I suddenly got inspired to pull together my fragmented thoughts for a set of Ancient Naval rules.  I have played many different rules and boxed games but never found that gem which inspired me to continue with it no matter what.  So to emulate many wargamers I’ve let my ego take the fore and decided to have a go at getting my own rules finally encoded into paper.

The working title is Trireme - hardly inspirational I know, but at least it ancapsulates the period I want to capture, primarily the Greek and Persian wars, and its many off-shoots involving Carthage.  I don’t really see it being a problem applying them to other wars involving oared galleys but at the moment haven’t really focussed on the wider remit.

The basic premise of the rules is for them to be very simple, with quick turns and fast combat results.  I want to be able to control a fair few ships and be able to achieve a definate result within the two to two and a half hours available in a standard wargaming evening playing on a standard table around 120cm across by anywhere between 1800cm to 2400cm wide.  The scale is currently aimed at 1/600th ships available, but that could be easily changed if someone decided to produce beautiful ready painted plastic ships in another scale.  I can only live in hope.  Until that day, ships can be reflected by cards, or the beautiful models readily available through Xyston or Skytrex.

I had been playing with various models for movement to allow squadron movement which wouldn’t be too clunky or time consuming.  I looked at various models, using a single base to represent a squadron of ships, or squadron orders on paper, individual ship orders, or simply just allowing a player to choose how to move each ship each turn.  I wasn’t totally happy with each solution.  I wanted a simultaneous movement mechanism which didn’t allow a ‘if you do that then I’ll do this’ argument.  Orders would address this but most systems I looked at were paper heavy and time consuming (if not completely confusing).  I ended up returing to a mechanism which I’d used with friends around 15 years ago to run a partcipation game around the shows for the Tron Light Cycle game where players were forced to plot their orders multiple turns in advance.  The orders were simple presenting fairly tight restrictions but did involve an order record template.  No matter how ‘professional’ it might look with its laminated cover and dry wipe orders it still wasn’t what I was after.

I looked at other mechanisms which I’d played with from other games such as the book dualing systems and passed them by.  It was when I was playing Wings of War a couple of months ago that I realised that I had a serious solution.

I’m not a blogger by nature or heart, so I can envisage my posts being somewhat few and far between (and even far may be an understatement).

To be honest I already seem to post onto a few other sites, so for fear of repetition don’t tend to post up the same thing here.

Derek suggested trying ou the GW Epic sci-fi game system for last Wednesday.  We did originally try it out a year or so ago, but haven’t really been back to it in a while.

We had two forces of around 1400 points, one of Marines and the other Orks.  I played the Orks with 6 units or ‘mobs’.

My army was a mixture of large infantry units, lots of tanks and light vehicles, and a hefty looking unit of mechanical mayhem called a Stompa Mob.

The game turns are determined by winning initiative.  Each player rolls a D6 and adds their intiative factor to determines who goes first.  The Marines have very good intiative, whilst the Orks are fairly poor.  Derek tended to win the intiative and let me take the first move.

The turn sequence alternates between the players as each attempts to issues orders to a unit, complete its actions, and potentially retain the initiative to activate a second unit.  The Orks tend to need 3+ to activate a unit, though this is modified depending upon the order being issued, as well as the current state of the unit.  Orks get bonuses to advance or assault, though suffer penalties if their unit currently has ‘blast markers’ on it, or the player seeks to retain the initiative.  Blast markers are gained through enemy fire and casualties, needless to say the Ork units tended to have a few blast markers.  The Marines only need 1+ to pass, so can only really fail if they have blast markers, or it is their second unit being activated.

In my first turn I activated my large ‘Speed Freek’ force to double across the tbale and start shooting at the enemy.  A few hits started to whittle away the enemys whirlwind missile tanks.  I managed to hold onto the intiative and brought up my battlewagon force to provide some more death and distruction but failed to hit anything.  In response Derek brought his Predators into action and started destroying the battlewagons.  He retained initiative and his landraider tanks started hitting the battlewagons again.  By the end of thr round only three vehicles remaind with a pile of blast markers.

For my next few rounds I failed to activate any of the units and had to contend with a slow lumber across the table towards the enemy whilst Derek proceeded to pile the blast markers and casualties to my forces.  A few of the minor highlights though were his skimmers failing to do any significant damage when they engaged my Stompers, whilst I managed to all but remove his scounts, and his assault marines bouncing off from my Speed Freeks.

At the end of the first turn we each had units retreating.  I managed to remove a few blast markers ready for the second turn.

Derek brought his terminator infantry into play and dropped them behind my speedfreeks.  They unfortunately failed to do anything.  He retained the initiative and sought to bring his landraiders to bear, but again with little major success.  I then threw the speed freeks into action by assaulting his infantry deployed along the flank.  We fought a couple of rounds of combat with both units being forced to retire broken.

Well I finally gave in a bought a unit of Germans for Festung Europa but went for the cheapest company I could find.  This ended up being 8 panthers for 1495 points, though I could increase it slightly with a recovery vehicle to 1500 points.

I want the tanks to be usable on the Western Front so have opted for a yellow ochre base as described in my books.  However the colour doesn’t quite look right, seeming to be somewhat too dark.  I’m unsure if this is because of the paint I’m using, the fact that I’m painting on a black undercoat, or that I just have the wrong colour.  I’ll ask around, though if anyone reading has a good paint suggestion I’m all ears.

The intention is to have a mottled camouflage - pictures will follow.

I’ve just returned for a 8 day stay touring around the historical areas of Sicily.  Actually that isn’t as difficult as it possibly sounds since you can’t actually walk ten yeard in Sicily without tripping over something of historical signifcance on the island.

The weeks holiday though was targetted at getting to as many of the signifcant sites from the Greek dominance of the island.  I travelled with my old and trusted friend (actually not so old) Chris.  The objective was to visit the sites and explore each of them as much as possible within the very limited time we had available.

 We arrived Saturday night at Palermo International airport.  For those who may potentially do their own tour of the island you should be aware that this airport is actually a fair distance west of the city.  If you Google Earth Palermo IT ISN’T the airport right next to Palermo, even if the flight company sends you the map.  So don’t do what I did and print off multiple maps and look for accomodation near that airport - since you’ll be miles away from where you land and will inevitably end up driving through Palermo.  (And no one in their right mind wants to drive through Palermo traffic! - at least not more than once.)

 Due to our hotel cancelling our booking the day before we left I ended up booking a B&B near to the International Airport (quite by accident), in a pleasant town called Ballestrate about 15 minutes drive along the coast from the airport.  I would recommend checking out the B&B opportunities on the internet before you leave - try http://www.bed-and-breakfast-in-italy.com/bed_and_breakfast_sicily.cfm for some ideas.  The other option is to consider the Agritourism guesthouses which often offer very good value for money.

The first morning we set off early(ish) for Segesta, a short 15 minutes drive south from Balestrate.  €6 gets access to both the Temple and the city, with free parking.  When we arrived it felt as if every day tripping tour group from Palermo had arrived at the site, so if you’re visiting it may be a good idea to wait a couple of hours until these groups have been and gone.  Fortunately they didn’t seem to stay for very long.

Segestas temple is situated a fair distance from the city itself.  The temple is on a hill with two sides protected by steep cliffs down to the river.  The other sides lead east to the city or north.  The temple is significant since it was never completed, or rather because it is believed that there never was any intention to complete it.  The temple was one major scam to deceive the Athenians into believeing the city was far richer than it actually was.

to be continued….

Well, I can assure you that there won’t be any world shaking comments here, just a simple commentary of my gentle stroll through wargaming.

Warren