Trading and games

A few months ago one of the club members asked about buying a board game I had.  Unfortunately, I could not sell it at a price that was cheap enough for him to purchase.  He has a 3d printer and wanted to know if he could trade printed items for the game.  I thought about it and found a file on line for printing ancient galleys.   this could be sized to fit the various classes of ancient galleys, most of which varied in length from 120 feet to 140 feet.   The file included masts with sails, oars, towers, etc.   We left off the masts and oars as masts were taken down prior to combat and the oars would show up in the top down images that I would mount the ships on.   We put two towers on the larger ships and one on the hexares.   I traded the board game to him for about 600 ships.

Pictured above from left to right 1/1200 metal ships, two 30mm printed ships without towers, a 30mm printed ship with one tower, two 35mm ships with two towers, and one 40mm ship with two towers.  30mm equals about 120 feet which is one of the more common galley sizes.  35mm is about 140 feet which is another common galley size.   40mm is about 160 feet.   There are records of larger sizes, but those are not mentioned in any of the battles and may have been built for prestige only.

Side view of the ships.   The towers have had the top part trimmed off, because they looked too tall with it.  As can be seen ships can be printed with no towers, one tower, or two towers.   The single tower can be in front or back.  Now to add some color to the towers and if I feel ambitious enough, eyes to the front of the ships.  

This left me with all the 2.5D ships that I had made.   Fortunately one of the members of South Bay Game Club was running a Spanish Armada game at the meeting this past weekend.  He was using the paper ships from the Helion publication so I game them to him and he gave me an extra copy of the Armada book in exchange.

All three of us ended up with something we wanted and saved money if we had to purchase the items we got from other sources.   The following are pictures of the various games being run at the South Bay Game Club this past weekend

 PT boat game being set up

Monthly planes on sticks game

 The Spanish fleet at anchor viewed from the edge they needed to escape by.

 Trench warfare skirmish game

 The English fleet arrives behind its fire ships

 The English manage to get amongst the Spanish ships.   The English moved twice as fast as the Spanish and were more maneuverable.   Almost all of the Spanish were able to raise their anchors before the English reached them.   Bill and I managed to sink 38 of them, but they got 50 off the table without their anchors cut for the victory.

General d'Brigade game

Naval Gaming at South Bay Game Club

For the past few months I have been participating in age of sail games run by Bob at the South Bay Game Club.  These were squadron level games with each person commanding three to six ships.  Attendance had been low over the winter months and the games usually had me playing against Bob in two of the three games.   I ended up losing one of the three and winning the other two.  For the March meeting I ran the Battle of Cheetos (Chios) using modified Corvus rules from the Society of Ancinets.   Cheetos are corn chips and when Manny's son heard saw the bag of chips and heard the name of the battle that is what he called it.   Manny commanded the Pergamon fleet, Bob commanded the Rhodian fleet, and Craig commanded the Macedonian fleet with my assistance.  I used the scenario from the GMT board game War Galley, but scaled them at one to one instead of one to three as in the scenario with the Lembis being scaled at one to two and a half.  The Macedonians were also given the one twelve that I had, the Astro Thanatou. 

The Pergamon fleet had thirty-six ships, mostly fives with three threes.   Rhodes had forty-two ships with thirty-three fives and the rest threes.   The Macedonian fleet had three tens, one nine, four eights, three sevens, three sixes, eighteen fives, eighteen fours, three threes, and sixty lembis representing the 150 present at the battle along with the twelve.  The Rhodian fleet was well trained while the others were average.

Both sides were allowed to deploy as they wished, up to six inches in from the table edge with the only restriction being that Pergamon was on the allied left flank and Rhodes was on the allied right flank.

The first two turns saw the fleets approach each other.  On turn three the allies moved first and decided to attempt bow to bow rams against the Macedonians.  This did not turn out well.  Only four Macedonian ships were wrecked, while twelve of the thirty-six Pergamon ships were wrecked.   Under the game rules this would have been an immediate rout for the Pergamon fleet with a third of the fleet lost except that the Pergamon admiral's ship had not been involved and counted as two ships for a total of thirty-seven.  On my flank the two fleets only approached.   On the fourth turn there were some bow to bow ramming attempts by the Rhodian fleet.   These were not as destructive as the earlier attacks by the Pergamon fleet.  On my half of the turn the lembis passed through the gaps between my larger ships and attempted to shear the oars of the opposing fleet.  Ten of the attempts were successful with only a few failures.  On turn five Craig was able to sink an additional Pergamon ship winning the battle.   At this point victory went to the Macedonians as the Pergamon ships that were not crippled fled.   Only part of the Rhodian fleet was able to escape as almost half of their ships had been crippled by oar shears and many others were wrecks.

We used a 30 inch (75cm) by eight foot (2.4m) table.

 Bob, wearing red cap, Manny, and Craig 

 End of Allies' first turn.  Macedonian fleet on the left.

 End of second turn. 

 The Pergamon fleet attacks

 Contact.

 end of turn three

turn five.  My lembis have passed through attempting oar shears on the first line during turn four.   On turn five we moved first and the lembis attempted oar shears on the Rhodian second line, often having two of them ganging up on one Rhodian ship. Ships with a square blue marker behind them have been crippled. Those with the larger rectangular markers are wrecks.  The ships have been removed.  I did capture one ship with a boarding action.  

Chaos at Chios

Having assembled enough ships I decided to run the Battle of Chios 201BC at the Miniature Wargaming Society of Sacramento meeting.   Phillip V of Macedonian had been forced to retreat from the siege he was conducting and was intending to flee to the island of Samos.  The combined fleets of Rhodes and Pergamon caught him and brought his fleet to battle near the island of Chios.  Polybius is the main source for the battle.   Phillip lost about half of the lembis and 28 of his larger ships.  The allied fleets lost seven ships.   There were two events of note during the battle.  One was Phillip's flagship accidently ramming one of his own ships when it crossed his path, getting stuck, and then being sunk by two opposing ships.   The other was Attalus flag ship running aground and being captured by Phillip along with the treasure on board.

I used the order of battle from the War Galley scenario converted to 1:1 scale except for the Lembi's in the Macedonian fleet.  As I only had 60 small ships they were scaled at 1:2.5 for the 150 Lembi's in the Macedonian fleet.  This gave Rhodes and Pergamon thirty-three "5's" each along with nine "3's" for Rhodes and three "3's" for Pergamon.   The Rhodian fleet was rated as well-trained giving them slightly more movement and a +1 for ramming.   The other fleets were rated as average.   The Macedonian fleet had three "10's", four "8's", five "7's", three "6's", eighteen "5's", eighteen "4's", three "3's", and sixty Lembi's representing the 150 Lembis that were present.  I also added a couple of  extra ships.  Rhodes got a "9"  and Macedonia got the "Katastrofea Ploion" a "12".   I may purchase a Navwar "16" and name it "Astro Thanatou".

The rules that were used were The Society of Ancient's version of "Corvus" with some modifications which I will cover later.  Mike O'brien commanded the Pergamon fleet, while Gary commanded the Rhodian fleet with Aaron as his subordinate.  Dave commanded the Macedonian fleet.  Both sides were allowed to deploy as they wished with the restriction that Rhodes was on the right and Pergamon on the left.

During the battle both sides conducted missile fire causing a few casualties.  The Lembis were considered to be destroyed if they suffered any casualties from missile fire or were rammed.  Both sides also attempted oar shears with mixed results.  There were quite a few ramming attempts.  A couple of times the rammers sank.   The Rhodians engaged in a few boarding actions and captured two Macedonian ships, one of which was rammed and wrecked by another Macedonian ship.  The Macedonians did capture a Rhodian ship.   Following the initial contact the fleets no longer maintained ordered lines and the ships sought individual targets.  I did not keep track of the number of turns that the game lasted, but after setup and explaining the rules it lasted a little over four hours.   The fleets spent three turns approaching each other before engaging in combat.   After several rounds of combat Macedonian losses exceeded their morale threshold and they fled.   The Macedonian right flank almost broke the Pergamon fleet which would have won the game for them.   The allies lost more ships than happened historically while the Macedonians had about the lost more lembis and fewer large ships.

Photos of the battle follow.  Though they are hard to see in the photos the Rhodian fleet had red markings, Pergamon green, Macedonia blue and grey with ship sizes on their bases.

 Initial deployment Macedonians on left, right-front to back Mike O'Brien Pergamon commander, Gary b.  Rhodes commander, Aaron M.  Rhodes sub-commander

 First turn  On the left from front to back Mike W., Dave R. (the Macedonian admiral).  

 the fleets approach

 from the other end.

Initial contact as Aaron attempts oar shears.  Aaron was plaqued by bad die rolls for most of the game

 The action continues as fleets become interspersed. 

boarding action near center bottom of picture

 Action in the center.  Macedonian flag ship at top center.  Rhodian ship near top right about to be rammed by four Macedonian ships.  Macedonian Lembis sneaking into the rear of the allied fleets in the gap between the two.

 Pergamon fleet engages Macedonians

 Battle devolves into a free-for -all  Allied right flank

 The center

 Pergamon flank maintains order as they opposing sides were the last to engage in combat.

Then the fleets engage.

 chaos on the Pergamon flank as combat continues

Allied right

 allied right flank

view from behind Macedonian center

 end of game center

 end of game Pergamon flank Rectangular blue markers are wrecks, square blue markers are crippled, H and white are temporary halt markers.  Small counters with numbers indicate ships that have taken missile casualties and their current boarding factor.  Original single-sided reference sheet at bottom right.  Ship with red and black marker at rear near the center of the photo is the Pergamon flag ship.

end of game center and Rhodian flank  I used the graphics program to divide the reference chart into two parts and enlarged it to fit on two sides of the paper.  I also made half-sized turning templates from the larger scale turning templates instead of using the smaller turning templates that came with the rules.

Bottom three photos by Mike O'Brien

The table cover is the back side of the space cloth I had purchased from JOANN Fabrics.  I was going to use it to photograph some spaceships and noticed that the back side looked like water, so I no longer needed to purchase an ocean table cover.

I used my computer to reduce the full size 1:600 turn and movement aids to half size instead of the included smaller turning and movement aids.   This allowed the more agile triremes to make an attack and turning maneuver they were capable of as mentioned in a previous blog post.

As I noted we used some house rules for the game as follows

HOUSE RULES FOR CORVUS

INITIATIVE – At the beginning of each turn after the first both players roll one die.  High score has choice of which side moves first or second that turn.  If the dice are equal, the side which did not have the choice on the previous turn gets to choose which side moves first or second for the turn.  Helps to avoid the tendency to stand off facing each other

SHIP SPACING – Ancient ships did not deploy oar-to-oar.  They usually kept far enough apart to avoid entangling their oars.   Though not mentioned in the rules, ships must keep about ½ unit  apart.  If friendly ships make side to side contact treat it as a collision per the rules.

MOVEMENT – A ship that is not crippled and is halted may pivot in place and face any direction.  Crippled ships may only pivot up to 90 degrees.   Ships that have rammed another must back up on the following turn to disengage their ram.

RAMMING – Change rule from having to move straight 4 units to ram to 2 units to ram.  This matches the movement chart.

DISTANCE SHOOTING – While ships sometimes used fire weapons for shooting, most of the time they did not.   Engines could shoot large bolts capable of piercing four inches of wood or stone/concrete balls weighing ten pounds (think cannonball).  If a hit is scored reduce the close combat factor by one.  Also, use the shooting factor for the class of ship with the equivalent of the reduced close combat factor.  For a close combat factor of 5 the shooting factor is 4.  

FIRE WEAPONS – If shooting fire missiles the range is halved.  If equipped with fire pots and the ship rams an opposing ship the fire pots may be dropped.  For missile fire the missile hits as it normally does.  Roll again and on an odd roll the target ship catches fire.  For fire pots the target ship catches fire on an odd roll also.

CREW QUALITY – (Optional) Well- trained crews cost 1 point extra and add 0.5 units to movement rate.   Poor crews cost one point less and deduct 0.5 units from movement rate.  

Other possible modifiers:                       

Ramming – Better quality crew than opponent add +1 to ram modifier.                                                    Oar Shear – Crew quality two levels higher than target also shear on a 5.   Crew quality two levels lower than target only shear on 4 or 6.  

One additional note.  We copied the 1/600 movement and turning aids and reduced them to half size for the 1/1200 ships instead of using the 1cm in place of an inch.

Corvus Ancient Naval Rules and Cardstock Galleys

For the past couple of weeks I have been investigating different rule sets for ancient naval warfare.   I have found several blogs with battle reports, book reviews, and information on different manufacturers.   One of the best of these is Rams, Ravens, and Wrecks   Not only does his blog cover rules, models, and books, it also has links to other sites.  It has been very helpful in determining which rule sets might work for fleet actions and which are best for small actions along with which books on the subject are worth reading or purchasing.

One of those that looks like it might be good for fleet actions is Corvus from the Society of Ancients which arrived in the mail today.  While there is an earlier version available for free online, the one from the Society is well worth the price.  In addition to an expanded rule book it includes two color sheets of top down ships, a card quick reference sheet, markers, and turning aids for both 1/600 and 1/1200 ships.   The color ship sheets are 1/600 scale and are similar to the ones from Tiny Tin Troops  The ones at Tiny Tin Troops can be purchased in 1/600 scale and 1/1200 scale.   I purchased all the 1/1200 ship cards that they have available.

Some time back I had purchased the Roman Seas ships from Hotz Artworks  These are 1/300 scale, but with a bit of computer savvy they can be reduced to smaller scales.   The first step is to take a screen print at 50% zoom.  Next locate the screen print (easy to do with Windows Ten using the onedrive feature).   Then using a program like Paint Shop Pro use the resize function to reduce the image to the scale you want.  Note when resizing, increase the number of pixels per inch/centimeter to keep the clarity of the image.   For example, if further reducing the image by 50%, the number of pixels should be doubled.   There are also a number of side view images of galleys on the internet that can be saved and reduced to the scale you prefer.   The Hotz ships are actually larger than 1/300.   A trireme should be about 30mm long after reducing the 50% screen print image by 50% a second time.   I found that I needed to make a further reduction in size to reduce the trireme image to 30mm.   At the moment I am waiting for the cards from TTT to arrive to determine if the reduced images I have made will fit on the counters.

I have seen Hotz Roman Seas galleys reduced to 1/650 scale on The Miniatures Page in the Galley section and built as three dimensional models.   1/1200 is quite a bit smaller and I will be building 2.5 dimensional models instead,  What I will do is print them on heavy cardstock, fold and glue the two side images together, trim as needed, glue them to a base and glue the oar banks to the sides for stability.  I did look at various 1/1200 ships, but even the less expensive ones from Navwar are cost prohibitive for the number of ships I intend to use.   Outpost Wargame Services makes 1/3600 ships, but their range is a bit limited and may be too small for what I want.

There are a couple of rule sets that I am looking at for large fleet actions.   Corvus is one of them.   The rules are not complex, but do cover ramming, grappling, boarding, oar shearing, missile fire, and morale.   The rules for missile fire are a little odd as the only effect is setting the target ship on fire.  Setting ships on fire rarely happened.  What I will do is change that to a reduction to the class of the ship for the missile fire and close combat factors when a hit is scored.  The ram factor will not be affected.  This will reflect crew casualties.  It may also reduce the ships top speed.   

The Roman Seas website has a page on myths about ancient naval warfare.   One of them has to do with artillery on ships actually firing stone/concrete balls.  The artillery was the torsion type which fired projectiles in a flat trajectory instead of the Onager catapult that is often depicted  for ancient artillery.  The site mentions that the lighter engines could penetrate four inches of planking while the heavier ones could fire a ten pound projectile (think canon ball).  Range was about 200 to 400 yards.

There is a tactic that is missing from the Corvus rules called the Anastrophe.   This is a combination oar shear and ram where the attacking ship attempts to shear the oars on one side then make a tight about turn to ram the target from the rear quarter.   War Galley from GMT Games has rules for this in section 7.3 of the rulebook.  The War Galley rulebook is available for free from GMT games in their living rules section.

There are other bits of chrome that could be added.  One is crew quality, with good crews costing an extra point and poor crews being reduced by one point.  Another would be towers that were on larger polyremes. One probable change would be to add an initiative rule to determine who moves first in each turn after the first.

Ancient Naval warfare is one project that I will be working on this year.  I will be posting more later when I look at other possible rule sets and put the ships together.

As an addition to this I have added more about other rule sets at
Ancient naval rules