Ruling — Hannibal & Hamilcar

← Hannibal & Hamilcar

You asked

how do i play this game?

Answered counted as answered

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

The game is played in turns, and each turn must be played in the following order:

1. Reinforcement Phase (skip this phase on the first turn) [1]

2. Deal Strategy Cards [1]

3. Strategy Phase [1]

4. Winter Attrition Phase [1]

5. Political Isolation Removal Phase [1]

Reinforcement Phase Details:

1. The Carthaginian player places reinforcements [1]

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

3. The Roman player places reinforcements [1]

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

Strategy Phase Details:

1. Players are dealt a number of Strategy Cards as listed on the Turn track [1]

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

3. The phase ends when both players have exhausted their hands [2][1]

4. A player may discard a Strategy Card rather than play it; if they do, no action occurs and it becomes the opponent's turn to play a Strategy Card [3]

Winter Attrition and Political Isolation Phases:

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

2. Both players (first the Roman, then the Carthaginian) remove all their non-Walled, non-Tribe PCs that are Isolated [1]

Post-Phase Actions:

1. Both players calculate their Political Points [1]

2. If one player has fewer Political Points than the other, that player loses a number of PCs [1]

3. After completing the Victory Check, begin another game turn [1]

Ending the Game:

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 · 7.4. Ending the Strategy Phase

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

The table has its answer — dice up.

🔧 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 137 ms · ask 5495 ms · total 5633 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5633 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 8, "score": 0.047712, "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": 6, "score": 0.046244, "snippet": "The Hannibal scenarios depict the Second Punic War while Hamilcar depicts the First Punic War. It is suggested that new players start with the Hannibal scenarios. Once players are comfortable with Hannibal they can move on to the slightly more complex Hamilcar scenario. See scenario rules for detail", "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, "score": 0.032258, "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": 19, "score": 0.031746, "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": 17, "score": 0.03125, "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}, {"page": 31, "score": 0.030769, "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": 29, "score": 0.030366, "snippet": "In case you'd like to add some realism to the game or try some optional rules, here is a collection for your consideration. These may also be used to even out differences in play skill, with the more advanced or skilled player playing with a handicap. If you want to enrich the game experience, add c", "headingPath": "Optional Rules · 26.1. Additional Strategy Cards (Hannibal Scenarios) · 26.1.1. Messenger Intercepted: Variant · 26.1.2. Elephant Fright: Variant · 26.2. Additional Generals (Hannibal scenarios)", "sharpsignalDocId": 977}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "During the Victory Check Phase, players count the number of politically significant Provinces they control. All are politically significant except Gallia Transalpina, Massilia, Liguria, Baleares, and Mauretania (optional province). You earn one Political Point for each politically significant Provin", "headingPath": "22.1. Procedure · EXAMPLE: · 22.3. Sue for Peace · 22.4. End of Game · Sudden Victory", "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": "7.4. Ending the Strategy Phase", "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}]
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 0.89850 of 1399 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 10, 2026 15:26 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	0.047712 (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)	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	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
#3	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	0.032258 (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	0.031746 (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))	300
#5	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	0.03125 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	You can reach us at:	p.31	0.030769 (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)	Optional Rules · 26.1. Additional Strategy Cards (Hannibal Scenarios) · 26.1.1. Messenger Intercepted: Variant · 26.1.2. Elephant Fright: Variant · 26.2. Additional Generals (Hannibal scenarios)	p.29	0.030366 (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)	22.1. Procedure · EXAMPLE: · 22.3. Sue for Peace · 22.4. End of Game · Sudden Victory	p.26	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	#9	0.030214 (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
#2	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	7.4. Ending the Strategy Phase	p.8	#1	0.047712 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	Optional Rules · 26.1. Additional Strategy Cards (Hannibal Scenarios) · 26.1.1. Messenger Intercepted: Variant · 26.1.2. Elephant Fright: Variant · 26.2. Additional Generals (Hannibal scenarios)	p.29	#7	0.030366 (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)	8.7 . Reshuffling	p.10	#35	0.010638 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	EXAMPLE: · 14.4. Militia · 14.5. Sequence of Land Battle Resolution · 14.6. Battle Round · 14.7 . Matching the Attacker's Battle Card	p.18	#11	0.029412 (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 + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	2.2. The Playing Pieces · Design Note: · 2.2.5. DICE:	p.4	#13	0.027313 (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
#7	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	#2	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
#8	RULEBOOK Hannibal & Hamilcar — Rulebook (corpus doc 977)	Introduction · Game Components	p.3	#37	0.010417 (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

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)	7.4. Ending the Strategy Phase	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

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 137 ms · first delta 3481 ms · total 5633 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 137 ms · ask 5495 ms · gateway work 5633 ms · total 5633 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3877
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 420
tok/sec: 201.0 tok/sec — 420 output tokens in 2.090 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 18s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 7s 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.