Friday, 18 July 2025

Turks And Venetians

Caesar and I played a game of Galleys & Galleons last night. I set up two roughly equal forces of Renaissance galleys lifted straight from the book.

The Venetians fielded two lanterna flagships, four galleys, two galliots and a couple of galleasses. Opposing them the Turks has two lanterna flagships, three galliots and six galleys. Caesar took the Turks whilst I ran the Venetians. The latter are a little more complex since they have a mixed sailing and oared force.

Here's the setup. With two flagships we each got to divide our force into two squadrons, and used cards to decide which squadron activated when.


The Venetian fleet, ready to advance. At the bottom left you can see the two galleasses.


Early advances. Both sides made use of galliots to work around the enemy's left flank.


The galleasses get left behind. Most of teh galleys have good activation rolls so could move twice each turn, whereas the galleasses sail; they get to move for free, but only once per turn.


The Turks fired teh first shots, but they caused no damage.


More firing and a couple of damage markers appeared. To the left a galleass has opened up with its heavy bow guns.


Caesar concentrated fire on the big galleasses, and one of them started to take both hull and rigging hits.


The two fleets were now locked in battle (although I took this photo at the end of a turn, when we'd removed all of the smoke).


Ah! A shot of the two fleets actually looking like they're locked in battle! In the centre I'd committed a galleass to a boarding action which, with hindsight, wasn't a sound move. Galleys get a small bonus in barding, so the odds weren't as highly in my favour as I'd hoped.


One of my galleys caught fire and promptly exploded. The only silver lining in the huge cloud of smoke and debris was that it set one of the Turkish galleys on fire.


A Turkish galliot is pounded into striking by a Venetian galley.


One of my galleasses surrendered after a long series of boarding actions.


The other made up for it by firing a mighty broadside that utterly demolished a Turkish galley. With modifiers I was rolling of a combat value of 8, which is pretty good in this game. You can see the wreckage of the galley in the background.


Remember that Turkish galley that caught fire? It exploded as well.


The action was very close now; plenty of point-blank firing and boarding going on.


Out on the Venetian left, Turkish galliots continued to skirmish with the larger Venetian galleys.


An overview of the action.


Another Turkish galley surrenders as two Venetian galliots grappled it.


However sustained gunfire from a galley and one of the Turkish flagships forced my second galleass to strike.


At that point we called the game as it was getting late and teh fight had reached that point where both sides would need to consolidate their forces before any more action would take place.


We called it a draw, although I think with the loss of two galleasses the Venetians probably had had the worst of it. The Turkish right was still relatively fresh and in a position to cross the centre and bring its weight to bear on the intense action on the their side. I think that would have swung the battle in their favour.

Still, it was a lot of fun to get these ships out again, even if I still haven't really worked out the most effective way to use the galleasses yet.

Here's a bonus picture from Ralph showing me smiling far more confidently than the situation deserves.


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