2nd Punic War FOG Campaign (1)

My friend Mike is running a 2nd Punic War campaign with my friend Charlie as the Carthaginian commander and myself as the Roman commander. We're hoping it will generate a few good Field of Glory tabletop games for a bunch of our FOG-playing friends to join into. The campaign system will use the board game "Hannibal".  Mike had Charlie and I over to his place on Friday to do a dry run with the board game.

I have to admit, initially I was overwhelmed with the game. There's a lot of things going on and the board game seems to have quite a few layers of game play. Initially I charged into Span head first with not one but two fine Roman armies only to see Hanibal with his Spanish allies crush my legions to dust do as much to my own incompetence as it was to the lack of skill of the on-board generals the Romans start the game with. I took a few turns to lick my wounds while Charlie took Sicily and Sardinia from me. Towards the end of the game I clawed back some of the northern Italian provinces while Hannibal stalled in a drawn out siege of the Roman walled city on Sicily.

With one last push I sent Scipio Africanus to where else but Africa! With the help of two Numidian revolts, Scipio was able to take two provinces from Africa and hold them by only destroying one of the two armies available to him. This secured a narrow Roman victory. In all reality in campaign terms it was at the best a Pyrrhic victory with the Romans suffering three entire armies totally wiped out and two others significantly depleted. Hannibal suffered only one army lost and some minor losses during several other engagements.  Charlie out played me throughout the game. During the campaign I will have to do better to give the Roman players a fair chance at the table.

Below are the dice used in the board game. The crazy Carthaginian die is on the left and the Roman die is on the right. Both dice are showing a roll of six on the top face.