Pressing on with my paper galley fleets, and having worked out a basing scheme which seemed to be OK, I went ahead and based up a load more of the ships into roughly a 'green fleet' and a 'red fleet'.
And this is how everything ended up. I'm still not 100% convinced by the light blue bases, but it would be easy enough to paint them dark blue instead. I've got a big bit of the light blue card left which will do for a battle board for 3x3 type games anyway, so I'll leave them as they are for now.
So this is the 'Red Fleet'. I've added small wakes to all the ships using my Posca Paint Pens and added flags, prows and hull sides in a mix of red and yellow, with red being predominant. The yellows are in there for variety and so I can represent allied contingents. I've also labelled them as light (3/4 bank), medium (5/6/7 bank) and heavy (8/9/10 bank). I haven't bothered with individual numerical codes but it would be easy to add them.
There are also a couple of red flags off the original counter sheet, to represent admirals or whatever.
And this is the 'Green Fleet', actually a mix of green and white. Some of these ship counters have corvus (corvii?) printed on them so are presumably supposed to be vaguely Roman. Those 'green' flags look yellow to me!
I made up both sides identically, they have eight bases of light galleys, eight mediums and two heavies, although the specific types vary. Green Fleet tends towards heavier ships (4s instead of 3s, 6s instead of 4s etc). They are all on 40mm x 40mm bases and my original plan was to use them in pairs so I can represent lines and columns and possibly stack them for the wierd circular defensive formation.
These are the odds and sods. The original Red Fleet had loads of the little rowing boat things. I've no idea what they are supposed to be so I based a few of them in groups of three and labelled them as Very Light. There are also six merchantmen/transports which are just medium galleys with unfurled sails drawn on in a variety of colours. I stupidly labelled them as M, which of course is just the same as a Medium galley, so I had to rename them MM. I wish I'd picked T (for transport) instead!
The entire collection fits very neatly into a single business card box, with half a dozen spare counters and plenty of space left over. I've not even used half of the counters I printed off, so I can make up some more bases if I feel the need. I just need to actually play a game with them now, but they weren't an enormous amount of work to put together.
Hilariously, having completed these, I have become distracted by other projects (I blame you, Bill Farquar), so 'Dominion of the Galley' will have to wait a bit while I fiddle around with WRG 1925-50 and work up Alexander the Brief.
Looks great, nice and compact. The Dominion of the Spear rules can be used pretty much as is for galleys, just re skin the units as the equivalent types of ships and away you go.
ReplyDeleteThanks Mark, that is pretty much what I was thinking of doing, although I did have some odd ideas about trying to model the differences between navies who preferred ramming to boarding and vice versa. It is probably over complicating things though.
DeleteI have been experimenting with the same thing. Navy's that prefer to ram attack first and hit on a 5+, those that prefer to board attack second and hit on a 4+. If they are missile heavy, like Byzantines using Greek Fire they would go before taking and hit on a 5+. Crack crews would get a +1, and really large ships would be -1 to hit because they were harder to sink. Rolls would be simultaneous for the same types. The unreliable trait could be applied to transports or merchant Valley and ambushes to pirates
DeleteLooks good to me, Mark!
ReplyDeleteSteve
I'll clean this up and post it on the Portable Wargames Facebook page.
DeleteGreat, thanks.
DeletePaper fleets may be the way to go, I stalled half way through building up my fleets of Nanwar 1/1200 Greek and Phoenician triremes
ReplyDeleteThat is why I went paper for this. It is such a peripheral interest for me that it didn't seem worth the effort of researching and painting up real fleets.
DeleteExcellent and inspiring: I've always been a fan of this sort of approach as a supplement to standard minis.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ed. Back in the day I made up a load of infantry counters to use with WRG 1925 to 50 as it was far easier to see what they were armed with than peering at my 6mm infantry figures!
DeleteThese are brilliant Martin. I take it that you printed aerial views of galleys (with added colours for differentiation) and then 'beefed them up a bit' to give a three-dimensional impression? I went through previous posts and tried searching for 'paper galleys' on your blog but could not find part 1; hence the basic question.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes, James
They are actually scans of the galley counters provided in the "Corvus" rules, reduced 50%. If you look for Galleys R US Part 1 you'll find the first post. I did add some extra colours though.
DeleteThanks Martin. I did not search very well did I #embarrassed#?
Delete