With a few paper ships made it was time to play a couple of games using the Galleys and Galleons by Ganesha games, which is my next 6x6 gaming challenge. I played two games, the first one with my daughter who was visiting over Easter and was kind enough to offer to play, and the second was a solo game.
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| Spanish Galleons |
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| English Galleons |
The first game was a bit of a hoot as both players tried getting to grips with the sailing rule mechanics of the game. Some missed activations saw one of Spanish galleons merrily sailing off the board. The remaining Galleons fought it out with the English who suffered badly after a successful boarding action and some excellent broadsides by the remaining Spanish galleon. A win to the Spanish and my daughter who was delighted to have won.
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| Game 1 - only one photo was taken of the game itself |
Looking up and remembering the multiple special rules was quite frustrating in the first game. So for the second game I converted these various special rules into some galleon statistics. So rather than just quality and combat, I had quality, shooting value, boarding value, and defence value. This helped speed up the combat quite significantly in the second game.
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| Start of the second game |
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| Spanish galleons split by the reef. |
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| A successful boarding action by the Spanish |
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| A second Spanish win |
By the end of the second game, a second Spanish victory, I had certainly come to grips with the basic rules. I liked the activation approach which works very effectively as the galleons manoeuvre to try and gain the advantage over their opposite number. The effects of combat also get factored into the activation process and the level of risk you want to take when rolling for successful actions.
Peter,
ReplyDeleteThe paper armarda ships from Ganesha Games certainly looks to be a most economical and fast way of getting into Naval Battles in miniature. I have seen similar type paper models used for Pre-Dreadnoughts...most successfully. I have not had a go at this myself with paper models - preferring to scratch build with balsa and styreene ships in the round to a scale of 1/1200th for Pre-Dreadnoughts. Cheers. KEV.
Hi KEV. The paper ships themselves are by Peter Dennis in his book Armada and are designed to be just cut out. I really like them and as you said - a fast way to get gaming. Like you I have used balsa wood in the past, while not necessarily quick it is a cheap option to build some ships. Regards, Peter
ReplyDeletePeter,
DeleteThanks for clearing up my misconception about the source of the ships- I remember from one of your older posts mentioning the Peter Dennis ships. Cheers. KEV.
I never really found the various special rules to be much of a hindrance when playing. But it's not too difficult to put the ones which are relevant to the vessels you have in play on a QRS and have that to hand. It *is* possible to factor some straight into the data for the ship (Intimidating just means your CV is always one higher when boarding), but some are conditional, so don't always apply (High Castles, for example, although if one side has them and the other doesn't, then that's a fixed +1 as well).
ReplyDeleteHaving all the ships stats and special rules written on a card helped greatly with flow of the second game. No flicking through to find rules, just a bit of preparation on my part. Too many special rules are at odds with my memory :-)
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