Hannibal ad Portas is now available on Wargame Vault!
Hannibal ad Portas is the first title of the One Page Games series: it’s a quick, solitaire historical game where you play the role of Hannibal on his march from Spain to Italy, where he will meet the Roman Army at Cannae (216BC).
One Page Games (1PG) have been designed with the objective of being “light” games in terms of:
- Time
- Table space
- Cost
I’ve found it more and more difficult to find the time to study a full-featured game while often I’ve got a 30 minutes break in the daily routine: 1PG have been designed to fill this small interval. Rules are easy and short enough to provide a quick but interesting gaming session: from this perspective 1PG are great for a flight since they perfectly fit on the small space of a plane seat.
Each 1PG must follow two design rules:
- All the components for the game can be placed on a single A4 sheet of paper (no counter, no dice).
- The same deck of 18 cards is used by all the games to provide randomness without the need of using dice (while you can play Hannibal ad Portas using two standard dice).
In addition, you will only need a pencil and a rubber.
How Hannibal ad Portas is played ?
The game uses a simple, linear map built with a succession of nodes. Each game turn is composed of four phases:
- Planning Phase
- Event Check
- Combat Phase
- Army Advance
In the planning phase you determine how many action points you have at your disposal, then you decide how to use them to execute the available actions:
- Recruit
- Diplomacy
- Gather Intelligence
- Supply
- Promote units
Your army is composed of Infantry, Cavalry and Elephant Units and you need to manage three critical resources: Supply, Intelligence and Diplomacy Points.
During Combat you proceed selecting one of the available Battle Moves (ex. Assault or Flank) that will determine the casualties: similarly the enemy army will execute one (randomly determined) move.
Stratagems are also available: those represent special, single-use Battle Tactics.
Hannibal ad Portas Game Components:
- The game rules
- One game board (A4 and Letter formats)
- The 1PG deck (18 cards)
- “The 1PG Deck” document.
Get your copy now on Wargame Vault!