Caesar and I planned to play Galleys & Galleons at the club yesterday, and were joined by two players new to the game, Darren and Colin. Fortunately I'd arranged a large game, so it could easily accommodate four players.
I set up an ancient naval battle, between Carthage (blue labels) and Syracuse (red labels). Both sides were given four triremes, four quadremes, four quinqueremes, two quinquereme flagships and a hexareme flagship. Stats were as per the rules, aside from the quadremes, which I simply rated as Q3 C3 with Ramming, dropping the Reinforced Hull and Veteran NCO traits, as they create weird anomalies in terms of points and combat capabilities relative to the other ship types.
Both sides were free to divide their ships up into three commands in any way they saw fit, under control of the flagships. Carthage (Caesar and Darren) simply created a command of each type, with the hexareme leading the quinquereme command. As the Syracusans Colin and I adopted a similar approach, except that we added a trireme to our quadreme force.
I set up a semi-random terrain (I threw islands at the table), and then we diced for sides, with the high roller getting to choose where they set up and the other side setting up opposite. We ended up with two islands on our right flank whilst Carthage had their force split by a small island.
Here's the setup from behind the Syracusan fleet. On our left were the quadremes, faced by the Carthaginian triremes. We had our quinqueremes in the centre, and our small triremes command was set up by the islands, because their shallow draft allowed them to easily navigate the area around the terrain. Carthage placed their quinqueremes to the fore on their left-centre, with the quadremes behind them.
This was an intense and bloody fight, with an interesting mix of ships. It was nice to see that, despite the temptation to ram, both sides were happy to spend some of the action standing off from the enemy and bombarding them in order to soften them up. Although we finished before a final victory, were were fairly close, and the game moved quickly given that two players had never played before. All in all it was a good evening's gaming.
Another nice looking game. Any chance you could upload your counters to your free stuff page?
ReplyDeleteCheers
Simon
I have converted them to a PDF file, and added a column explaining how I use each one. It's at the bottom of the Free Stuff page:
Deletehttp://hordesofthethings.blogspot.com/p/free-stuff.html
They should print out as 1cm squares.
Many thanks!
ReplyDeleteThat looks really great Alan! I've always had a hankering for multi squadron sized games with war galleys, rather than the multi-dozen sized games that can get a bit overwhelming. I'll have to check out G&G!
ReplyDeleteSee you at MOAB perhaps?