Testing Times

The last three days have seen two substantial battles against opponents to further test out the Aegaeon rules, together with several solo run throughs of particular aspects of the combat mechanics.  These activities have been interspersed with a ferry trips to and fro across the less than wine dark - indeed distinctly muddy - Pearl Estuary to visit a friend in Macau. 

After the fight in the previous week, Gareth had remarked that he thought the system worked for the straightforward scenario for that battle - two fleets each with the same single class of ships - but would become much more difficult as the number of squadrons increased and different classes of ships were added into the mix.  The only way to test whether this surmise was correct was to try a larger battle with a variety of ships.  So, I put together two identical fleets, one Macedonian, the other Seleucid.  Each fielded 8 squadrons overall.  Three of these were all trieres, three a mix of trieres and tetreres, two a mix of hexeres, tetreres and trieres.  I also worked through the combat mechanism to see where unnecessary steps could be removed.

On Tuesday night, the two fleets faced off against each other.  I commanded the Seleucids, in the foreground, deploying my heavier ships in line on the left, my fast squadrons in two double depth columns on the right.  The Macedonians commanded by Gareth deployed in three columns, weighted towards my right.

As the Seleucids moved quickly forwards, the bulk of the Macedonian fleet was swinging off around the islands, leaving only a pair of squadrons to face the Seleucid left.

Two Macedonian squadrons carried on around the islands while the others moved back towards the Seleucid right.

I pulled back my right while pressing on with the left, hoping to overwhelm the thin and isolated line of Macedonians in front of them before the main forces engaged.

As the squadrons on the left clashed I cast caution to the winds and advanced to meet the main Macedonian force, hoping to disrupt the leading squadrons before their reserves could come up.

Unfortunately in the first combat the Macedonians sent my central squadron back in disorder with a couple of ships lost.

Happily my heavy squadrons made mincemeat of the Macedonian trieres facing them

Back in the centre my disordered squadrons rallied and drove back the Macedonians in turn while another of my squadrons caught an enemy heavy squadron in the flank.

Macedonian trieres near the shore were beached by their crews while others turned to flee behind the islands.

As the wreckage drifted away, four turns had delivered a clear victory to the Seleucids.  Against my expectations every round of combat had delivered a clear result, affording no opportunity for a second round in which grappling is more likely to succeed than ramming and, in consequence, providing no test of the mechanics for fighting boarding actions.  The new scheme for coding movement introduced since the last game had worked very well, leaving us with no disputes despite moving more squadrons around at the same time.

In preparation for the next game I decided to amend the squadron outcomes table to increase the chances of getting a drawn result that might lead to grappling and boarding but apart from that made no changes to the rules or the fleets.  Once again I took command of the Seleucids while my Macedonian opponent was Andrew, a newcomer to the rules - and ancient naval games - but a cany and experienced gamer.

For the second game I deployed the Seleucid fleet similarly to the first game, with heavy squadrons in line near the coast, fast squadrons in column next to them.  The Macedonians were in a single row across the table, two squadrons in line facing my heavy squadrons, six in column, two of them out beyond the island line.

Again I advanced quickly on the left while hanging back on the right, but this time my opponent had anticipated my intentions, holding back against my left while moving more quickly around my right.

The clarity of purpose that guided me through the first game deserted me.  Faced with the reluctance of the enemy to engage my left, instead of pressing on I hesitated, redeploying the second line partly to support my right, partly to try to get a squadron in position to outflank his right.  As his right had fallen back, and as the squadron I had moved out to the shoreline was not fast, it ended up a long way behind and my front line was still nowhere near engaging.

Rather than wait for the Macedonians to close in on my right and centre, I struck at his centre as it moved up.

These first two clashes went well for me

The first ended up driving back a Macedonian in disorder into its support line - this will slow movement by both enemy squadrons in the next turn as they disentangle.  My squadron could advance into the square they had contested, allowing the squadron behind to move forward into the square alongside.

In the second clash, the Macedonians surprised me by evading rather than fighting.  They rolled well and managed to get their squadron away without damage.  Still, this left me in a good position, I thought.  In the centre, I had three squadrons against four of the enemy, but one of these was already disordered and damaged.  On the left I had three to two with a chance to attack his flank, while on the right I could match his outflanking squadrons which had now arrived.

The next turn saw 12 of the 16 squadrons on the table going head to head.  Unfortunately, the first fight in the centre saw my squadron driven back in disorder.  It was forced to take a morale test, which it passed, but my line was now cut in two.

On the right my squadrons met the Macedonians who had tried to work around the flank from behind the island line.  We looked evenly matched.  The Seleucid squadron on the left of the picture is the one forced back from the centre.

On the left, anticipating that the enemy would again hold back, I had my outflanking squadron advance two squares, expecting that my front line of heavy squadrons would push back his lighter ships as had happened in the first game.  Instead, the Macedonians rushed forward to meet my line as it advanced, causing my outflanking squadron to overshoot.  Then, to make a bad situation worse, both my squadrons lost their combats and fell back in disorder!

Some relief came from the two fights on the centre right where one squadron destroyed the Macedonians who had been disordered in the previous turn while the other managed to catch the evading squadron and inflict a couple of losses on it.  On the right, however, disaster!  Against the Macedonian line where my fast squadron in column had some advantages, the result was a rout for my ships after a failed morale test - all I needed was a 3!

And a moment later, with another 3 being needed in a morale test....  There was something wrong with my ships that day - or with the mettle of the men that manned them.

So that turn ended with the Seleucids driving back a couple of enemy squadrons from the centre while five almost unscathed Macedonian squadrons were poised to close in on three disordered Seleucids while a fourth was way out of the fight to the left rear.

I tried to make a fight of it and was aided by my enemy trying to shift his line in front of my left hand squadrons to the centre, expecting that mine would not be able to recover in time to stop them.  Not only did my heavies get back into the fight but I was able to bring a fast squadron back from the centre and catch one of the Macedonians in the rear as my heavies hit its front, sinking it most satisfactorily.  Alas, while this was going on, three Macedonian squadrons were piling into one damaged Seleucid squadron in the adjacent square.  My squadron showed some pluck, beating back the first squadron to engage it, but could then do nothing as the other enemies swarmed in on flank and rear, grappling my ships, overwhelming five of them without opposition and causing the remaining ship to fail a morale test and surrender.

Far off from the main action, a Seleucid squadron had pursued some Macedonians to the edge of the game world.  Rather than tamely sail off into oblivion, the Macedonians turned to face their pursuers.  Rubbing my hands with glee I rolled the dice and failed to secure a single ram!  For the first (and last) time in the game, a fight continued into another turn.  Again I tried to ram.  Again I failed while the enemy went for the grapple.  They succeeded and won three of the ensuing fights.    We stopped the game at that point as the Seleucid position was hopeless and we were finding the boarding action mechanics much too laborious to want to carry on.

The second game went on for several more game turns than the first, as we spent several turns of manoeuvring before the main action began.  All of the movement went smoothly, Andrew finding the small cards I had printed to aid identification of the codes needed to record each move simple and intuitive to use.  He did make the sensible suggestion to be more rigid about the sequence of movements as there were a couple of occasions where we had to unwind to work out when exactly a combat started.  He also found the combat mechanics worked well - until we got to the final boarding action.  In his first combat he had used the 'Block' option without understanding the limitations of this action if his squadron did not have secure flanks.  He did not make that mistake again and has given helpful suggestions on how to improve the definition of open and secure flanks.  Other definitions are needed to clarify how to handle combats where squadrons are moving diagonally.  This is simple to do and removes any ground for arguments that might slow down play.

We ended up with a lengthy but inconclusive discussion about how to reform the mechanism for boarding actions.  Certainly major changes are needed but which direction to take I am not yet decided.  

I am going to continue to work on the combat resolution table.  Not only does it still seem too difficult to get a result that leads to a continuing engagement but the dividing line between a simple loss of a round of combat and a serious setback that leads to a morale test seems too narrow - unless your main objective is to have a quick game and head for the pub!

All in all, a couple of good tests that have thrown up several points where improvement is needed but suggest that the main framework is sound.  I hope to be able to get through revisions to the rules over the next week, but first have to prepare for a battle using the 'Twilight of the Soldier King Rules' next Monday, the first time I will be trying out this variation from the familiar Twilight of Divine Right system.