcements: Throw average dice and add 1 to score, this equals number of Roman reinforcements in Reinforcement Phase. I realise that this will balance the game as Hannibal does normally win more battles than he loses, and hopefully give Carthage a better chance. The rule on Roman reinforcements adds a bit of uncertainty to the Roman player, all well and good. Another major fault with the game is the lack of cavalry. The reason for this would be that the system copies We the People so completely, especially the combat system. I am not knocking the combat system as I find it more interesting than the "let's hunt for that extra factor to give me that 3:1 odds to have a 1 in 6 of routing you" type of game. The problem is that colonial war in the Americas was fought largely without cavalry and so would not need to represented in combat. Unfortunately this can not be said of the Punic Wars as cavalry was of prime importance, both numerically and tactically, Cannae and Zama were won largely by the cavalry and Trebbia less so but still significantly. Apart from Marharbal's Cavalry card there is no mention of cavalry in the rules, although I assume that the pursuit rules are due to cavalry (although most casualties seem to have been on the battlefield, no Jenas here). In my opinion a grave undersimplification. I have not attempted to do anything about this at the moment as it would need a total overall of the game. No cavalry are present so where and how would they be recruited? How would you use them in battles, and for scouting? Also we have no mention of the quality of the troops involved. Probably not a major fault but a rule similar to the one in We the People concerning English early superiority would be interesting for the Carthaginians, and again worry the Romans. As an aside Hannibal initial strength is far too low Polybius (Polybius is not the only source but I have taken his figures for simplicity) gives his strength as he crossed the Ebro as 90,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry, this is where the game starts. At this point Hannibal's 10 CU army is worth 10,000 men per CU. Which does not work for the Romans as their two armies were around the 30,000 mark each, not 80,000. Hannibal crosses the Pyrennes with 50,000 infantry and 9,000 cavalry. This number was due to Hannibal leaving 11,000 with Hanno north of the Ebro, and sending the same number home. Polybius also states that he had taken several cities by storm and had taken severe losses. He also disencumbered himself with the heavy baggage, and weaker elements among his army. When we next are given figures of his army after the crossing of the Alps we find Hannibal's army to have shrunk to 20,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry. He had done a lot of fighting along the way and also had to leave garrisons, cross the Rhone and the Alps, but the figures are excessive and Polybius may be wrong on his initial figure of 59,000. Interestingly enough we are at around the strength of around 10 CUs worth, is this a fudge? Despite what I have said I find that Hannibal is still a good game, but not too historical. It fudges so many things to allow it to use the We The People system without altering the rules too much. As a note I see that they are designing games on Alexander's Successors and the American Civil War using the same system, is this overkill or just a good company ploy to make as much money as quickly as possible? Unfortunately the Punic Wars is one of my favourite periods, and the game reawakened my interests I have just ordered some Spanish, Gauls and Romans figures from Essex. Don't say that I thought you were doing Napoleonics, I am..! Concerning The General, I have just received the new glossy covered issue. I must say that I am saddened to see it in its present state. For a long time it was a very good magazine often containing interesting well written articles, if always from the American viewpoint. Now it seems to be all computers and advertisements. Unfortunately I think that Avalon Hill has definitely lost its way concerning boardgames, from now computers win. I have nothing against computers, I have two at work and one at home, it is just that I find boardgames and figure gaming far more interesting than sitting in front of the screen for hours. CHV: Interesting points Craig, I have played Hannibal but twice, and then only for an hour or so (not playing to a conclusion either time). In both cases it seemed rather gamey, but I could see its appeal. Clearly the second stage of the war where combat could be avoided has been missed, but I think it goes further than that because by means of "camp-war" the Romans were able to put Hannibal under a lot of pressure. The truth is that in the Ancient world there were many gradations of military activity before you met mano-a-mano, and the designer is either unaware of this, or could not care less. Back to Perfidious Albion #95 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com