Ruling — Hannibal & Hamilcar

← Hannibal & Hamilcar

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Hannibal & Hamilcarbg-227460-en-1e

HANNIBAL & HAMILCAR is played in turns, which must be played in the following order: [1]

1. Reinforcement Phase (Skip this phase on first Turn): [1]

* The Carthaginian player places his reinforcements.[1]

* If the Carthaginian player has any displaced Generals, he may return them all to the map.[1]

* The Roman player places his Reinforcements.[1]

* The Roman player designates a Proconsul, removes his old Consuls, and randomly selects and places two new Consuls.[1]

2. Deal Strategy Cards: Each player is dealt a number of cards from the Strategy Deck as listed on the Turn track or in the scenario rules.[1][2]

3. Strategy Phase: [1]

* To determine who goes first, the deciding player asks the opponent if he is going to preempt.[2]

* To preempt, the player must immediately play a Major or Minor Campaign Card (either as an Event or OP Card).[2]

* If there is no Preempt, the deciding player declares who goes first.[2]

* Players resolve this phase by playing their Strategy Cards one at a time, alternating back and forth between them.[1]

* Each card played allows the player to use either the Operation Points (OPs) on the card or enact the Event on the card to occur.[2]

* A player may discard a card for no effect.[2]

* Playing a Counter Event does not count as a normal play; the player must still play a Strategy Card for their next normal play.[3]

* The Strategy Phase ends when both players have exhausted their hands.[1][4]

4. Winter Attrition Phase: Both players conduct Winter Attrition against their CUs stationed in hostile spaces.[1]

5. Political Isolation Removal Phase: Both players (first the Roman, then the Carthaginian) remove all their non-Walled, non-Tribe PCs that are Isolated.[1]

6. Victory Check: Both players calculate their Political Points; if one player has fewer Political Points than the other, that player loses a number of PCs.[1]

Play continues until one side wins a Sudden Death Victory or all turns have been played.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook · p.6 · HANNIBAL & HAMILCAR contain several different scenarios. · HANNIBAL & HAMILCAR are played in turns, each of which must be played in the following order: · 5.2. Deal Strategy Cards · 5.3. Strategy Phase · 5.4. Winter Attrition Phase · 5.5. Political Isolation Removal Phase · …

[2] RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook · p.8 · 6.7 . Scipio Africanus · 7.1. Receiving Strategy Cards · 7.2. Two Options for Each Card · 7.3. Who Goes First · 7 .3.1. Preempting Who Goes First · 7 .3.2. How to Preempt · …

[3] RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook · p.10 · EXAMPLE: · 8.3. Events · 8.4. Counter Events · 8.5. 'Remove if Played' Cards · 8.6. Discarding

[4] RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook · p.8 · 7.4. Ending the Strategy Phase

That settles it — whose turn was it?

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 191 ms · ask 5841 ms · total 6034 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6034 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 8, "score": 0.047493, "snippet": "The players alternate playing Strategy Cards until all cards in each player's hand have been played. At this point, the Strategy Phase ends. It is possible that one player may use all of his Strategy Cards while his opponent still has several left in his hand. In this case, the player who still has ", "headingPath": "7.4. Ending the Strategy Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 977}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.04741, "snippet": "Scipio Africanus arrives as a reinforcement in the Hannibal scenario on Turn 6 (211-210 B.C.) as a second Proconsul. He brings five CUs (these are in addition to the five CUs the Roman player normally receives) with him. Scipio and his 5 CUs must be placed as a group; they may not be split up. The R", "headingPath": "6.7 . Scipio Africanus · 7.1. Receiving Strategy Cards · 7.2. Two Options for Each Card · 7.3. Who Goes First · 7 .3.1. Preempting Who Goes First · 7 .3.2. How to Preempt · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 977}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.046244, "snippet": "By playing a 3 OP card, the Carthaginian player may flip both Roman PCs in Dertosa and Tarraco and then place the remaining PC in either Numantia or Osca (a total of 3 PCs can be placed). c) RAISE TROOPS: This is only allowed with a 3-OP Strategy Card. Playing a 3-OP Strategy Card in this way allows", "headingPath": "EXAMPLE: · 8.3. Events · 8.4. Counter Events · 8.5. 'Remove if Played' Cards · 8.6. Discarding", "sharpsignalDocId": 977}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.045695, "snippet": "To attempt a counterattack, the defender rolls the die. If the die roll is less than or equal to his commanding General's Battle Rating, he has seized the initiative and becomes the attacker. If the die roll is greater than his General's Battle Rating, he fails and remains the defender in the next B", "headingPath": "14.8. Counterattacks · 14.9. Reserve Cards · 14.10. How to Win a Land Battle · 14.11. Land Battle Casualties", "sharpsignalDocId": 977}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.043905, "snippet": "2.2.1. COMBAT UNITS (CU): Round playing pieces that have a picture of a Roman, Carthaginian, or Elephant printed on them. They represent a number of Combat Units of that type equal to the printed value. Throughout the rest of these rules, the term 'Combat Unit' will be abbreviated as 'CU' and plural", "headingPath": "2.2. The Playing Pieces · Design Note: · 2.2.5. DICE:", "sharpsignalDocId": 977}, {"page": 31, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "www.facebook.com/games.phalanx twitter.com/PhalanxGames www.instagram.com/phalanxgames boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/227460", "headingPath": "You can reach us at:", "sharpsignalDocId": 977}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "An Army consists of a General and one or more friendly CUs stacked together in one space. The composition of an Army is public knowledge and may be inspected at any time by any player. Force: A stack of CUs in a space. If the stack also contains a General then the Force is also an Army. Consular Arm", "headingPath": "3.3. Army", "sharpsignalDocId": 977}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "After a successful Avoid Land Battle, the active player may attempt to continue moving (either to pursue or to move off in a different direction). To determine if the attempt is successful, roll the die. If the die roll is less than or equal to your General's Battle Rating, your Army can continue mo", "headingPath": "13.4. Pursuit · 13.5. Walled Cities and Avoid Land Battle · Land Battles · 14.1. Battle Cards (BC)", "sharpsignalDocId": 977}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "HANNIBAL & HAMILCAR contain several different scenarios. · HANNIBAL & HAMILCAR are played in turns, each of which must be played in the following order: · 5.2. Deal Strategy Cards · 5.3. Strategy Phase · 5.4. Winter Attrition Phase · 5.5. Political Isolation Removal Phase · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 977}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "6.7 . Scipio Africanus · 7.1. Receiving Strategy Cards · 7.2. Two Options for Each Card · 7.3. Who Goes First · 7 .3.1. Preempting Who Goes First · 7 .3.2. How to Preempt · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 977}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "EXAMPLE: · 8.3. Events · 8.4. Counter Events · 8.5. 'Remove if Played' Cards · 8.6. Discarding", "sharpsignalDocId": 977}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "7.4. Ending the Strategy Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 977}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 977 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 977 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.91534 of 1630 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 6, 2026 10:07 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	7.4. Ending the Strategy Phase	p.8	0.047493 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	6.7 . Scipio Africanus · 7.1. Receiving Strategy Cards · 7.2. Two Options for Each Card · 7.3. Who Goes First · 7 .3.1. Preempting Who Goes First · 7 .3.2. How to Preempt · …	p.8	0.04741 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	EXAMPLE: · 8.3. Events · 8.4. Counter Events · 8.5. 'Remove if Played' Cards · 8.6. Discarding	p.10	0.046244 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	14.8. Counterattacks · 14.9. Reserve Cards · 14.10. How to Win a Land Battle · 14.11. Land Battle Casualties	p.19	0.045695 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	2.2. The Playing Pieces · Design Note: · 2.2.5. DICE:	p.4	0.043905 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	You can reach us at:	p.31	0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	121
#7	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	3.3. Army	p.5	0.03125 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	13.4. Pursuit · 13.5. Walled Cities and Avoid Land Battle · Land Battles · 14.1. Battle Cards (BC)	p.17	0.030303 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 62 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	EXAMPLE: · 8.3. Events · 8.4. Counter Events · 8.5. 'Remove if Played' Cards · 8.6. Discarding	p.10	#3	0.046244 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	Introduction · Game Components	p.3	#49	0.009901 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	HANNIBAL & HAMILCAR contain several different scenarios. · HANNIBAL & HAMILCAR are played in turns, each of which must be played in the following order: · 5.2. Deal Strategy Cards · 5.3. Strategy Phase · 5.4. Winter Attrition Phase · 5.5. Political Isolation Removal Phase · …	p.6	#10	0.029911 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	2.2. The Playing Pieces · Design Note: · 2.2.5. DICE:	p.4	#5	0.043905 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	8.7 . Reshuffling	p.10	#22	0.024128 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	6.7 . Scipio Africanus · 7.1. Receiving Strategy Cards · 7.2. Two Options for Each Card · 7.3. Who Goes First · 7 .3.1. Preempting Who Goes First · 7 .3.2. How to Preempt · …	p.8	#2	0.04741 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	Strategy Card Notes	p.28	#14	0.026077 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	7.4. Ending the Strategy Phase	p.8	#1	0.047493 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	HANNIBAL & HAMILCAR contain several different scenarios. · HANNIBAL & HAMILCAR are played in turns, each of which must be played in the following order: · 5.2. Deal Strategy Cards · 5.3. Strategy Phase · 5.4. Winter Attrition Phase · 5.5. Political Isolation Removal Phase · …	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	6.7 . Scipio Africanus · 7.1. Receiving Strategy Cards · 7.2. Two Options for Each Card · 7.3. Who Goes First · 7 .3.1. Preempting Who Goes First · 7 .3.2. How to Preempt · …	p.8	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	EXAMPLE: · 8.3. Events · 8.4. Counter Events · 8.5. 'Remove if Played' Cards · 8.6. Discarding	p.10	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	7.4. Ending the Strategy Phase	p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 191 ms · first delta 3492 ms · total 6034 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 191 ms · ask 5841 ms · gateway work 6034 ms · total 6034 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3910
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 490
tok/sec: 200.8 tok/sec — 490 output tokens in 2.440 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 56s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 2s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 907), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.