So row well, and live

A little over a year ago we tried out Richard H. Berg's 'War Galley' rules; details of our lack of success can be found here and here. Osprey have recently published a set of ancient naval rules and James has managed to blag a copy. The obvious thing therefore was to get the galleys out and, well, have another crack at 'War Galley'. Last night was a bit of a much needed refresher in the rules and a chance to learn the inevitable changes that James had introduced. These fell into two main categories: command and control, where he had opted for a sort of Two Fat Lardies lite squadron activation process; and fatigue, which has been simplified enormously.

A chap with a beard is simply fatigued

 It went smoothly enough - if you allow for the fact that we kept getting the rules wrong - and we shall hopefully have a more polished proper game next week. It's a bloody affair with ships sinking very easily. There was also far more going on fire than I remember from before.

Should have rolled a 1,2 or 3

I can't say that I've changed my opinion much. I think that hexes - or at least grids - are ideal for galleys; I think that these particular rules are rather complicated with their many different categories of movement restriction - fatigued, half-speed, raked, crippled and so on; and I think too much rides on the luck of getting first strike when within ramming distance. So, it's a completely open-minded approach from me then.