Rome has two consuls "overseas," 1 in Africa and 1 in Spain. They each had 7 CUs, but due to combat losses have 2 each left.

The turn has ended and the consul in Spain has been removed. The other in Africa was promoted to proconsul.

My understanding is that I cannot, in the new turn reinforcement phase, put the second consul in Spain with the 2 CUs for 2 reasons:

1. A consul must be placed with a minimum of 5 CUs.
2. Only 2 CUs can be placed outside of Italy, so that would leave the
Roman army in Spain with 4 CUs - not enough to place the consul with

If this is so, my options as I understand are:

1. place the newly elected consul(s) with the stack that is in Rome
2. move one of the consuls by sea with a 3 OPS or campaign card to the
leaderless army in Spain with first card play or thereafter.

If I had only 3 CUs in Italy, I could still place the consuls in Rome,right?

I find some of these HCvR rules tedious. Thanks for the help.

The only time a problem arises is if
1. You have no stack of 2 or more CU in Italy
2. You have no stack of 3 or more CU outside of Italy
3. Rome is being besieged.

If all of those are true, your Consuls cannot be placed on the board, and you'll have to get by with just your proconsul(s). And unless Carthage is similarly bereft of CU's, you will probably lose shortly.

Roman consuls may be placed inside a besieged Rome (Roman CUs may not) if there is no other legal space they may be placed in.

I do not completely understand, especially point 3 does not make sense to me. I would say: if 1 or 2 are true, your Consuls cannot be placed - 3 does not matter in this case. The rules say:



Or does this phrase mean (how I understood it) that a consul may be placed in a besieged Rome even if there are less than 5 CUs?

Even if you have no CU on the board at all, you can do this by placing 5 CU in Rome.

Thinking about it: What makes you sure that a Consul may not be placed in a besieged Rome, even if there are less than 5 CUs? To be honest, I find the rules a bit unclear here. On the other hand, the situation does not appear very often...

You cannot place a consul with a stack of less than 5 CUs, and you cannot place reinforcement CUs in a city that is being besieged. Thus, if you have less than 5 CUs inside of Rome and it is being besieged, you cannot place a consul there.

Roman consuls may be placed inside a besieged Rome (Roman CUs may not) if there is no other legal space they may be placed in.

Last I checked (I may be superseded or just wrong) but from the Avalon Hill edition: you must place the Consuls with a 5CU army if possible. Then the consuls go to the next highest army. Thus: if you had a 3CU army w/a proconsul & a 2 CU army, both consuls go to the 3CU army, subordinating the proconsul, and, if they got into a fight, the commanding Consul would be determined by die roll, reflecting the reality that if 2 Consuls wound up in the same army, they would alternate command by day (Marcellus on Monday, Fabius on Tuesday, etc.). Indeed, in the actual 2nd Punic War, Hannibal won a battle because he waited to attack until the incompetent consul had command. I'm pretty sure the rule carried over to the Valley Games edition...

Playing 2nd edition or Valley games rules, it depends on whether you interpret the quoted sentence as only letting you override the "Consuls must be placed where there are at least 5CU" rule, or just the "a beseiged city may not receive reinforceents" rule.

Andy got it 100% right... that's the question. How do interprete it, Andy?

I just checked what wargameroom's interpreation is. I trust Bruce Wigdor more than myself as an interpreter of the Hannibal rules. He agrees with what I would do---If there is no legal place (because Rome is beseiged, and Rome is unable to build a stack of 5CU anywhere), then both Consuls are placed in Rome, even if there are fewer than 5 CU there.

Anyone know how WBC rules on this?

I doubt WBC has ever needed to make a ruling on this. While it's possible in theory to construct postions of this kind where Rome has a chance, in practice any postion that meets these criteria is likely to be one in which the Romans will resign anyway.

Andy got it 100% right... that's the question. How do interprete it, Andy?

I just found another relevant rules passage, in section 24, the section on general's special abilities. This says that if there are no stacks of 5 CU's in Italy, Fabius may still be placed with a smaller stack, and if there are no CU's at all in Italy, Fabius may still be placed in Rome. It would be really odd to conclude that if you have no CU's at all on the board, you could place Fabius in Rome, but no other general; Fabius's "special ability" is a restriction, not a special ability. I conclude that the intent of the rules is that generals may be placed with fewer than 5 CU's if there is no legal alternative, and since the rules clearly indicate that a general can in some circumstances be placed in a besieged Rome, I would conclude that it is legal to place a general in a besieged Rome with fewer than 5 CU's if there are no 5CU stacks on the board. Otherwise, we are left with the rules interpretation "If there is no alternative, a consul may be placed in a way that violates the 'no placing in a besieged city' rule, or the 'no placing with fewer than 5 CU's' rule, but not both of these rules at once", which seems like a stretch.