As promised a couple of weeks ago now, I did a review of those new rules on my blog, which can be found here:

https://nickthelemming.wordpress.com/2018/12/10/review-age-of-hannibal/

Bottom line - now I have to decide how much money I want to spend on yet more Punic Wars figures...

If you're in the market for some simple, quick, but still atmospheric rules for the Punic Wars and similar conflicts, you can't go wrong giving them a try. There are a lot of ancients rules out there, but these ones really stood out to me.

Nice job on the review. I too, like the Little Wars guys and had already bought the AoH and AoF rules. 

I also signed up as a follower of your blog. As newest acolyte of NtL, I hope there are no horrible initiation rites - like having to kill people who helpfully flash their car headlights.

Trusting that there are no such rites of passage, let us proclaim: "All hail Nick!"

BTW, those were some nice looking rangers you have in the Muskets and Tomahawk game.  What scale are they, who's the manufacturer and from where did you get them?  Thanks.

As long as you spend every Yorkshire Day (1st August) in fervent devotion to all things Yorkshire, you'll be fine.

The rangers are 15mm Blue Moon.

I own these rules, but have not played them, but they are VERY simple indeed.

Seem like a DBA+ rules set to me.

They are nice and simple, that's exactly what I was looking for. The unit traits really help define different units well though; in the Trebia scenario, both sides use Celts (Gauls for the Romans) but the troops are different because of those traits. Likewise the Alae spears, Triarii, African veterans and Spanish Scutarii are all "spear" units, but they're all very different.

If you're a gamer who likes to spend days slowly moving figures around, consulting half a dozen charts each time a unit does anything, noting down casualties on an individual level, and factoring in a hundred different possibilities for every action, then these rules certainly aren't going to appeal to you. If you want a good, satisfying game fought in an evening to a decent result that doesn't require much book-keeping, checking up on rules, etc, then Age of Hannibal are just about perfect.

I can sort of see the resemblance to dba if I squint a bit, but there's nowhere near the arsng around measuring angles etc that you get with DBA, there's more granularity (using D10s rather than D6s help), more difference between units, and much less in the way of pre-ordained results. Plus then there's things like the morale clock, the terrain system, the siege rules...there's a lot more to these rules than DBA.Not least because you're likely to have much larger armies too.

Flippin' 'eck Nick, you're not my long lost twin are you? These are the first rules to get me wanting to create and play with ancient armies since the mid-70s. The last thoroughly enjoyable ancient game I had (around 1977/78 I think) was using Hoplite Warfare.

I dunno DP, we do both like BBB and don't like overly-competitive arseholes either. There might be something in that. :D

Thanks also for the Trebia suggestions. Will continue building those armies after completing the additional Altar of Freedom/BBB ACW troops and terrain I am currently working on. Actually I do have a brother called Nick, who is a wargamer, but he is 9 years my junior.

I'm pretty sure that isn't me, unless I have an older brother my parents never told me about. Did they hide you in the attic for the first 30 years or so of your life? That could explain it.