This contribution has no pictures but should easily be one of the most useful contributions to this site. It is from Pepe Palau of Madrid, Spain. And it's just in time for the impending release of the Roman and Carthaginian sets! It is produced verbatim below:
Now that Hät Industries is going to make reality one of my childhood's dreams (go into a toy shop and buy 1/72th Hannibal plastic soldiers) I think will be useful an overview about the books and publications that can be helpful to organize your Second Punic tabletops armies.
The first place to look is obviously the Osprey Collections. Men at Arms Series have several useful numbers.
The Wargames Research Group have a book called "Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars 359 BC to 146 BC" written by Duncan Head with drawings by Ian Heath. It contains sections about Rome (pp 38-41, 58-61) and Carthage (pp 33-37, 54-57), and description of the following battles: Trebia 218 BC -Italy- (p.76), Lake Trasimene 217 BC -Italy- (p.76), Cannae 216 BC -Italy- (p.77), Ibera 215 BC -Spain- (pp 77-78), Castulo & Ilorci 212 BC -Spain- (p.78), Baecula 208 BC -Spain- (p.78), the Metaurus 207 BC -Italy- (pp 78-79), Ilipa 206 BC -Spain- (pp 79-80), and Zama 202 BC -Africa- (p.80). Line drawings of Carthaginian troops (pp 140-155) and their roman foes (pp 156-163) are also included.
Another interesting author is Peter Connolly, who wrote "The Roman Army" (1975) and "Hannibal & the Enemies of Rome" (1978), gathered both into his monumental "Greece and Rome at War" (Black Cat, 1988, ISBN 0-7481-0109-8) recently reprinted by Green Hill Books. All of them contains very nice color plates of Carthaginian mercenaries & roman legionaries and diagrams of their deployment in battle, although there is a little controversy about the translation of the Greek words "speirai" "longchophoroi" and "longchai" used by Mr. Connolly.
John Warry "Warfare in the Classical World" (Salamander, 1980, ISBN 0-948509-16-3) contain color plates of roman legionaries (p. 110) and Spanish scutarii (p. a22) also a complete chapter on the Punic wars (pp 114-120) with diagrams on the battles of Cannae and Zama.
J. F. Lazenby "Hannibal's War" (Aris & Phillips, 1978, ISBN 0-85668-080-X) and Serge Lancel "Hannibal" are two academic works (one British, one French) that worth a sight for the amount of information included. No color plates this time.
The two original sources and classical reference books about this matter are Polybius "The Histories of Polybius" and T. Livy "The War with Hannibal", I'm afraid I can't throw any light on English editions of this books, because my copies are the Spanish ones. There were other contemporary writers (e.g. Sosylos of Sparta from the Carthaginian point of view, or Q. Fabius Pictor from the roman one), but none of theirs works have survived, even the Polybius work is incomplete. You can blame Caesar for having put the Alexandria Library into fire when he started to conquer Egypt & Cleopatra.
There is a very nice book called "The Roman Legions Recreated in Color Photographs" by Daniel Peterson (Windrow & Greene, 1992, ISBN 1-8872004-06-7) that contains images of velites (pp 10-11), and hastatus & princeps (pp 12-13).
From the wargames point of view Terence Wise wrote a serial of booklets in the 70's called Battles for Wargamers, there is one volume devoted to the 2nd Punic War (Model & Allied Publications Ltd., 1972) covering the battles of Metaurus, Lake Trasimene, Cannae, Baecula Ilipa and Zama with maps and pictures of the recreation of the battles using Airfix soldiers. More recently Gosling Press put in circulation several booklets describing battles for wargamers Ancient Historical Battles Volume 1 (ISBN 1-874351-00-7) covers Lake Transimene, Cannae, Baecula, Metaurus, Ilipa and Zama. Volume 2 (ISBN 1-874351-11-2) contains Ticinus, Trebia, and Ebro. Both volumes were written by Peter Sides.
Tony Bath wrote also a very readable volume on this subject called "Hannibal's Campaigns" (Patrick Stephens Limited, 1981, ISBN 0-85059-492-8)
And several wargames magazines contains articles about the Second Punic Wars, I found the following interesting:
So that's all, now you must run to your nearest book-shop or public library and check some of the above references.
Enjoy your Second Punic War Wargame.
Many thanks for this most splendid and excellent contribution.