F:AT Thursday - Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage and Clash of Cultures

Ok kid, come over here. Take a knee. I want to discuss something with you.

You see that guy over there? The one in the dark robes, kinda boney, got a big scythe?

Yah? Well he was looking for you. Yes you specifically. It's lucky for you he still relies on Mapquest for his directions. Otherwise he'd have found you rather than standing over there with that puzzled look in his dark empty eye sockets.

Settle down. I didn't tell him where you were. I gave him the old  "At the third light take a left and go to the end of the road," bit. That should keep him busy for  a while. Those directions will have him going all the way to Rhode Island.

Yah, he'll be back. He doesn't strike me as the type to quit. Buy, you know, for now, I've bought you some time. Spend it wisely.

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Every so often I pull a game off my shelf that I haven't played in a long time. A game I see every time I activate the sliding door to my super secure Game Vault! (well more of a linen closet than a vault but you get the point). A game that usually gets passed over but every so often it makes the cut. And then I'm playing it and I wonder...."Why in the world do I spend so much time playing crummy games when this game exists?"

Such was the case the other night when Josh and I played Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage. Yes it's a classic. Yes you hear about it a lot. But have you played it? If not you are really missing out. It is a superb game.

It is called a Card Driven War Game. The type of game where each player gets a hand of cards and these perform several functions usually either the giving a limited and variable amount of action points to activate your armies OR trigger an event that could give you special actions or change the rules of the game for a specified period.

In a standard Hex and Counter game, the kind that probably springs to your mind when you hear "war game", there can be a certain god like control. You know where all the units are, how far they can move, and how strong they will be when the get there. The great thing about these CDG's is that the cards introduce an extra element of chance regarding how many action points you get on a certain play but also a great deal of thematic flavor in the events. They make for a much less "dry" and more exciting experience.

I've been calling it a war game but really it is much more about maneuver and political control. See...battles were big events back in the days of Rome and one good one or one bad one could shift the course of human events. So the choice to fight should never be made lightly because if you lose, you are going to be punished. Severely.

The game is one where you always need just a little more "juice", one more army, one more action point, one more card. That delightful, ulcer inducing, tension that many games strive for and fall just short or some take to the point of near agony like Paths of Glory, Hannibal nails  just right. Tense but still friendly.

If there is one gripe people have about this game it is the combat system itself which basically boils down to being dealt a number of cards based on your relative strength. The attacking player plays a card and the defender must match it or lose. If he does match it, the defender has the chance via a die roll to become the attacker and he plays a card first. If one player cannot match a card, he loses the battle.

This is cool in that no battle is certain. Outrageous luck could allow for a greatly outnumbered army to be victorious in a battle. It is kind of lame in that sometimes you spend five minutes figuring out how many cards each of you gets and then the battle is over in two seconds. To be honest, I'm not a big fan but the rest of the game is so good that I just deal with it. (Get it..cards...deal with it?? Huh?! See? I'm clever!)

The game was most recently produced by Valley Games (gasp of dismay from the audience) who are notorious for production and business fumbles but who in the end put out one fine looking game. The board is superb. The counters are nice and hefty. The "standies" topple over all the time but that is the nature of a standie and no fault of Valley. They did include dice with the Carthaginian and Roman  numerals on them rather than the Arabic numerals that have made life so much easier in Western civilizations since the Saracens ruled Spain. Or pips because...you know...they wouldn't have been a pain in the ass.

In the end it was my failure to remember one crucial fact that gave the victory to Josh and his Romans and it is this:

Elephants are cute, elephants are strong, elephants never forget, BUT elephants do not float!

I tried to take Hannibal to Italy by sea rather than crossing the Alps on foot and the damn Roman navy sank my ships and my pachyderms and my general as well. Losing Hannibal doesn't cost you the game necessarily but it did in this case. 

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F:AT Thursday arrived and Engineer Al, Uba, and I played another game of Clash of Cultures.

I have gotten to the point where I can focus more on playing the game than on remembering the rules. The tech tree, while l don't have it memorized, I know well enough to know what each category does. Uba and Al, however, have played it far less and thus by necessity had to spend a great deal of time squinting at the advancement board.

There was a lot of do-overs and take-backs as they saw or remembered the powers of a certain tech which altered how they would have done things. (We weren't playing "tournament rules" so that was cool by me).

Involved tech trees are a double edged sword in any board game, I think. I, as a player, love the variety and depth they can provide. I enjoy the invitation to a long term strategy they engender. However, be it in Twilight Imperium or here in Clash of Cultures you always, Always, ALWAYS forget some power, some special ability, some bonus. It can't be helped. At the least it can be a minor annoyance but at worst it can cost you the game.

Al had a dramatic "come from behind" win by building a wonder and slapping down three objective cards in one turn and following that up on the next turn with three more objectives. That many points so close to the end of the game was impossible to overcome and there he was....sitting there....all AL like with that AL look upon his face...AGAIN! Gah!