In the last article, we explored the Event and Action cards. This time, we’ll dive straight into Combat.
The revolution must either prevail or perish, Russia would either survive or cease to be. Each side, in effect, imagined itself leading a crusade against the apocalypse. We are pure, our cause is just. Our enemy is evil incarnate. To defeat him is not enough. He must be destroyed as well. – Willard Sunderland
This article follows up Part 1 of 2, A Tale of Two Sexenniums: Hannibal’s Revenge After Action Reports – Part 1 of 2 | Inside GMT blog, with my erstwhile gaming buddies, Perry and George, continuing their foray into the fun and exciting arena of the Hannibal’s Revenge game by switching sides!
Last game’s end of the Sexennium saw Rome (George) in the Hand Size Lead with 9 versus Carthage (Perry)’s 6. Rome only grows stronger over the passage of time, getting more resources and better available leadership from the Senate, so that game did not bode well for Carthage’s chances for ultimate victory. Now, in Game #2, it would be George’s Carthaginians versus Perry’s Rome. Will Carthage fare better this time around?
Before reading this AAR, for additional Hannibal’s Revenge background, please reference this InsideGMT article for a general overview of the game, albeit with utilizing an early playtest version of the gameboard lacking Mark Mahaffey’s transformative graphic talents: Meet the Leaders & Gameboard of Hannibal’s Revenge | Inside GMT blog.
Furthermore, for historical background regarding this epic conflict, perhaps this under thirteen minute video will be of interest: The Second Punic War – History of the Roman Empire – Part 4 (youtube.com). The paths of the Carthaginian and Roman armies’ marching across this video’s maps are nicely relatable to the Hannibal’s Revenge gameboard.
Now to Game #2’s After-Action Report.
In the last article, we explored the Victory track and how factions score VP. This time, we’ll cover the cards players use to achieve their goals through concrete actions.
You can’t make soup out of promises. – Francis Spufford
During a game of Napoleon in Egypt, the French Player has the opportunity, through scientific research, to build a “military hospital”. This precious asset will greatly increase the durability of the French troops. In this article, we’ll look at the historical aspect of this element, before considering the game mechanics around it in a follow-up article.
Desgenettes and Larrey were two French military physicians who followed Bonaparte from the Italian campaign (1796) to Waterloo (1815). The medical breakthroughs of the Egyptian expedition are largely thanks to these two dominating figures. René-Nicolas Dufriche Desgenettes was chief physician, and Dominique-Jean Larrey was chief surgeon. Both displayed remarkable skills in organizing the Medical Corps in Egypt. In a difficult geographical, climatic and epidemiological context, they were crucial in the emergence of modern military medicine and played a full part in the expedition’s scientific achievements.
In the first article on the Enemy of My Enemy expansion, I covered the new Arab Revolt game that uses the Palestine map. In this article, I’ll pivot to the other new game included in the expansion, The British Way: Japanese Occupation. In a first for The British Way, the British faction, Force 136, acts as the insurgent player and their Japanese opponents the counterinsurgent. After the fall of Malaya and Singapore in early 1942, the entire Malayan peninsula was under Japanese occupation with only a fledgling resistance led by stay-behind British officers, such as Spencer Chapman of the famous book The Jungle is Neutral, and members of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). The British officers and MCP worked together to organize armed resistance against Japan. As the name of the expansion itself already suggests, the two opposing factions from The British Way: Malaya are now roughly on the same side in the prequel game. However, as I’ll expand upon below, to capture the uneasy alliance between the British and MCP and the lack of complete British control over the MCP’s units, the MCP operates in the game as a simplified non-player actor who may even win the game!
Leaders came and went with fair frequency in the Civil war, removed from command by relief from above or sometimes an enemy bullet. How does the game handle that?
Some leaders start the game in play, and a few of them appear on schedule during the first year of the war. After that, they are replaced with other leaders based on Event Card draws.
As shared by 9/19/24’s GMT Update (September 19 Update from GMT: New P500s, Many Game Updates, Art Samples, and More! (mailchi.mp)), Hannibal’s Revenge: A Card Conquest Series Game, received a status update and something of a “teaser”. That teaser was a promise for an After-Action Report of Hannibal’s Revenge playing when my two buddies, George and Perry, from our youthful New York City wargaming days, arrived at my North Carolina home for an annual gaming get-together. Ah, a happy multi-day escape from our normal routines!
I hope that many of you are aware that a reprint for Next War: India-Pakistan is up for pre-order. This particular game in the series has long been touted as a good entry point into the system as it concentrates solely on the ground and air war and doesn’t have those pesky naval rules. This will be a second printing with a few updates. To keep it simple, I wanted to give you a brief outline of the following changes, i.e., it’s not a new edition with a bunch of changes.
We will, of course, be correcting the two errata counters (PRC J-31 and Pakistani JF-17). In addition, we’ll provide the counters presented in Supplement #2 including the Pakistani T-129 Attack Helicopter and the new PRC Group Army (the 77th) as well as some independent units. The ROI Tejas will be upgraded to the Tejas Mk2 (which will also be available in Supplement #4 when it’s published). There will also be a host of other changes to bring the game up to the current standards for the Russian, US, and CW units.
In the last article, we explored the four factions of Hammer and Sickle and their unique asymmetries. This time, we’ll cover how these factions relate to one another, and how victory is achieved.
Revolution and war are two different things. For someone who is not only trying to defeat a military opponent but also radically change the society in which they live, there is no clear-cut front line visibly separating friend from enemy. – Hans Magnus Enzensberger
In this installment of Cuius Regio Developer Notes I’ll be talking about the evolution of the Cuius Regio map.
We started off with several key principles – we wanted a map that covered the area where the fighting and campaigning of the Thirty Years War in the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) took place, the key population centers needed to be represented as focuses of supply and political influence, and we wanted the geography to encourage the flow of operations in historical ways.
To cover the area of the conflict we settled on a scale of about sixteen miles across a hex (or about 250 square miles per hex). This allowed us to design a map that covered an area from north to south of about 750 miles, and from east to west of about 500 miles. Since we were looking to capture the operational movement of armies, this turned out to be a great scale. It allowed us to set the time scale to yearly turns during which armies could be activated several times to accomplish strategic goals or respond to developing situations.
