Field

Second Punic War

The war for supremacy between Rome and Carthage, 218–201 BC, including Hannibal's invasion of Italy.

1 case

The Second Punic War is the war in which the side that kept winning the battles lost the war. So this field puts a premise in front of you immediately: designing a battle and designing a war are different jobs. Read Cannae as the finished form of the first, and note that it did not secure the second.

Patterns found in this field

02
Absorbing momentum

Do not stop his momentum; receive it and change its direction.
Cannae — the encirclement that turned numbers into a trap →

A pattern is not a template to apply but a tool for checking conditions. The conditions under which each one fails are set out on the patterns page. The thirteen patterns

Cannae — the encirclement that turned numbers into a trap

The reason a Roman army nearly twice the size was annihilated was not the shape of a double envelopment, but a design that flipped Rome's packed mass and momentum into an immobile weakness.

Pattern: absorbing momentum

Decisive Carthaginian (Hannibal) victory Read →

Other fields

Napoleonic Wars The Pacific War The Eastern Front The Hundred Years War The American Civil War Japan's Warring States period The Western Front, 1940–45 The Vietnam War The Western Front, 1914–18