Groundhog Day!

Replaying the Egyptian attack in Turn 2, using revised rules

Moving quickly on from the fizzle of the last game that first tested out my home-brew rules for large ancient naval battles, I have reworked the ramming rules, redesigned the record cards and have just replayed the major attack by the Egyptian fleet to see what effect the changes make.  In that game the Egyptians made six ramming attacks of which five failed outright and the last did insufficient damage to sink a ship.

The changes that have been made are :

A) Ram attacks are now divided into two types, those made head to head, where the attacked base automatically tries to counter-attack, and those made against any other aspect of the enemy base.  In the latter case, if the attack is against either bow quarter the attacked base is allowed to test to see if it is able to turn into the attack and meet it head to head, if which case the resolution uses the head to head attack rule.  If it fails to turn sufficiently, it simply tries to evade the attacks as is the case with attacks on the beam, stern or stern quarters.

B) Instead of only the attacker rolling dice, now both sides roll as many dice as they have ships left on the base, comparing pairs from highest to lowest to see how many 'wins' each gets.  For each 'win', the player rolls again to see what damage is caused.  In a head to head attack both players can secure a clean ram (which wrecks a ship) on a 5+, with all other scores giving a damage point.  In other aspect attacks, only the attacker can secure a ram while both sides can inflict damage.

C) Damage is now taken off the agility rating of the base rather than off ship strength.  This is significant because bases with lower agility are at a disadvantage in making or evading attacks.  A rule has been added that when the agility score drops below par the base loses 1 movement and 1 turning allowance.

The idea is that both sides get involved in the attack, raising adrenaline and enjoyment, while  both rams and significant damage are more likely to occur, increasing satisfaction.

Giving rolls to both sides meant that the separate 'Attack' and 'Evasion' modifiers for agility could be dropped.  Either side simply gets a bonus on their rolls if they have higher agility.  That allowed one box to be dropped from the record card.  All of the boxes for individual ships on the reverse of the record card have been deleted as well, being replaced by little ship markers at the foot of the new front.  Each ship marker shows the class and marine capacity of the ship.  When one is lost to ramming, any marines still aboard are lost.  The class number can matter if ships of different classes are on the same base.  The rule is that ships with the lowest class number are removed first.

The old style record card with front and back, lots of numbers to keep track of and two agility modifiers to watch out for.

New style card.  One side only.  Numbers need only be put into the two big white and one pink boxes.  Exertion points - the stars - and ships can simply be crossed off.

How did things work out?

In the first two attacks, the Egyptians were threatening the bow quarter of Athenian bases.  These would test to see if they were able to turn to meet the attacks - both getting a -1 modifier as they had already moved during the turn.  The other four attacks are made head to head.

In the first attack the Athenians failed to turn to face the Egyptians.  These then rolled at +1 on all their dice for the attack on a bow quarter.  This was crucial, converting  what would have been 2 losses and 2 draws into 2 wins and 2 draws.  

Egyptian +1 bonus converts defeat to victory.

Pity about the follow up rolls.  Neither gets a ram (4+ needed), so only 2 points of damage that reduce the Athenian's agility by 2.

In the second attack, the Athenians did pass their test to turn into a head to head encounter.  Much good it did them!  The Egyptians won 3 and drew 1 even without modifiers.  Again they failed to convert any win into a clean ram, but 3 points of damage reduced Athenian agility to 0, costing them movement and turning points.  Things were looking good for the Egyptians.

The third attack was a straight head to head between two bases of trieres, neither of which had any advantages.  The initial rolls matched this perfectly with two wins each.  On the damage rolls, the Athenians did better, getting one clean ram and one damage to the Egyptian's 2 damage.  

Athenians sink their first Egyptian trieres

Next up, an Egyptian base with a penteres and three trieres found itself going head to head with the Athenian commander and his four tetreres.  The Athenians had greater agility, so rolled at +1 on all their dice.  They were fortunate to have the bonus as this converted what would have been 3 losses and a win into 2 wins and 2 draws.  They converted the wins into one more ram and a damage.  Momentum was moving to the Athenians.  Could the Egyptians manage any better in the last two fights?

The Athenian's scrape through thanks to their agility bonus 

The penultimate fight saw the worst two bases on each side go head to head.  They were equally bad so neither got any bonus.  The result was devastating, the Athenians notching up 3 wins and a draw!  These they converted into a ram and 2 damage, bringing the Athenians to 3-0 on ramming so far.

Showing their betters how to do things.   The poorest Athenian base gets in three wins and a draw against its opposite number.

All now came down to the Egyptian Commander on the end of the line, with 2 penteres and 2 trieres stacked up against 4 Athenian trieres.  He got +1 bonus on his first rolls for his higher class rating but didn't need the bonus as he won all four pairings without need for modifiers!  His damage rolls again were at +1 for his class rating advantage.  He needed 4+ for a ram.  Time to even the score for the Egyptians!

Would you believe it?  Not a single clean ram, just 4 measly points of damage - though that will affect the Athenian's movement allowance!

So, once more the Egyptians had failed to gain substantial advantage from their attack.  However, the position at the end was very different than in the first game.  There they had inflicted only 2 damage, not sinking a single ship or affecting the performance of any of the Athenian bases.  This time around, while the Egyptians had lost 3 ships outright they had taken only 4 points of damage and none of their bases had lost any movement allowance.  In return, they had inflicted 11 points of damage on the Athenians, costing 2 bases movement allowance  and making it more likely that these and two further bases would be at a disadvantage in future attacks due to reduced agility.

This refight was fought solo.  It took about 15 minutes to work through - ignoring the time that went into preparation of the new cards!  With greater familiarity this should reduce further - and involving another player should speed marking damage on the record cards.  It seemed a lot more enjoyable than the process I had observed as umpire a couple of nights before, though I don't expect that the Egyptian commander would have been much happier at the outcome.  All in all, significant improvement, I think.  I will try a few more tests to cover attacks from other aspects and reducing the threshold for a ram from 5+ to 4+ to see how that changes the balance.  But I think we are getting towards what I set out to do.