Thursday 16 February 2012

The Second Punic War Campaign Begins

To decide who played which side we rolled dice - high dice got to be Rome: Peter J. will be Rome and I will be Carthage.

We are blasting straight into this campaign with very little written down on how we will translate map to table and back. We will make it up as we go along using the rule of "sounds reasonable". One thing we have decided is not to think of this campaign as a Hannibal: Rome Vs Carthage campaign with a mathematical equations to govern CU value, etc. It is rather a wargames campaign with Hannibal: R Vs C running the map movement and events. This will allow thing to flow and not get bogged down in silly detail.


Turn 1: 218 BC

The Roman player began the campaign with '37, Minor Campaign' card. Publius Scipio sailed from Rome for Massilia and Sempronius Longus marched from Agrigentum to Rhegium.

There then followed a series of cards used for diplomacy by both sides. Carthage played cards 46 and 47 to place Political Control (PC) markers in Idubeda (Northern Hispania) and Gallia Cisalpinia, Rome played cards 50 and 32 to place PCs in the Massilia region.

Next Hannibal attempted a forced march over the Pyrenees with card 63, but the weather was awful (card 42) and he was delayed. In Italy Sempronius entered Rome (using card 62) to the sound of cheering crowds - the Romans like parade.

Hannibal continued his march (using card 57), but as he tried to skirt Massilia, by heading north to the Rhone, he was intercepted by Scipio (he rolled a 1). Hannibal attempted to avoid contact but failed (he rolled 6). Thus, near Nemausus, the army of Hannibal Barca and the consular army of Publius Scipio met.

The site of the battle was just west of modern day Nimes on a gently rolling, scrubby, ground (Google Earth: 43:48:27.12N  4:17:33.51E elevation 95m).












The Romans had 9 CU of troops (8 + 1 allied); the Carthaginians had 10 CU. We will give Scipio a consular army. Counting the velites as half a unit each this equals 18 units. Consequently, Hannibal gets 20 units plus two units of elephants (elephant CU count as both CU and elephants in the game).

We will be using Ager Proelii rules for the battle. Hannibal has a battle rating of 4 so his army gets a D12* sequence deck and army die. P. Scipio has a battle rating of 2 so gets a D10 sequence deck and army die.

Scipio gets an extra characterisation card for interception, Hannibal loses one for failing to avoid, but he is Hannibal so gets an extra one anyway.

This battle will be fought next Wednesday - May the Best Carthaginian win!

9 comments:

Guidowg said...

Looks fantastic, your figures really stand out against your board.........GO the Romans!!!!!!

WarRaptor said...

Thats awesome - I love what you guys are doing here!

Brent said...

Love your creativity James! As a fan of any campaign, I'm following this with great interest.

Brent

BigRedBat said...

I had suspected that the game would work; it certainly looks like it will! Good luck with it, Simon

Gunny Highway said...

Looking forward to ole "one eye" rattling some roman cages!........
Also using your Ager Proelii rules will be fun to watch on how they work in a real game....

Respectfully,
Gunny

Gunny Highway said...

Not to change the subject James, but how do you determine when a army has had enough of it and legs it off the battlefield? Not too crystal clear in your rule set. As an aside, remember, Americans tend not to debate but want a clear cut goal or answer:)
Respectfully,
Gunny

Castigator said...

Looks awesome. I'm also impressed by the gigantic bottle of Coke in the background. Everything in your game room seems to be epic in scale! :)

Looking forward to following your detailed campaign reports.

Dave M

JAMES ROACH said...

Hi Gunny,

When an army reaches 0 army morale chips it is subject to army morale tests on army morale cards (x3). When these are failed armies tend to break up quite quickly - running en masse from the field.

As to Americans not wanting to debate, yes, we've noticed that here in the civilised world (LOL).

Silver Whistle said...

Interesting reading and fantastic looking table.