Ad Mare Bellum: Slaughter at Salamis

Before the November lockdown I did manage to get a couple of games in down BIG as we were (then) Tier One, I have just been a tad tardy on writing up the after action reports for one reason or another... The first of these was our refight of Salamis using Long Face's Ad Mare Bellum. Following a couple of previous games we'd made a couple of tweaks to the game which had worked well including the inclusion of a 'Tiffin' card which randomly ends the turn (what's the Greek for Tiffin?)

On an 8' x 6' table Steve and Bryan commanded the Greeks (deployed at the top in the photo below), whilst George and I command the larger fleet of Persians, Ionians and Egyptians... The numbers of ships was taken from the scenario in Poseidon's Warriors.

Turn one started with the Greeks drawing two phase dice in a row (the dice bag contained four a side plus the end turn dice), but decided to remain in position using the two small islands to protect their flanks. The third dice was Persian so mine and George's fleets started rowing towards the pesky Greeks.

The next dice was Greek and Bryan decide to push one of his triremes forward...

The next phase was Persian so one of my Egyptians decided to ram the Greek galley in the flank. Unfortunately, despite such a prime target, the Egyptians only damaged the Greek vessel not sink it.

The Greeks took the opportunity to retaliate inflicting a Crew casualty on the Egyptian vessel.

George's loyal Ionians took the opportunity to lock horns with the Steve's Greeks and board their vessels.

Unfortunately as they rowed forward they took a number of Crew casualties (shown by the coins) and one vessel was boarded by the Greeks and captured (the white dice signified a captured ship).

One the other flank Bryan captured one of my ships but was swarmed by my reserve squadron.

The next phase was Persian again and I recaptured the lost ship and boarded and captured three of Bryan's.

The fight between Steve and George was turning into a rugby scrum with ships being captured...

... and then recaptured!

The next dice pulled was Persian again (the third phase in a row) and I used thus to pull the captured enemy ships out of the way and attempt to punch a hole in Bryan's line.  

The next dice was the turn end one, so all the dice went back in the bag.

The first one pulled out for turn two was... Persian! (I blamed this on Steve's negative vibes not being seen favourably by the Gods of Dice).

George pushed his reserve forces forward and used them to board and recapture lost ships and capture two of Steve's defensive line.

On the other flank Bryan's line was disintegrating as more his ships fell under Persian control, one squadron was now completely captured...

The aim now was to row the captured Greek galleys out of the way and push through the gap into the reserve Greek squadron and the flank of Steve's galleys...

The Fates looked poorly on the Greeks again as the next phase dice was Persian (the sixth in succession - we did check the Greek dice were in there!)

My Egyptians pushed through the gap in Bryan's line and looked to bear down on his remaining squadron.

Meanwhile George's managed to sink one of Steve's galleys and pull another out the defensive line having captured it.

At this stage there was clearly no route to victory for the Greeks and they conceded control of the seas to the mighty Persian Empire!

The battle turned out rather one sided, not helped by the Persians drawing six phases in a row allowing them the initiative to attack the static Greeks. The odds of that happening are of course rather unlikely but the Gods of the Dice decided to that was the way things were to play which was a shame as it had not happened like that in the two smaller games George and I had previously played and led to a rather unsatisfactory game for Steve and Bryan...

Ad Mare Bellum: Confrontation at Kolokythokeftedes

Following last week's run out of Ad Mare Bellum, George and I decided to have another battle down BIG with a couple of minor tweaks. 

Last week in the first turn we had pulled four of the six phase cards and as three of them had been mine George knew he had two phases in a row coming up and was able to position his ships through two moves in a way be would not have if he had not had that certainty. If the possibility existed of my ships having the opportunity to move he would not have exposed his flanks in his first phase move. Speaking with game designer David Manley he suggested we include a turn end card which ended the turn(!) but oif you had not had an Action Phase in the turn you automatically got one before the next turn started. Secondly in one boarding action we had a two ships on one situation with each scrap fought separately, tonight we were going to treat it as one action with the attacker combining their Boarding Factors.

Off the Greek island of Kolokythokeftedes, a Phoenician fleet has appeared and the Greeks have launched their triremes in response (as we did last week we treated the Pheonicians as being from the Manoeuvre school and the Greeks from the Boarding school.

The first card drawn gave George the Action Phase so he moved his fleet forward... The second card was for George, as was the third! :D This allowed the Phoenicians for close with the static Greeks and George make some comments about how lucky (or not)  I was in general! 

The next card was the Turn End one so not having had an Action Phase I was allowed one and moved the right flank of my fleet forward. At this point George decided we would be better served drawing dice to determine whose Action Phase it was given my card shuffling skills(!) so he went and bought a dice bag from the BIG shop! :D

The dice bag did not make a huge amount of difference as George pulled out dice giving him the next two Action Phases, pinning the left of my fleet to the shoreline (the table edge)...

And putting him in position to smash into my flank!

A first flurry of archery saw one of the Greek triremes suffer a Crew Casualty (we used the coins again to show vessels who had suffered a Crew Casualty).

Fortunately one of my dice was pulled next so it was my Action Phase. I attempted to pull back my left flank in some form of kyklos defensive formation... (not a very good one as it was to turn out)...

And pushed the Greek right flank forward in an attempt to overwhelm the Phoenician left and expose their right.

My defensive formation was not as well positioned as I tried to make it and the Phoenicians managed to ram one of the Greek galleys in the flank...

Completely wrecking it! (I bought a bag of craft matchsticks on the way to the game to use for Damaged and Wrecked ships).

The next Action Phase fell to the Greeks and being of the Boarding school, they launched a number of boarding attempts capturing two of the Phoenician raiders! (we used white dice to show captured ships).

On the Greek right a Phoenician trireme was Immobilised by a Greek ramming attack (signified by a Lardies shock marker).

The next Action Phase fell for the Greeks again and after softening up the enemy with bow fire, the Greek left launched boarding attacks on the Phoenicians capturing four more enemy triremes in just one phase following some excellent dice rolls!

With the Greek's trying to sail their captured prizes to safety, the Phoenicians decided to meet sword with sword and launched some boarding attempts of their own...

In a flurry of boarding actions the Phoenicians took a Greek galley, but lost another of their own.

On the Greek right flank the Phoenicians found themselves ganged up on losing two more triremes to enemy boarders as well as a galley in the centre. At this point the Phoenician admiral conceded the battle.

Having captured 11 enemy triremes and immobilised another for the loss of just one sunk and one captured this was a pretty decisive victory for the Greeks. 

Whilst George had joked about my luck early on as he had three Action Phases in a row (and five in total to my one initially), it did mean that my fleet was forced into a defensive position and George unable to use the advantages of Manoeuvre to any effect with the Phoenicians falling victim to the superior Greek Boarders. As he could not gain the advantage of turning the Greek flank George felt he should have been more decisive in Ramming the Greek triremes head on, despite the risks. Standing still handed the Greeks the initiative allowing them to board and capture the static vessels.

Our experiment in combining the Boarding Factors proved too powerful as the best the defenders could hope for was a drawn combat (and only a 1 in 10 chance of achieving that). We decided part way through to amend this to so that an Attacker could only add half the Boarding Factor of any supporting ship in a multiple combat. This worked much better and did allow the Phoenicians to capture one ship with some fortunate dice rolling.

We concluded the missile fire was too powerful for the actions we were fighting, with a 50% chance of a target suffering a Crew Casualty. The impact of that meant that in a subsequent Boarding Action the impacted vessel's own Boarding Factor is reduced by half (from 4 to 2) severely limiting their chances of not seeing their trireme captured and it became my tactic of choice in this battle. For our next game we are only going to allow a Crew Casualty to be caused by bow fire on a roll of 6.

Our minor tweaks are not a criticism of the rules which we really like, but they do cover a 3000 year period and we are making some small modifications to tailor them for the first twenty years on from 400 BC.

Ad Mare Bellum: Bloody Seas off Taramasalata

After our less than satisfactory try out of Posiedon's Warriors our initial plan was to make some changes and given them another go, but a read through of Long Face Games' Ad Mare Bellum led George and I to decide to given them a try out last night down BIG.

We both went with 20 triremes a side, George deciding his were Phoenicians trained in the school of Manoeuvre tactics, whilst I went with Greeks who emphasised Boarding as their preferred tactics. Adopting a specific school gives you some benefits in Ramming, Boarding etc. As we just wanted to try the rules out we lined up facing each other and started rowing!

The game turn starts with a Command Phase (which has no relevance at the start) followed by six Action Phases in which you can Move, Shoot, Ram and Board, whose phase being decided by drawing of cards from a deck. I managed to steal a march on George by having two Action Phases in a row so (in the spirit of trying the rules out) I recklessly decided to Ram three of George's galleys head on completely forgetting I should have loosed arrows at them on the way in to try and inflict Crew Casualties on the Phonecians! 

My headlong tactic was not very successful. My first trireme was damaged in the attack (we used silver coins to indicate damaged ships). Even worse my second galley managed to Wreck itself on the ram of its opponent! (we used the TFL shock markers for Wrecked vessels as we didn't have any wreck markers with us). Fortunately the third galley's attack was just ineffective.

The marines on my damaged trireme decided to try and Board the Phoenician galley and whilst they inflicted a Crew Casualties on them (shown with a gold coin), the action managed to lock the two vessels together!

The next Action Phase went George's way and he sailed his two free galleys around the flanks of the three engaged Greek galleys, one ploughing through the gap created in the squadron and into the side of a Greek trireme.

Firing as he went in George inflicted a Crew Casualty on the Greek vessel and Immobilised it with his Ramming attack (indicated by a purple dice). From his locked galley he launched a Boarding action and managed to capture the Greek trireme (we used white dice for this - see next picture).

Fortunately the next Action Phase was mine so I ineffectively loosed arrows at two Phoenician galleys before Ramming into their sides!

One was Wrecked with a second Damaged and subsequently Captured during a Boarding action.

Elsewhere two squadrons of Phoenicians ganged up on an isolated Greek one...

Inflicting Crew Casualties on all but one of the Greek triremes before Ramming them!

The two Greek galleys hit in the side were immobilised, but of the three rammed head on, only one took any Damage, three of the attacking Phoenician triremes themselves being Damaged themselves in their attack!

George then attempted to Board the Greek galleys, managing to capture one of the Immobilised vessels but saw one of his attacking triremes captured as the boarders were repelled and their ship counter-attacked and overrun!

The main battle saw more triremes captured and immobilised with the Phoenicians now catching some Greek galleys in the rear.

In one memorable phase a Damaged Phoenician trireme with Crew Casualties (who George named the Ship of Death) managed to ram a Greek galley in the side and Wreck it!

Another wave of Phoenician attacks saw the Greeks suffer more casualties and after two full turns we decided to call it a night.

By the end of the game the Greeks had seen six of their galleys sunk, five captured and one immobilised whilst the Phoenician fleet had seen two triremes sunk and five captured. Overall a victory for the pesky Phoenicians!

So how did this compare to our experience with Poseidon's Warriors? Much, much better. The Ad Mare Bellum rules have a little more record keeping but nothing too onerous and there were no automatic sinking results with no dice rolling which I still maintain is wrong in a wargame! Ramming atempts here had the possibility of failing or causing different degrees of impact. The game proceeded at pace, we were both fully engaged throughout and most importantly, whilst, like with the Mersey Osprey rules, odd rules like the ease ships took Crew Casualties seemed too effective at the time, the actual effect that had and the end result felt "right". We need to sort out some better markers and get some decent wrecked markers made but I think we have found our rules and would recommend them to anyone looking for a fast play Ancient Galley wargame.