Looking back at Connections UK 2019 Sabin - Punic War

While on the subject of things dating back to 2019, I found a couple of photos from the first day of Connections UK 2019 which as I remember was was packed full of "other" games. I took full advantage of this and joined a morning gaming session of Phil Sabin's multi-player Second Punic War game (I had read it from the book [Simulating War] but had never assembled a critical mass of interested people to actually get down to play it). Wargaming the strategic level of the Punic War board/wargame was a first for me, I only partially knew the background (Cannae to Zama), so I was not going to pass up a session with the author of the game. It was memorable. In the first run through, playing as the Leader of  Carthage I was beautifully stitched up by the Numidians and lost to Rome (even before the arrival of Scipio Africanus) .. so ho hum (see below, the state of the Cyber game board says it all, lots of Romans in North Africa - it did beautifully show the dynamic behaviour of the campaign and shows how a game can help unravel historical elements hidden by the text book - the importance of alliances and keeping  allies in check in particular - one of those Carthage "C"s in Africa [the Numidian] turns to a "R" [infamy] and the fat lady sings for Carthage):

The second run-through (where I played as Rome, but as a junior general) had a strange fratricidal "re-cock" [nothing I hasten to add to do with me] as internal Roman politics proved to be more dangerous than the Armies of Carthage - leading to a stupendous case of petulant "bad play" that let Carthage have an easy victory. After a 'group discussion' a decision to re-cock was made and the Romans got their act together so Carthage fell again (see below, "R" for Roman and "C" for Carthage - Africa has fallen to Rome, end-game for Carthage): 

Individual player scores are kept (so you can be the winner of the winning team and/or loser of the losing team), but this part of the game seems to be more of avoiding a "race to the bottom" - no good seems to come from going to war when you lose (see below, presumably the Roman winners will now celebrate in the traditional Roman way by plotting against each other in internal Senate politics, probably with as equally fatal consequences): 

The other point to note is the really effective way the game was presented by using" minimal computer power". Professor Sabin used a simple Cyberboard display (akin to a PowerPoint or Google Docs electronic document) with the Mediterranean game board & counters. He acted as control by moving the simple tokens about the board as directed by the players. All-in-all it was an obvious evolution of his "chalk and talk" KCL seminar sessions associated with his MA courses. The Cyberboard way of hosting will doubtless have saved him a fair bit of chalk by not having to continuously redraw the map of the Mediterranean. 

Command and Colours: Ancients

It came to pass, perhaps old hat to everybody else but I have never played it and it seems to be a stalwart of the wargaming community. In fact I think it a transition game between miniatures and board-games. Indeed the likes of Tim Gow uses the (modified) rules with hex based boards and his miniature armies (see below, not cheap but full of kit - a game to be played though):

It starts with Rome and Carthage which means a bit of background reading is required by me, as most of my ancient knowledge is based around Greeks to Macedonians beating up the Persians. That stuff is in later expansion packs (which I see as perfect birthday and Christmas presents). I see a long journey ahead of me. I am hoping perhaps to get the family involved because of the blocks and ease of set up. However I see myself moving to figures in the mode of Tim Gow.