Breaking Out

To give some impetus to development of my ideas for an ancient naval warfare system, the other day I set up a much larger test game than I have used hitherto, with a more varied set of ships and a scenario to guide decisions.

The scenario had a Persian fleet of a little over 80 trieres trying a surprise attack to bottle up the Athenians in port, but arriving a little too late.  Two separate divisions of Athenian ships had managed to get clear of the harbour while a third had not yet set out - it would start to deploy on turn 2, advancing through a screen of light ships that acted as harbour guard.

The photograph at the top of the page shows the position after six turns, looking from behind the Persian fleet.  Two Athenian divisions, each of three squadrons, are trying to work around the Persian left flank.  The last division has just cleared the harbour but is not going to have sea room to work around the Persian right.  Each marker represents a squadron of from 5 to 10 ships.

The Persians have a division of three squadrons of 'fast' trieres on their left,  each squadron having 10 ships deployed in line astern.  The Persian centre and right each have four squadrons deployed in line abreast, three in the front line, one in reserve.  These ships are all trieres but are carrying larger marine contingents.  This reduces their agility in manoeuvre but will give them a big edge in boarding actions.  A key part of the test was to see how the grappling and boarding rules would work.

Each squadron marker comes with a record card in a plastic case, on which changes in status can be marked up.  This card is for the Persian's A squadron, which has good quality helmsmen, crews and hulls (the pinkish boxes in the top row) which give it an agility of 6.  The squadron starts the fight with 10 trieres, each with the standard complement of 2 marines, giving 20 in total.  

This card is for the Persian's H squadron.  This has average helms and crews (light green boxes) but poor hulls (light grey - hard to tell the difference : will change on next printing).  These would normally give an agility of 3, but the ships are carrying twice the usual marine complement, which reduces agility to 1.  There are only seven ships in the squadron but the extra marines mean these outnumber the standard complement of a full size squadron.  Only after printing the cards did I realise that I had forgotten to include boxes for movement and action dispositions, hence the green and blue markers on the squadron cards themselves.

Disposition markers turned over.  The blue marker shows movement - here it is turned over to show the red 'advance' colour, the 'A' meaning move directly forward.  The green marker is the reaction disposition. These are revealed if contact between opposing squadrons arises and affect whether a combat arises and what outcomes are possible.  Here it is turned over to reveal 'h' which indicates Hold - the squadron will defend against attack but not launch attacks itself.  For solo play these markers slowed play a lot.  Even for a multi-player they may not be worth the added complexity, so I will give some thought to how to adjust the scheme.

But back to the game itself.

Starting position from behind the Athenian lines.  One fast division on the right has manoeuvre room to get around the enemy flank but the leading squadron is under strength and they will not have any advantage against the Persian fast division on this flank without support from the second division.  This is also a fast division, but needs to think about how to stop the Persian centre moving to join any fight on the flank.  The third fast division is not on the table yet.  It will come in through the gap between the three squadrons of penteres and other light ships that guard the harbour mouth. 

By the time the last Athenian division had cleared the harbour, action was about to be joined on the Persian left/Athenian right.  The Persians had shifted their main line to the left, putting their fast division in position to engage the leading Athenian squadron if it tries to pass by.

The Athenians go for it and the Persians pounce on the weak leading squadron, one of their squadrons moving to attack the flank while another moves up to block the way forwards.

(To confuse things, this picture is taken from the Persian view point - the reverse of the last picture).  The lead Athenian squadron reveals its cunning ruse.  Rather than an 'e' - Engage - disposition it has 'an' - anastrophe or evade.

This leads to the first clash of the battle as Persian squadron A moves into the space from which Athenian squadron G has evaded and is caught in the flank by Athenian H squadron.  Both are full strength.  The Athenians get an automatic ramming opportunity for the flank attack but they have a lower agility factor as the crews for this squadron are only average!

Both squadrons did well on their opportunity rolls ending up with both rolling 7 dice for ramming attacks, but the Athenians (blue dice) managed four successful rams against only two for the Persians.  The Persian squadron must fall back in disorder.

Persian Squadron A has fallen back with a disorder marker, leaving the Athenian squadron to move into the square, where it is promptly attacked head on by Persia's C squadron.

The Persians get the best of the opportunities in this second clash, rolling a 6 for their 10 ships, which gives them 5 attack chances, against only a 1 for the Athenians who have already lost 2 ships and end up with only 2 chances of their own.  They have better quality helmsmen, so can discount one ram by the Persians.  They manage to take down one of the Persian ships, but lose three of their own, leaving them disordered and at half strength.

As the fight rages on his left, the Persian commander starts to shift his right hand division further to the right to head off any outflanking move there by the last Athenian division that has moved directly forwards from the harbour area.  The Persian second line squadrons can cover a gap in the front line.

The Athenians continued their efforts to work around the Persian left while avoiding the centre with its masses of marines.  Their rear division engaged in a manoeuvring contest with the Persian right, trying to get a gap to open up which they could exploit.

Not having compiled a Mr Babbage like machine to guide the conduct of the Persians, by this stage I was running into difficulties as the Persian Commander (me) knew exactly what the Athenian Commander (me) was doing, and vice-versa.  When the Athenians tried to attack, they were met with the perfect response and the dice started to run in favour of the Persians in the clashes between the fast squadrons on the Persian left.  Eventually, to break the impasse and provide at least a small test of the grappling and boarding rules, I had part of the Persian right advance to try to smash up the harbour protection force and prevent the Athenian fleet returning there.

Two squadrons of Persian trieres, laden with marines, try to overwhelm three squadrons of light Athenian allies guarding the harbour mouth.  The allies hope to be able to swarm the bigger ships with their numbers. 

The first round of engagement sees all squadrons taking losses as they close, but none getting a significant advantage pushing an enemy back.  This leaves continuing engagements for the next turn, in which grappling has a much higher chance of success than ramming.  It is clear that the Persians have taken a big gamble as both their squadrons were under strength to begin with and each ship loss has cost them four drowned marines against only 1 for the defenders.

After the second round, the right hand Persian squadron has been over-run by the two allied squadrons.  The other Persian squadron is winning against its opponent but is still locked in engagement and looks set to face the same fate as its neighbour if the action continues.

Having to go off to join a Mid-Autumn Festival dinner, I ended proceedings there.  During play, and on reflection afterwards, a number of questions came up, apart from the design issue with the record cards.

The simultaneous movement mechanics seem to work well but need to be tested with other live players to be sure.  Also, allowing double moves in the early stages, to reduce the time spent before combat sets in and to make commander's decisions about initial deployment and direction more consequential may be sensible, unless the scenario set up has the fleets face to face already.

The combat opportunity mechanism was changed for this game, moving from a D6 to a D10 to allow for a wider range of results with more averaging.  This seemed to work better than previous iterations but more thought is needed on what modifiers apply under what conditions.  It seems too complex for quick use at the moment.  I'm not sure that I have the balance between ramming and grappling right.  After avoiding the Persian ships with beefed up marine contingents for most of the game for fear of what they might do if they got to grips, they proved easy meat at the end.

The main lesson is that I had jumped too far ahead in setting up a complex scenario when I had meant to have an initial test of boarding combat mechanisms.  A smaller game with more balanced forces that had reason to get to grips with each other would have been much better than this sprawling affair with lopsided fleets.

The 'proper' squadron bases with model ships rather than 2D prints are slowly coming off the production line and work has started on the information markers that can attach to them.