After last week's disappointing game of Ancient Naval Warfare we tried another set of rules today. American gamer Tim Wineland got in touch with me after reading my blog last week and he very kindly offered to share his self written set of Ancient Naval rules' Raminseas'. Thankfully this is only a few pages long and after a quick read through Ian and I opted to choose a small equal number of ships (in two squadrons) and play a simple first game scenario of just trying to destroy each other to get used to the game mechanics.
At the Recon wargames show on Saturday I purchased two 3D printed island harbours and managed to get them painted up quite quickly. They didn't actually get used today but looked good on the table.
A simple deployment set up. The dice indicate and record how many 'Action Points' (AP) a ship has left. Various movement rates, and actions such as ramming or grappling cost varying amounts of AP so spend them wisely.
Movement is quite easy. The blue and green markers depict tokens for each sides squadrons and the numbers the order in which they were drawn. This denotes then the order of play for each squadron (as we played it, not 100% sure we got this bit right?).
Ian gets in the first strike by ramming me.
Note here we switched Ian's colour of dice representing AP to red to help differentiate whose ships were whose.
Pretty soon ships were engaged in melee all over the board.
The different colours of counters represent different types of damage which a canny general can use AP to 'Repair'.
Ships can also catch fire for which we used cotton wool.
The dice were very much on my side today as my fleet destroyed 3 of Ian's ships and were in the process of battering his two remaining ships when he graciously conceded the game.
Ian and I both agreed that these rules gave us a much more enjoyable game even though we were using less ships. Each ship does trail quite a few counters and dice behind it but we will look at a way of simplifying this. Being a first game we came across a few situations that we need a bit of guidance on so a series of questions have been sent across the pond to Tim who will hopefully let us know how best to proceed in our next game. Our idea is to create a 'ship list' for the various Greek, Persian and Macedonian fleets to match our little 1/1200 scale models and our wargames armies in case we tempt ourselves into a campaign where the Naval aspect of war can play a part.
Our thanks to Tim for sharing his rules with us, they are great fun and they will see much use in our future games.
Thanks Stuart! Looking forward to hearing from you and reading about more of your games (that table looks GREAT by the way).
ReplyDeleteCheers Tim, your rules worked really well. The sea mat is one from Warlord games that Ian and I picked up on a bring and buy ar a show for just £20.
DeleteI am one of the players who played Tim's home brew game a few weeks ago. We all had a blast and hope to play again soon. Not to brag, but I DID sink the most enemy ships by ramming. (evil laughter)
ReplyDeletePerhaps Poseidon was rolling your dice that day?
DeleteGood to read that you've found a good set of rules, and proof that you don't need a huge rulebook for a fun game.
ReplyDeleteNice islands, I'm glad I showed them to you 😁
The islands were a good find for thanks for spotting them for me. I shall scratch build a few more bits of terrain too.
DeleteTim the Younger here, another player in Tim the Elder's group! He has challenged us with a number of home-brew rules over years and it's always fun. Ask him about his roto-table, an innovation he created for our Zoom-based wargaming sessions. Thank you for an excellent write-up of your experiment with Tim's rules. That's a beautiful seascape! And Coon Whisperer is an evil rammer. Planes. Tanks. Ships. Spacecraft. He's rammed them all. ;- )
ReplyDeleteTim did mention his roto table, sounds like a very clever way of enhancing his games. Also, I can tell you are a great group of gamers by the banter you aimed at Con Whisperer.
ReplyDelete