Thursday Galleys

I took my scratchbuilt galleys along to the club last night and we played a game of Galleys & Galleons with them. I took one side whilst Bailey and Stuart took the other as a team effort.

Both sides had a hexareme flagship, three quinqueremes, three quadremes, three triremes and two biremes, for a total of twelve ships. My side was nominally Romans (apparently because I deployed so neatly) whilst Bailey and Stuart were Carthaginians.

I didn't keep track of a lot of the detail of the game. Here's the very early stages as we advance towards each other. As you can see, I kept my fleet together in a neat block by being cautious and economical with my activation rolls, whilst the Carthaginians just went for a wild charge.

As ever the smaller ships opened up the fight on one of the flanks. A Roman bireme was rammed but the other returned the favour. Within a couple of turns both sides had lost a ship.

In the centre Carthage had contrived to shift some of their ships around the Roman left, whilst others looked set to move around an island and threaten the Roman right. The Romans reorganised their second line to face these threats.

The larger ships were now engaged, and we had the first boarding action when a Roman quinquireme boarded a Carthaginian trireme as was repulsed.

This boarding action was more successful, with a Carthaginian quinquereme striking to a Roman quadreme.

Bailey and Stuart consider their options.

A wider view of the action.

The Carthaginians ram and damage the Roman flagship!

At this point we called it an evening. I normally play until one side loses half of its ships and we'd reached a point where both of us were five ships down and looking for that last kill. So we called it a draw.

We had ships sunk by ramming, captured by boarding, burned to the waterline and even one where the crew panicked and ran it aground (thanks to the All At Sea table), so on the whole I think the evening went well. Neither Stuart nor Bailey had played Galleys & Galleons before, but they soon picked up the basics, and the game rattled along fairly well. With hindsight I think the forces would have been better split into two six vessel commands, but they otherwise gave a pretty good game.