Tuesday 11 October 2022

First Experimental Battles - Triremes

Ok the kit (or certainly enough kit) has been painted and placed on the table = but how to play? (see below, "Red" Spartan triremes face-off against "Blue" Athenian .. as they represent ships, not squadrons, .. I think I will need more "space"): 


The "dice have it" .. coloured dice to represent hit points of damage .. six hits and you are dead. Double attacks from flank and rear. Working on the principle of one ship per model (aka "not squadrons") there  is a maelstrom of ramming and mad manoeuvre (see below, this Athenian started the day extremely confident but ended the day clinging to the wreck of his trireme with his gloating Spartan son sailing on - the Fates are extremely fickle):   


Seeking easier prey, I called on my friend, we'll call him "Dave" - who always loses in the most sportsmanlike way, so I laid a trap for him (see below, I gave him plenty of Spartan triremes to surround my defensive circle of Athenians in a prickly "kyklos" formation):  


All I had to do was survive for a set number of turns until the rest of the Athenian fleet turned up and scared the Peloponnesians away, simple. As the unwary Spartans approached I decided I would sprint out at them, like a released coiled spring (see below, unleash watery hell!): 


Except Dave had not read the script and biffed me up before the rest of the Athenians had time to turn up. Perhaps I should have waited more patiently for the attack to bounce off my prows and then I could have taken the unwary Peloponnesians in the flank or rear quarter as they drifted past in disarray (see below, as it was I traded blows and came off far worst, swimming home again): 


Sigh, I retain my 100% ancient naval record, the only way now being up. All hail to Dave the Navarch, I now tremble in your wake or rather swim pathetically!

Rules: Er, yes, there were some, sort of. I was going to play using a set called "One Hour Ancient Naval" (by "somebody" - Update [12-1-2022]: please see comments by Simon for clarification on this) whose name escapes me. However I had to roughly translate the movement in inches to hexes and related the up to 45 degree turns into a number of hex sides. I then slimmed everything down to do triremes only (Romans really liked boarding and shooting a lot), so the rules were a back of the fag packet and a bit in my head, so yes I kludged them together and called them in as I saw fit. The result being I pulled in rules from of things I had read historically or I think were in one of the many other ancient trireme rule sets I have previously read ... and so, the result was that I still lost, if I may say so in the finest of style and Dave managed his fourteenth game in a month ;) 

4 comments:

Simon said...

Hello.

I am also looking around for some Trireme rules that are quick. I think the rules you referred to were by John Armatys at the Sheffield Wargames Society. The rules are in the file section of the AMW group on GroupsIO. We played with the rules for an Actium scenario and I recall us all enjoying the game. I'd be interested in seeing your hex version if you ever write your ideas down!

Cheers

Simon

Simon said...

OOps - further to my last comment, the One Hour Wargaming variant was not written by John Armatys. I believe John wrote a supplement. Apologies to the original author - Daniele Varelli?

Cheers

Simon

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

Thanks Simon, clarification (on both counts) really appreciated there!

Khusru said...

I tried ancient naval wargaming and it wasn't really to my taste. Or perhaps I didn't try long enough. The rules were Trireme I think. I still have the ships, H&R I think, but not the rules.
I'm impressed with how people do the bases for them nowadays and the fact they usually have sails which look fantastic as do the mats.