SPI's "The Punic Wars" from S&T no.53

 

“The Punic Wars” from Strategy & Tactics magazine no. 53, Nov/Dec 1975

 

Over the years I’ve played “Punic Wars” a handful of times before the recent tabling. I’ll be honest, I like this game and this time I played it for several days using the Second Punic War scenario. Not all day every day, but it went on for easily 5x longer than the average game I play. I lost count of the turns. Each time one side got the upper hand, the other side made an epic comeback. So, a war of attrition that’s “fun” and a small aspect of a game becomes real world attrition and that’s not so fun. It was, though — until I realized that outright Victory of any kind was very very difficult to achieve. The designer almost certainly knew this was the case because there are express rules for players agreeing to end the game. Then the winner is determined by who has the most Victory Points awarded for territorial control. 

In my case, after messing up a small but ultimately significant rule having to do with relief forces entering a hex with besieged Friendlys, and with the Romans far ahead, poised for a territorial victory, I ended the game declaring Rome the winner. 

 

Hannibal doing the thing...

There is only one glaring problem with this game: sea travel is too costly and dangerous especially given the speed and distance possible with a terrestrial move by Leaders. There aren’t enough advantages to be had traveling by sea to offset the potential danger of losing an army in the water. Even with extra Fleet Points and a good Leader, it’s still too unrealistically risky. If sea transport was as dangerous and lethal as depicted in “The Punic Wars” game, people would never have moved troops by boat and we know that isn’t the case. 

Movements of forces during the Punic Wars from "Warfare in the Classical World" by John Warry.

 

“Punic Wars” is a simple game that feels big. It has rails, but still feels open and full of potential. Intriguing (performance attenuated) randomness. Just enough chrome for flavor. Tasteful restraint. All made sensible. This rule is x because of y. Lots of things feel right; the differing diplomacy and election rules, attrition, control, sieges, all well modeled, stylistically coherent, but still easily managed. Nothing extraneous that breaks the flow. And it has a nice rhythm, which is important to me.

In the end, what appears simplistic and abstracted actually might be some decent simulating and modeling of the major relevant kinetic factors in the Punic Wars so that the situation can be played as a game with reasonable outcomes that may differ from the historical record, but nevertheless are defensible as sort of alternate history, i.e. “if this had been this way or another, the outcome would have been different and here's how and why.” That's what a decent simulation ought to do, I suspect. And it's a pretty good game.