When you get your big Hannibal Battle Set for Hail Caesar Epic Battles from Warlord Games, you will also get a slim rulebook and everything else you need for playing out a second wargame called Scipio.

Scipio // Warlord Games

Scipio is a new "battlegame" which is Warlord's mixture of both a board game and a wargame on the tabletop. It has been designed for you to play out the battles of the Second Punic War but very quickly. Because the idea is that Scipio is more of a board game, once you've cracked out your miniatures and stuck them to bases you simply need to set up the battle mat and get stuck in. I do like this as a quick and easy way to get started with your miniatures without feeling you need to get everything painted before you can play.

Scipio Set-Up // Warlord Games

The Scipio rules come from both Rick Priestley and John Lambshead who have designed the game to be quick and fun to play. It makes use of the typical tactics of the period and offers up the chance to play an epic battle but with the benefit of simple grid-based movement to make it quick and easy to move around. When it comes to learning stats, you just need to get your head around attack and defence values and that's it. As well as your basic rules, you can also spice things up with optional special rules in the eight-page rulebook. Perhaps this could be your next step after a few plays of the basic game. There are also rules for playing the game as a campaign.

Scipio Armies // Warlord Games

The game also only requires you to get thirty stands ready to play for both the Romans and the Carthaginians. Because the sprues are in two different colours, you can also forego the painting, to begin with, and just start playing a game. I think it would be fun to see Warlord look into producing similar quick and easy sets for their other Epic games so they can be played right out of the box more or less.

Scipio - Lines Clash // Warlord Games

Are you going to be giving Scipio a go when your Epic Battles set lands for Hail Caesar? This seems like a fun idea and hopefully, it gets more people playing games quickly rather than feeling like they're languishing in hobby limbo during the painting phase of their journey!

Let us know your thoughts on Scipio below...