All At Sea With The Romans

I got my ancient galleys out on Sunday and what started as 'I'll have a quick game to try out something' turned into a three commands a side big battle (in Galleys & Galleons terms, anyway). 

What I wanted to do was try out some Romans, using their legendary corvus boarding bridge. Now it's possible that this wasn't used for that long, if at all, but for the purposes of the game I let them have it. Now Galleys & Galleons does have specific rules for the corvus, but I've always thought that they were a bit clunky and didn't fit the general elegance of most of the game's mechanisms. And it's easy enough to create an acceptable facsimile of one using existing traits anyway.

Naturally the Romans were up against their traditional arch-enemies, the Carthaginians. I gave both sides six quinqueremes, six quadremes and four triremes, split into three commands. I semi-randomised the distribution of ships to make things interesting.

The Carthaginian ships were straight out of the rules, aside from the quadremes simply being Q3 C3 with ramming (as per previous games I've played) and their triremes having expert oarsmen.

The Roman triremes were given drilled soldiers. The quadremes and quinqueremes dropped ramming and added swashbucklers and drilled soldiers. So they were exceptionally good at boarding*.

Here's the two sides set up. The Roman ships are red and green and are on the right. Any other colour is Carthaginian. You can see the rough division of the fleets into commands.

Here's the position a couple of turns in. Close to the island opposing triremes are approaching each other.

And that's where the fighting started; a Carthaginian trireme rammed its Roman counterpart.

However the Romans boarded and evened things up.

More fighting and ramming.

On the other flank quadremes and quinqueremes faced off. The Romans inflicted a few hits with artillery as they approached.

In the centre the Carthaginians got the initiative and rammed the Romans. They got a cuple of lucky hits which crippled opposing quinqueremes.

Battle was joined all along the line. With little sea-room the fighting was close and there was little maneuver to speak of.

A Carthaginian quadreme struck on the left, after teh Romans boarded. But the Romans were suffering hits as well.

Intense fighting in the centre. A Carthaginian quadreme hit the red Roman quadreme in the centre of the picture, sinking it.

It sliced through the wreck and rammed one of the Roman command vessels as well.

You can see a few sunken ship markers now.

One of the Roman command vessels strikes.

The Roman flagship was now under attack. 

It was all too much for the Romans. I gave each ship a points value - 2 for triremes, 3 for quadremes and 4 for quinqueremes. This gave a total of 50 for each side. I considered a side defeated if it took 25 points of losses or more. The Romans reached 27 points. The Carthaginians had lost a mere 7.

The Romans were comprehensively defeated in what was, given the number of ships involved, a relatively short action. They certainly had the edge when it came to boarding, but the Carthaginians got some good rams in early on and the Romans never really got into the fight properly. However it was interesting to try two different fighting styles in this era and I'd like to give it another try with, maybe, fewer ships and more sea-room.

*If you subscribe to the view that the corvus made the ships unstable you could add the sluggish disadvantage and add in iron grapples. I  didn't.

The Tabletop Tour de France - Part 9

When last I wrote about our Tabletop Tour de France we had four stages left to run and Catherine's green team had a fairly solid 8 point lead. Last week we played two more stages.

Stage 18 runs from Gap to Barcelonnette. It's quite hilly, but there's no extreme climbs. The short climbs are interesting; if you position yourself right you can bump over them in a single move, and then use the descent or supply zone on the other side to burn off a low card. But time things incorrectly and you could get stuck on one and that can cost you position.

Here's the start. We had a tailwind early on, over the first ascent, but a later crosswind would slow things down towards the finish and the final straight was wet with the potential for crashes.

Early moves. Everyone was bunching together in teams except for me; I'd managed to split my riders up and, indeed, was running last.

Blue got out ahead and was looking strong, but would probably burn out before the finish.

And just over halfway through we caught up with blue. Both of my riders were pushing hard as I tried to stay ahead of Catherine. Somehow she had slipped quite badly and I wanted to exploit this.

I got my rouleur into the front pack. 

And good fortune for my sprinteur; I had a single sprint left but it wouldn't get me over the finish line. However on the penultimate turn the pack closed up several positions thanks to slipstreaming, putting me within reach of the finish-line. 

An epic final sprint saw my rouleur win and my sprinteur take second place. Blue picked up a third place and Catherine's highest finish was in fourth.

I picked up 23 points to her 14, eliminating her 8 point lead from the previous race and getting a 1 point lead of my own. I was back in the running!

Stage 19 runs from Embrun to Isola 2000. It has three quite horrible climbs, especially the one in the middle.

A tight pack on the run to the first climb.

After the first ascent was a crosswind, which would make catching up via slipstreaming impossible. And the biggest climb was into a headwind.

The first climb broke things up a little. Catherine had got ahead of me at this stage.

We closed up on the long ascent.

But heading towards the finish I got my rouleur out with the leader. With a climb to the finish line it was just a matter of holding position; there would be little in the way of epic sprint finishes.

And once again I got a win! I Increased my overall lead to 2 points as well.

Heading into the final two stages the team scores are:

Pink (Me) - 280
Green (Catherine ) - 278
White (Peloton) - 273
Blue (Bot) - 252
Red (Bot) - 225
Black (Gruppetto) - 96

Catherine and I have a good lead, but white could still surprise everyone.

Top individual riders:

Green Rouleur (Catherine) - 189
Pink Rouleur (Me) - 169
Blue Rouleur (Bot) - 156

I think Catherine's top rider position is assured; for me to catch her she'd had to finish almost dead last in both remaining races whilst I would have to win them. But the team scores are closer; Catherine's sprinteur tends to do quite badly whilst I manage mine better (indeed I have the highest ranked sprinteur). 

So there are two stages to go, and it's anyone's championship!

Turnip 28

Last night June introduced me to Turnip 28, a delightfully named skirmish game set in a Napoleonic post-apocalypse. The premise, such as it is, is that there's been an apocalypse after Napoleon was defeated at Austerlitz. I'm not sure what it was, but now there's a blight across the land driven by a disgusting turnip-like vegetable. Everything is generally grim, mutated and post-apocalypsy.

Look, the premise doesn't matter. Basically it's an excuse to do weird-arse things with mutated Napoleonics or, indeed, any figures you can lay your hands on. It's figure agnostic; there are no Official Miniatures. Just hack stuff around how you like. There are a few basic unit types and then the option of Cults, which are not unlike sponsors in Gaslands, each one granting your force some kind of special bonus (and sometimes access to unique units). 

It's a skirmish game in the vein of Saga or Lion Rampant in that you run a number of units with individually based figures. Units have from 3-12 figures, and there are individually based leader figures as well. Leaders, called Snobs, are used to scale the game. You decide on how many Snobs each player will field. One Snob is the overall leader (the Toff) whilst the others are underlings (Toadies). Toffs bring two units to the table. Each Toady brings an additional unit.

In our game we had a Toff and two Toadies each, for a total of four units. All units are effectively equal in points or, in terms of the setting, equally rubbish. We didn't use cults. It's not a requirement.

June provided all of the figures, and very nice they are too. One was a pirate-themes group based on heavily hacked around Napoleonics. The other were marsh-dwellers using GW Moria Goblins from their LOTR range. Here we are set up. I had the pirates and June had the goblins. There are five objective markers on the board. We were to play for four turns and whoever controlled the most markers at the end would win. Easy.

Here's two of my units. There are six unit types in the game: Fodder (large foot units of 12 ineffective figures), Brutes (small foot units of 6 more competent fighters), Chaff (4 skirmisher figures), Whelps (4 cavalry figures), Bastards (3 heavy cavalry figures) and Stump Guns (immobile and potentially explosive artillery). These units are Brutes. Each unit can be armed with either black-powder weapons (effective, but can only shoot once per turn), missile weapons (less effective but able to shoot multiple times) or melee weapons (great if you can get up close and personal). Obviously certain unit types are best with certain weapons; the cavalry types were made for melee weapons, for example. My brutes here are armed with black-powder weapons (left) and melee weapons (right).

A unit of Fodder, with black-powder weapons. A lot of the conversions are made up of sea-shells from the local beach.

June's marsh-dweller were mostly armed with melee weapons, but she had two units of Chaff with regular missile weapons.

In the crows-nest on top of a hermit crab is one of my Toadies, currently commanding a Stump Gun. The cannon and boat are scratchbuilt. Did I say that June is disgustingly talented?

Some shooting.

Players take turn activating their Snobs. A Snob can then either act themselves or command a unit within their command radius to do something. Units can Volley (effective fire), Move and Fire (obvious), March (move faster) or Charge (move fast in a straight line towards an enemy). Before you act you roll a D6. On a '1' the incompetents blunder and don't do the order anywhere near as well.

Once each Snob has activated you get to activate units that they didn't give an order to. So out of command units always act later in the turn and, if they blunder, suffer a special penalty based on the scenario. More on this later.

June had grabbed the objective in the cover in the centre of the table with some Fodder. My Fodder had shot at them and they had run away. June sent in her Brutes. My melee Brutes charged them and came up short.

June's Brutes charged me. Charging is good as it gives you initiative in the fight; you get to strike first and the opponent only rolls for their survivors. In addition a charged unit has to take a morale test before the fight happens so may simply run away. My Brutes stood their ground and were mostly cut down, falling back afterwards.

One of Junes Toadies was feeling a little vulnerable (being the closest target for my cannon), and decided to run away, taking a shortcut through some dangerous terrain. Most terrain is dangerous. You roll a D6 for any figure entering it and on a '1' the figure dies.

Guess what happened. Go on.

Yup. The terrain ate the Toady.

More fighting. June's Brutes had been shot down but now her Fodder was after me. I got it eventually but all I was doing was killing units; June still held three objectives to my two.

My Fodder advanced to harass June's surviving Chaff unit. I think at this point it was the only unit she had left.

Toff Off! If the Toffs of each force come within a certain range of each other one of them can challenge the  other to a duel. Unlike Lion Rampant the challenge is always accepted. They then fight a melee until one of them dies.

I challenged June's Toff ...

... and emerged victorious.

June's Fodder was now out of command and on its next move blundered, activating the scenario-specific blunder. In this case the unit would lose 1D3 figures to cannibalism. June rolled a 3, and the Fodder unit ate itself.

So we were into the last turn. June had a unit of Chaff and a single Toady left. They hid in the cover. All I had to do was a rapid advance across teh board to grab one of her objectives.

My Fodder marched, but the extra move you get is random and they came up 1" short.

On the other side of the board my Brutes were in the same position. They blundered and barely moved at all.

So June won the fight, a victory that comforted the marsh-dwellers as they cowered inside the ruins.

This was a lot of fun to play. Aside from the daft setting the rules offer some interesting choices; you have to decide the best time for each unit to act but because of a requirement that shooting and charges are almost always made against the closest enemy, you have to be careful with positioning. 

Thanks to June for letting me play with her lovely toys and teaching me the game. I'd read the rules but, as I said above, there are subtleties to it that aren't necessarily apparent from a simple reading.

I confess I'm quite keen on putting together some forces for this game.

The Tabletop Tour de France - Part 8

Catherine and I continued our Tour de France last week, so I thought I'd better write it up before I forgot what happened.

We ran two stages, the first flat and the second mountainous.

The Stage 16 runs from Gruissan to Nimes, and there's little in it to trouble the riders.

Saying that we had a fair bit of weather - a tailwind early on, then a headwind  then a crosswind. To be honest this didn't really affect the race too much. I put my sprinteur into the breakaway. I'm still pondering how to do the bots in a breakaway; I still feel that they overbid a little and I also like the idea of one of the players getting into the breakaway despite a low bid because a bot decided to massively underbid.

Anyway, here we are, ready to go.

There was a tight pack at the start, although being out in front my sprinteur picked up a bit of fatigue.

Blue got well out in front, whilst my sprinteur got absorbed into the pack. My riders were just ahead of Catherine's at this stage.

The run for the finish. Both Catherine and I were out in front and it was an exciting sprint. Once again my Rouleur was pipped into second place by Catherine's, but my sprinteur finished third, a couple of places ahead of Catherine's. Blue got a fourth place, and red and white finished poorly.

This left Catherine and I neck and neck at the top of the table, along with white (who is consistent if nothing else). Blue's sprinteur let the team down and dropped their score a little relative to ours.

Stage 17 runs from St-Paul-Trois-Chateaux to Supedevolouy and, after a flat start, is a steady climb to the finish.

An early headwind slowed everybody down.

The pack stayed tight going up the first ascent, but Catherine was slightly ahead of me at this stage.

Disaster. Towards the finish was a long ascent with rain on it. And as Catherine broke away one of my riders crashed on the wet road, costing me a couple of places.

This dragged my sprinteur back (although Catherine's wasn't do well either), and my rouleur wasn't doing brilliantly either. Despite everyone running out of cards, Catherine dragged herself over the line in first place, with white and red finishing well too. I managed a poor 6th place with my rouleur and Catherine's sprinteur finished ahead of mine for once.

There are four stages to go and Catherine now has a decent lead. The team scores are now:

Green (Catherine) - 248
Pink (Me) - 240
White (Peloton) - 239
Blue (Bot) - 227
Red (Bot) - 206
Black (Gruppetto) - 88

I think red and blue are out of the running now - I may need to review the various rules changes I made there - but white could still be a danger. However if Catherine doesn't make any mistakes I think her lead is possibly enough to give her a win. I've got a lot of work to do in teh next couple of races.