Enfilade! 2013

I arrived home from Olympia yesterday afternoon and crashed (after feeding the demanding cats, of course). Another Enfilade! has come and gone and I'm in recovery.

I took the week off, as I have done many times in the past. The goal of the week is spring cleaning around the house (not much accomplished there) and prep for Enfilade (again...). I always have more ambition than my efforts can support.

This year I originally planned to run just two games of my Row Well and Live! rules. I got another six heptiremes from Xyston last fall and planned on adding them to a game featuring a lot of big Hellenistic super-ships. Alas, by Wednesday night I had managed to clean and partially assemble the models and gave up all expectation of getting them done in time. I decided I would just use the ships I have already (about 20) and build the big ships later.

The urgent pre-convention calls from the events coordinator for MORE GAMES led me to plan on running a Silent Death game on Friday afternoon. However, I had no Silent Death ships painted. I ordered some from Metal Express, which took a very long time to arrive. Most of the last week was spent painting Silent Death ships and wee torpedo models for the game. In fact, I was still painting torpedoes at 3:30 AM on the first day of the convention.

I also wound up getting psyched to participate in a Bolt Action tournament that would be held at the convention on Sunday. I planned to run a 1000 point force of late-war US Marines. This was coincidental to the fact that I have been painting Marines for our regular gaming, so I had a good head start, but I still needed a few more units for the tournament force I would run. I spent a lot of effort getting things completed for our last Bolt Action game—time I might have spent painting heptiremes or Silent Death ships. As it turned out, I bailed from the tournament a week before the convention so that relieved me of having to paint more Marines before the convention.

Day 1

As I mentioned above, the first day of the convention started at 3:30 AM when I got up to feed the cats and continue working on my Silent Death ships that I needed for the game I would run 11 hours later. I had gone to bed earlier that same morning (12:30 AM). Thanks to the miracle of coffee, I was pretty well primed. I also had some house cleaning to complete so my cat-sitter wouldn't think I was completely feral (my week-off-from-work goal of deep-cleaning the house having gone by the wayside).

I finally left the house by 10:00 and headed first to Kinko's to get a couple copies of my Row Well and Live! rules printed and spiral bound. After getting more coffee from the espresso stand outside Kinko's, I was off to Olympia. It's about a 90 minute drive from Lynnwood if the traffic is good. Just south of Fort Lewis (a.k.a. Joint Base Lewis McChord), I had to pull off the road to keep from falling asleep at the wheel, an inauspicious event in light of the fact that I had two games to run before going to bed that night.

Silent Death

Silent Death was the first game I ran from 2:00 to 6:00 PM. I had a full contingent with a handful of nostalgic former SD players. I hadn't played in years, but everything went well and I had a chance to run my favorite (mostly mediocre) ship, the Epping.

The good ship Epping, scourge of the outer void

Our side took crippling losses right off the bat. I was off to the side with Dale Mickel's two Hammers mixing it up with Mark Serafin's two Sorenson IVs. We eventually took care of Mark, but our ships on the other end were facing a Betafortress and a couple Nighthawks, nasty ships—especially against little fighters like Blizzards.

Torpedoes about to rendezvous with Mark's Sorenson

By the fourth or fifth turn, It was just Dale and me left to face the little-damaged victorious enemy. I decided on a death ride through the mass of them. Fired at by blattguns, plaz cannons, torpedoes, and all kinds of what-not, I managed to avoid sure destruction for two more turns while dealing out misery to my tormentors. The Epping is a spacefaring missile battery and I put the hurt on the two Nighthawks.

The death ride begins with much nastiness ahead

Nevetherless, they got me in the end. I was one hex from exiting the board when I blew up. Dale lost one of his Hammers, but got the other one off the board. The sole survivor, like Jason McCord in the TV show Branded. ("All but one man died...There at Bitter Creek...and they say he ran away...")

Row Well and Live!

Game two started at 7:00 and ran until 11:00. By this time I was nearly incoherent—more so than normally. I had eight players and 13 ships in the game.

Into the narrow waters...

The squadrons mix it up

Being in a sleep-deprived state, I recall very little of the game except that Henry Thompson, with two little hemiolas, took on the world and managed to survive, although he caught fire a time or two.

Something's burning...

There was one fateful ramming attack, which was fortunate because I didn't manage to finish painting the other nine ship wrecks that I have.

Fire and Flotsam

Gamers are a curious species. They always do what you least expect and the result of the game left me needing to rethink some aspects of my rules. Overall, the game went well and I think the players had a good time.

By 11:30 I was in a nice king bed with a pillow-top mattress. I have never slept better in my life.

Day 2

Day two started at 7:00 AM. When I first awoke, I moved cautiously in the the bed so as not to disturb the cats lying all around me—but then I realized where I was. Cat wariness is a hard thing to just abandon.

My only scheduled event was another Row Well and Live! game at 7:00 PM, so I had the bulk of the day to wander, talk, shop, and have lunch with Phil Bardsley and Kevin Smyth in the hotel restaurant.

There were several interesting games. Chris Leach from White Rock B.C. put on an impressive Zulu game using his soon to be released rules Battles for Empire II. Tom Condon, who played in my Row Well and Live! game the night before was running an ancient naval game using his own Galleys & Glory rules. There was also an impressive game of the battle for Crete using Bolt Action rules.

Dave Schueler ran an event using his War of 1812 adaptation of the Sail & Steam Navies ACW naval rules. In the 2:00 period, he and Kevin Smyth ran their Sink the Tirpitz game, which resulted in a win for the Fleet Air Arm.

Shopping

There are things I usually only buy at Enfilade. My initial shopping netted me a Company B T-35 and LVT(A)1 Alligator. I also got a Type 94 tankette a bit later. That's a lot of tanks to paint.

I had a bit of serendipity in the much overloaded bring & buy. I found a bag of 28mm Crusader Miniatures WW2 Russians, all cleaned and mounted on Canadian nickels. The cost was roughly half price—not including the $1.83 rebate from the nickels (after conversion). I've been planning on painting Russians for Bolt Action, so this is a nice kick-start to the project. I already have some Crusader Russians and this extends it to a full platoon.

Wizard Kraft was there with some new dry riverbed pieces. I picked up a few of those to use with the river sets I bought years ago as well as some new swamp pieces. Wizard Kraft keeps getting better and offering new, interesting stuff.

I also picked up some resin terrain from Monday Knight Productions. MKP casts some Company B terrain products and I got five Japanese earth bunkers that will look very nice when they're painted and flocked. MKP also had some very nice bridges that were designed and mastered by Sven Lugar. I saw his painted versions in the Saga tournament he was running. He pointed me to MKP and I got two of them. They're a nice rustic foot bridge suitable for Dark Ages to WW2 (and beyond), although I shan't try to drive a T-35 over one.

Row Well and Live Game 2

The second RWAL game had fewer people so I was able to run a few ships (ingloriously) myself. This game saw some intense bow-to-bow ramming, which of course provided more thoughts about rules changes. The bows-on ram left both ships taking on a lot of water, but also going at each other like the Kilkenny cats. I must admit that it's a glitch in the rules that one player, whose ship was sinking, nevertheless attempted to keep ramming. He ultimately boarded the bigger ship and captured it, even though it, too, was bound for Davey Jones'. There will be changes...

Product of Scotland

The day ended (and actually the new one began) imbibing scotch in Gary Pomeryq's room (the "q" is silent). This is a new tradition that conflicts with the old tradition of drinking beer with the Canadians. We were all Americans in the scotch crowd except for one Canadian defector (Doug Hamm). I was well oiled by the time I went to bed at 3:00 AM.

Day 3

With nothing scheduled for Day 3, I got up around 7:00 feeling very cotton mouthed, showered and went to breakfast, where I met Doug Hamm. We chatted about my galley rules (he played the role of Henry Thompson in game 2) and I ran by some of my ideas. After breakfast I roamed the convention floor a while and then packed up my belongings and checked out of the hotel. After a little while more, I said my good byes and headed home at 11:00 AM.

The trip home was a little like the trip down. I was very sleepy at the midway point, but kept at it. I reached home without falling asleep and would have crashed immediately if the cats hadn't beset me on arrival wanting to be fed.

Home Fires

While I was at Enfilade! Phil Bardsley's wife Karen took care of my cats. Grendel was predictably pushy, Maebh was surprisingly friendly, and Rhiannon was sure that evil had come to town. She hid under the bed (her safe haven from whatever befalls) when Karen came in and had to be fed up there since she wouldn't come out even for food.

Is it safe to eat?

After feeding the cats when I came home, I sat down and leaned back in my recliner; I awoke some time later under a pile of cats, who were no doubt happy to have their warm-blooded furniture back where he belonged.

It was a good Enfilade! I wish I'd rested more beforehand and wish even more that I'd arranged to take the next four days off as well. Maybe I could deep clean the house like I'd intended.

Row better and Live More!

After the first two opportunities to play test my Row Well and Live! ancient naval rules, I've been able to work out some of the more nagging problems and get a better idea of what works well.

We played the third play test at Fix Bayonets, held in Steilacoom, WA in old Fort Steilacoom on the grounds of the Western State Hospital (i.e., insane asylum). This play test went very smoothly and only a few minor changes resulted from it. The overall changes from the first play test to the last are summarized below.

Ramming

Crushing the hull of your opponent's ship is sine qua non for ancient naval battles. In the first game, the ramming wasn't quite right. I fixed it into a worse state in the second game, but gained some insights that made it play out ultimately to produce the exact results I wanted.

My baseline for ramming attacks is that I want the speed, relative size of the ships, and where the target is struck to matter most. This lead me to the initial idea of a Ram Attack Value computed primarily by those factors. For example, a penteres (size 5) striking a trieres (size 3) amidship at seven knots would do 11 points of waterline damage. That's about the right number, but too deterministic. There's no variable that can make the difference between delivering a smashing blow and a somewhat disappointing bump.

Game 1 also introduced the phenomenon of a ship starting forward of its target, but still delivering a midship ram by running parallel and then turning in at the end.

This smacks of cheese

It's not what I intended, but the rules rewarded it. Gamers are ingenious people; they will always find the low-hanging fruit. That is why we play test. We discussed ways to prevent it and the best suggestion to bubble to the top was to count only hexes moved straight before contact. We tested that theory in Game 2 and found it wanting. The biggest problem was that a ship moving at 7 knots and starting one hex away counted only 1 towards its Ram Attack Value, but a ship moving at 3 knots starting three hexes away counted 3. We had some anemic rams that were certainly not what I wanted to see.

John Kennedy suggested some kind of hit-dice solution, which got me thinking. I ultimately came up with a formula that determining the number of ramming hit dice as follows: 1 D6 for each knot of attacker's speed, add or subtract variable D6 based on the size difference between the ships (subtract if attacker is smaller, add if larger), and the position of the target struck (+2 for midship ram, -2 elsewhere). Results of 4-5 are 1 point of waterline damage, results of 6 are 2 points. The only die roll modifier is a -1 for each turn the attacker made in the move to contact.

Saturday's game showed that this was the right stuff. We had one picture-perfect ram that sank a ship. We had a few other dodgy rams that provided some damage, but not enough to even cripple the target. We also saw a few ram attempts that just missed.

I also needed to revise the attacker damage part of a ram attack. Game 2 saw ships hurting themselves worse than their target. That kink seemed to have been worked out in Game 3 as well.

Shooting

One of the features of the rules is the ability of a ship to shoot multiple times during the turn. Most players liked how this worked, but after a few games I thought it was too much. We typically saw ships passing each other and shooting at every opportunity. There is a cumulative -1 modifier for each shot after the first, so ships would deplete their ability to keep shooting after a single pass between ships. In Game 3, I modified it so that a ship can only target another ship once. Ships can still shoot multiple times, but not at the same target. It sped up play and lessened the amount of damage. We saw no wholesale slaughter of deck crews from shooting in Game 3 like we had in Game 1.

I also learned from the first games that I put the shooting values too high. I've cut the chance for inflicting a hit and raised the chance for saving it. I'm also in the process of re-doing the ship cards so that the shooting value for the marines is about 20% of its boarding value.

Grappling and boarding

In Game 1 we saw the phenomenon of ships that were rammed grappling with and taking their attackers by boarding action. This happened in every case. The original grappling rule was that an attempt used 2 x D6 and the result had to be higher than the combined speed of the ships. It worked theoretically for moving ships, but no one ever attempted that. Instead, when there had been a ram and both ships stopped, the combined speed was 0, so any grapple attempt was automatically successful. Again, not what I intended.

On advice from Al Rivers, I worked out an opposed die roll for grappling. Each ship rolls 2 x D6, with the target ship adding the combined speeds. The result in Game 3 worked out well. We had some good boarding actions, but not every attempt succeeded. That's how it should work.

Overall impressions and next steps

It's nice to see a project come to fruition. I conceived these rules while lying sick in a hotel room in California three months ago. They ultimately play the way I conceived them—except that I've discovered that players can manage more ships than I thought and the number of ships in play can safely be set much higher than the dozen or so I initially assumed. (I think I need to make more initiative counters.)

I have 19 ships painted with another seven in the works and several more unpainted (or yet to arrive from the UK). I also have a small archipelago of home-made land bits for the playing area. I am pretty pleased with myself. Most of my projects dwindle and die somewhere between conception and the "Oh look! A shiny thing!" moment when another project pulls me away.

I need to do a thorough edit of the rules and add some ship data and pre-fab ship cards. I also need to do a final version of the quick reference sheet. At that point I'll post the rules somewhere for others to access and play.

I see several opportunities to play in the coming months and perhaps a chance to be picked for this year's D.A.N.G. I also plan to run this at Enfilade! in May. It's eminently schlepp-able and has been declared Enfilade-worthy by no less an authority than Gene Anderson.

Now with this project essentially done, I can get back to dry land and re-focus on my dormant 1672 project.

Thanks

Thanks to my playtesters for their time, patience, and input: Dave Schueler, Kevin Smyth, Gary Greiss, Michael Ng, John Kennedy, Steve Puffenberger, Al Rivers, Scott Murphy, Scott Abbot, Gene Anderson, Damond Crump, and Mike McClellan.

Mayhem on the wine-dark sea

The first play-test of my Row Well and Live! ancient naval rules went surprisingly well. Kevin Smyth, Dave Schueler, Al Rivers, Gary Greiss, Scott Murphy, and I played for about three-and-a-half hours at The Game Matrix in Tacoma. We had the place almost entirely to ourselves and it was a perfect setting for the first game.

I was able to test whether or not the rules were complete crap (thankfully, not), see situations where an enterprising mind could do things I didn't foresee or intend, and get some great feedback.

Last desperate prepping

Samuel Johnson famously said that "when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." With even less than a fortnight to prepare, I found my mind wonderfully concentrated on completing rules, game tokens, ship models, and all the other fiddly-bits needed to put on the game. Even then, it came down to the wire.

Prepping yesterday took me until 12:30 AM this morning, followed by about three hours of sleep, then up with the cats working away at ship cards, ship models, quick reference sheets, and final, hurried rules amendments. Then on the road to 1) tank up at Starbuck's, and 2) drive 60 miles to Tacoma. Home now after all this, I am tired and my mind is much less wonderfully concentrated. More like shriveled.

The set-up and preliminaries

Kevin, Dave, and Scott were one side and Gary, Al, and I were the other. I pretty much evenly balanced the two sides with each having one big hepteres (septiremes) bristling with artillery, two penteres (quinqueremes) with towers and bolt-shooters, and two tetreres (quadriremes). Their side got a third penteres with towers, but no artillery. We got two hemiolas.

The good guys deployed for battle

I took about 10 minutes to walk everyone through a basic outline of the rules. Then I placed out some markers to indicate the set up areas and we deployed our ships.

The game

Al started things off by running one of his hemiolas into the midst of the enemy squadron and ramming Kevin's hepteres. It was a very David and Goliath move and he managed to inflict some waterline damage that kept kevin leaking for the rest of the game.

Al biting off more than his wee hemiola could chew

However, on the way in, he took a lot of missile and artillery fire from the ship he passed and the ship he hit. He lost all of the few marines he had on deck, who gave only desultory fire themselves. Stopped because of the ram, he was easily grappled and boarded by the overwhelming number of marines on Kevin's big ship.

This is what happens when you kick the hornet's nest

In a much more even contest, Kevin sent his tetreres against Al's tetreres and successfully rammed it, Inflicting waterline damage, damaging Al's oars, and—for good measure—getting his ram stuck in Al's ship. Not content with leaving Al leaking and crippled, Kevin then grappled to board his foe, whom he thought to be at bay. However, in the ensuing mêlée, Al took Kevin's ship in a surprising reversal of fortune.

Kevin didn't know when to stop

His prize won, Al never successfully extricated the captured ship's ram from his own, nor stopped taking water, nor repaired his oars.

Al sent his other fast-rowing hemiola screaming across the water to attack Dave's end of the enemy line (opposite me). For his trouble, he missed his ram attempt against Dave's tetreres, got his marines shot up, and got set on fire from incendiary missiles shot by Dave's penteres.

Why does it always end in flames?

I played cagey for a while, but finally roused myself and took up arms. Encouraged by the sight of Al's ship burning, I thought I'd start a fire on one of Dave's ships. However, I rolled the dreaded "1" and set myself on fire instead.

Well, this is embarrassing

While not deadly (I put it out at the end of the turn), it was a nuisance and it affected my shooting.

In the center, Gary made steady progress and ultimately breached the enemy line, setting one of Scott's penteres ablaze en route.

Classic deikplous maneuver!

I wound up getting rammed and damaged by Dave's tetreres, but I was able to grapple and board my attacker making it a nice hat-trick in the game of three successful rams followed by the target vessels taking their attackers.

Analysis

At 3:00 we ended the game and spent some time discussing the rules and people's impression. Overall, the rules were well received. Most of the tweaks and revisions needed became apparent during play.

I was pleasantly surprised that everyone thought the initiative/movement sequence worked well. There was some concern that in a convention setting, having only one ship active at a time might cause conventioneers to fall off. I have to give this more thought. It worked as I hoped it would. I wanted to get away from a turn sequence where all the ships dash about each other in a general movement phase, whether simultaneous, phased, or IGO-UGO, before shooting, boarding, etc. I've played enough naval to feel a sense of disgruntlement at ships passing by each other without exchanging a shot only to be outside to arc or range when the shooting phase comes. The active/passive movement phase lets ships shoot and be shot at by everyone that come by.

However, all that shooting took a toll. Al's hemiolas only had three marine boxes to start with and got hit by some pretty hefty opponents, so it was no surprise to me to see his marines go poof under a hail of missiles. However, the bigger ships also took a lot of marine losses from shooting. Dave's ultimately losing ram against my ship was caused by the number of missile casualties he took in his transit. Gary shot him and I shot him multiple times. When he finally rammed me, he had three marines remaining out of an original 15. I had 10, so taking him was no problem. I need to lessen the effect of shooting and increase the probability os saving hits.

I was surprised that so little fatigue points were lost. My fear going in is that ship's rowers would be exhausted too soon. The only ship that went from "fresh" to "worked" was one of Al's, but that was due to hits on his rowers (which are taken as fatigue loss) and not from exerting themselves.

I have a short list of other revisions to incorporate this week and then send out the draft for review. Come Saturday, I'm running another play-test with a different group up here in Kirkland at The Panzer Depot.

Game on!

I'm almost set for the first play test tomorrow of my Row Well and Live! ancient naval rules.

It's been a whirlwind of little tasks this last week. Among the many things to finish (mostly within the last few days) are:

• The rules. These are a full draft, but I've been tweaking and reworking them—including a complete revision of the shooting and boarding rules. I spent a good portion of today going back through and editing heavily.
• Ship cards. I've been toying with these for a long time and probably even now don't have it right. They've been through several permutations and I've only just gotten an acceptable version. I'm at work now competing them.
• Counters. So many counters to make for shooting attenuation, ship damage, etc. I print these from Adobe Illustrator, cut them out and glue them to small plywood bases from Litko. Each counter is double sided. I got it down to a system, but it still takes time to cut, glue, trim, and finish each counter.
• Terrain. I finished another two island pieces beyond the three I posted about earlier. This task, too, is down to a system. With all the foam I have left, I can see making several more islands. (But there is still that storage issue...)
• Ship models. I've been working on another dozen for some time. These were completed just today—mostly, there are still a few last touches to do in the morning.
• Checklist. My big fear is that I will rush out to go to Tacoma tomorrow and forget something. I've got it all written down, so I'm set—unless I forgot to write something down.

In the midst of all this game-prep activity are other things like socialization with human beings, work around the house (who was I kidding about a "deep clean"?), and various randomizations.

Many randomizations come from my cats. I live to serve, or so they believe. They also have disdain for my computer time. It is a meaningless exercise from which they try to seduce me every time I sit down to it.

Their main tactic is to walk across the desk as I'm working or to sit on my lap. It's nice to have a cat purring away on one's lap, but it makes working at a computer a little awkward.

Rhiannon's favorite tactic is chair theft. While working this morning on my rules, Rhiannon (a.k.a. Ree, a.k.a. sweet pea, a.k.a. Miss Fussypants, etc.) was ensconced on my lap, but I had to get up. Ree protested this, as she often does (I live not only to serve, but to be a warm resting place whose sittings and risings are ordained by my feline masters). As soon as I got up, she grabbed the chair and would not be moved. Second only to actual leather, pleather retains heat well enough to be a desirable warm spot once the human's rear end has vacated it.

I busied myself with other things, hoping she would move herself once she saw me active elsewhere, but no. The only thing to do was to roll my desk chair away with Ree on it and use my painting table chair, which is smaller and much less comfy.

It also provides no lap-space. A deficiency Maebh (a.k.a. Mavis, a.k.a. Maebh the Merciless, a.k.a. Miss Fluffybottom, etc.) noticed with significant disapprobation. She paced from one thigh to the other, but found no suitable resting place. Eventually, she sat on the desk emitting her squeaky purr, nuzzling my face, and—most importantly—impeding my work.

At long last giving up (or merely executing a devious tactical withdrawal), she wandered off to snuggle with Grendel, who couldn't be bothered to bother me. As the day wears on—and after their dinner—the cats siesta until later in the day. It's the perfect time for getting things done.

My stuff is staged for loading in my inconvenient car:

• Ships. Two cigar boxes full.
• Counters. A nice plastic container with 10 compartments.
• Dice. My love 'em/hate 'em ancient dice. I'm up to 24 now, so I can use them in bucket o' dice games. I also have small dice for marking continuing turns and fire levels.
• Mat. Rolled around a heavy 5' long cardboard tube I got from Creation Station.
• Rules. Forgetting these would be a big faux pas.
• Ship cards. See above.
• Clown hair. This is actually a red-dyed cotton fluff produced by Flames of War to mark burning things. We typically used it for naval games to mark shipboard fires.
• Wet erase markers. For use on the ship cards, which are in plastic sleeves.
• Plastic sleeves. I found 5x8 clear pockets at Office Depot. I know I have some already, but like most things, they're lost somewhere.
• Terrain. The islands I made and the rocks I bought.
• Camera and tripod. I want to record the play test no matter how desultory or triumphant.

What else? We'll see tomorrow...

Land Ho!

In the midst of all the other things I'm doing in my week off, I'm landscaping the sea. More specifically, I'm creating island and shore terrain for my Row Well and Live! ancient naval rules. I've had doing this in mind for some time, but with ships (and the rules) still to finish, I've put if off until I had more time to devote to it.

I tend to hover on projects. I never sit and paint for hours. Instead, I paint a bit, do something else, come back and paint a bit more, do something else, etc. This means that over the course of an evening, I may get an hour or so of work done. On a weekend, I may get several hours.

Another factor in my hovering, is that some tasks in a project require long drying time, so there's an interval between, say, a first coat of paint and a second. During a work week, the standard intervals are a) overnight and b) while I'm away at work. These intervals usually mean that I don't get a lot done quickly. Now that I'm home, the intervals can be an hour or two, so I can do in a day what might tale several days during a normal week.

This is how it's been this week so far and I've definitely done something on everything and seen decent progress (except maybe on the cold fusion thing—perpetual motion I've delegated to Maebh, who seems to never stop).

Store-bought stuff

First the stuff that comes ready-made: A short while ago, I was at The Game Matrix in Tacoma to play some Victorian Sci-Fi and I picked up a pack of rubble piles from War Torn Worlds. These are very nice terrain pieces made out of recycled rubber.

The rubble piles are intended for 28mm scale, but when I saw them, I figured instantly that they would be perfect as rock formations poking up out of placid seas: a convenient place for sea birds to poop and an inconvenient place for ships to wreck themselves.

The rubble piles come pre-finished and flocked with mossy bits. War Torn Worlds produces other pieces that may also be useful, but this pack of rubble is the only pre-made terrain I have so far. Everything else is up to me.

Hand-made stuff

I mentioned earlier that I procured a stash of 2" pink foam insulation, which I had to cut down in the Home Depot parking lot to fit in my car. The high-density foam can be shaped to form hills and islands, provided you have the right tools. For our land-based games, we typically use unfinished, rough-cut foam board over which we lay a felt cloth. For naval gaming, you need to go a bit further and actually terrain the foam. I have done this once before when making hills for DBA/DBM.

For this project, I started by creating 2" hex-grid templates in Adobe Illustrator, which I printed on tabloid paper (11 x 17) and glued to the face of the pink board.

After that I cut out the pieces using a keyhole saw, which has a fairly rough blade. I initially imagined that I could cut close to the grid so that the pieces would exactly fit the grid on the mat. However, I found that once I started sawing, the template didn't stay attached. I made do with getting a shape that is approximately aligned to the hex grid.

I first thought that I could rough-shape the foam using a coping saw and some wood-shaping tools. However, the foam tends to chip if the tools used to shape it are too rough. So I bit the bullet and bought an expensive hot-knife foam cutter at The Panzer Depot. I've had my eye on it for some time because it has a nice heavy blade, unlike other heated foam cutters that use a thin wire.

After getting used to the hot-knife—and getting a respirator mask to avoid giving myself brain damage from the fumes—I roughed out the islands. The result is sort of a melty, blob-ish, burnt lump of pink.

I then took a wood rasp and smoothed out the hot-knife cuts followed by more smoothing with medium and fine sand paper.

Once the island pieces are smoothed, I slathered them in Mod Podge  as a sealer. The islands will eventually get sprayed with dullcote, which will eat into the foam if not protected. The sealing also stabilizes the foam and helps prevent chipping. It also serves as a better surface for subsequent coats and painting later.

After the sealer coat is dry, I did another coat of Mod Podge and sprinkled coarse and fine model railroad ballast on it for texture.

 

I let the Mod Podge and ballast dry on my kitchen island overnight—trusting that the cats won't get to it. By now they're used to my projects taking up space in their home and tend not to molest my works in progress. Although every now and then I'm awakened by a bit of clatter in the night and come downstairs to find three cats looking like they ate the canary as they watch me mitigate whatever disaster has befallen. Little scamps.

In the morning, I applied two thin coats of a brownish Apple Barrel craft paint as a base color.

I discovered that I don't like the larger ballast that I used. It sticks out too much and may only serve as raised bits to get caught by butterfingered gamers (or, more likely, by me) and cause chipping when it tears off. However, they seem to adhere sufficiently and haven't become detached through the process. The use of Mod Podge rather than white glue also helps. Mod Podge retains a great amount of elasticity after it's dry. Bits that are glued on will give a bit before they break off.

I dry-brushed over the base color with the same color lightened by yellow. I also painted the cliff part of one island using Vallejo Iraqi Sand (which is the same color I use for my ship's decks).

Once the dry-brushed color is dry, I started applying the flocking. For the initial flocking I used Woodland Scenics Earth Blend. After that flocking is dry, I watered down the Mod Podge and daubed it over the Earth Blend-flocked areas to apply multiple coats of Woodland Scenics Green Blend. I always use multiple applications of flocking on my miniatures bases and I find that if I try to brush on a second coat of Mod Podge on top of already flocked areas, it brushes away the flocking already there. Daubing watered-down Mod Podge uses the already flocked surface as a catch (so it doesn't run) and puts a lot adhesive down. Watered-down Mod Podge uses capillary action so it actually creates a thicker covering because the adhesive moves up into the flocking that doesn't actually touch the surface.

I've got three pieces done now. These pieces will feature in my Labor Day game. I have templates glued to the foam board for another two larger islands. I'll get started on these, but go slower. I won't use the coarse ballast in the future. I don't like the look and worked to cover it with flocking.

I still have about 6' of foam board, which I can use for hills or for more islands and shoreline. However, I'm worried about storage. The number of galley games I'm going to play over the next years is nothing compared to the number of days these pieces will sit in my garage, which is already full. If only there were storage options outside the normal bounds of time and space...

More Inspiring Cerebral Flatulence

I had been trying unsuccessfully to find some small plastic numbers to use for initiative markers for my Row Well and Live! galley rules. What I intend is to have tokens numbered 1 through whatever to be placed next to the ships in the initiative phase to mark the order or movement.

In the rules, the basic initiative value is a ship's current speed in knots, so that faster-moving ships will move before slower-moving ones. However, players can modify their initiative value with their ship's crew rating and command rating, which they can add or subtract (although poor crews with a negative value must only be subtracted).

I could have just printed out tokens created in Adobe Illustrator, but I wanted something that matched the bases for the ships and that would work best if the numbers were raised above the surface.

I went by Michael's, typically my go-to store for all things crafty, artsy, and fartsy that can be pressed into use for gaming. But Michael's doesn't have any such things as small plastic numbers and had no clue where I could find any. I searched online, but nothing came up.

Then last week, out of the blue, it hit me: clocks! People who want to make their own artsy clocks need numbers for the face. I went by Hobby Lobby, a sprawling new arrival in town selling much of what Michael's does—only less so or more so depending on what you want. I wandered through Hobby Lobby and, while randomly browsing an aisle, turned around to find exactly what I was looking for: 10mm tall press-on numbers for clocks. A single pack contained the numbers needed for two clock faces (1-12) and I bought two packs.

They come in multiple sizes, but the arabic numerals only come in one style (there was also roman, but as the ancients learned, the system is a bit limited and non-versatile).

I cut 3/4 inch squares from some 0.080 plastic sheet. Trimmed the corners to a rounded edge and sanded them down. Then I removed a number from the sprue and pressed it in place on the plastic. A single pack got me up to 20 with one left-over 2.

Using the second pack would only get me to 24 because I'd run out of 2s by then (and that's including the left-over 2 from the first pack). However, I think I'd be crazy to play these rules with even 20 ships. Row Well and Live! is intended for smaller numbers of ships and 20 just about stretches it.

The 6 and the 9 are the same number. Differentiating the two on a clock face is unnecessary and the people who make these numbers didn't imagine free-floating counters. I didn't do anything to distinguish between them, though I did think about it. I don't think the duplication will be a problem.

The plastic numbers are finished in faux gold (or is it faux brass?), which is not the look I want. Also, painting with acrylics on plastic is tricky. To get a better "tooth" for the paint, I sprayed them with Testor's dullcote (of which I now have an ample supply after expending a bit effort to get it).

I wasn't sure what color I wanted the numbers to be, but eventually decided on a natural mottled stone look. It would stand out from the water and look better than some solid color.

After I painted the numbers, I used the same color scheme and finish that I use on my ship bases: Vallejo turquoise with a lightened, thinned version daubed on. Followed by an application of heavy gloss gel medium.

More ships under way

The six penteres that I was working on are completed and nestled with their brethren in my Padron Imperials box. More ships came from Xyston and I've started the remaining ships that I had on hand: two hepteres, two triremes, and a single trihemiola. Completing the hepteres depended on the order coming from Xyston because it contains the bolt-shooters (oxybeles) and catapults (lithobolos) that I've mounted on their decks.

She drifted a dreary wreck

I also got a wrecked trireme from Phil Bardsley. He's begun his own oared navy with one ship so far. He also got one of the wrecks that Xyston offers, which he promptly gave to me. I finished it this weekend, so I'll have at least one wreck to place for now. I'll have to order more so I can account for maybe half the ships in play (eventually) being wrecks.

It was pretty easy to paint. I finished off the base (i.e., the watery bits) like the rest of my seascape bases. It's a nice one-piece model and serves an important function in the game, although with the water swirling about it, it's more reminiscent of The Wreck of the Hesperus than a rammed ship—only without "the form of a maiden fair lashed close to a drifting mast."

Rules play test

After adjusting for schedules, I'm still trying to get a play test of Row Well and Live! organized. I've committed to hosting a game at the Fix Bayonets! game day at Ft. Steilacoom in September. That may be the first time I play it, unless I can get something going on Labor Day weekend.

Little Brain-Farts of Inspiration

Phil Bardsley sent me a link this morning to the Litko website where there was a game token for broken oars. I looked through Litko's game tokens a few days ago, but I missed this item. It got my mind working. As nice as the token is, it didn't quite fit my need. In Row Well and Live! ships can get damaged oars or wrecked oars as a result of a deikplous attack where one ship rushes past another and attempts to rake its oars. Damaged oars slow a ship's movement and wrecked oars immobilize it. Damaged oars can be repaired (most ships carried some spares or the undamaged oars can be balanced between the two sides). Wrecked oars put you in what Greek philosophers called S.O.L. (σκατά χωρίς τύχη).

I originally thought of indicating oar damage using check boxes on the ship card:

After I saw the Litko token, I knew that it would be nicer to have a marker with the ship model. It makes the ship card less cluttered and I would also prefer to keep minimal information on the card.

I picked up some Litko 40mm x 15mm 1.5mm thick bases at The Panzer Depot on my way home. After feeding the cats and feeding myself, I got to work with Adobe Illustrator and created damaged and wrecked oar tokens.

I'll print out the tokens at Kinkos and mount them on the Litko bases with damaged on one side and wrecked on the other. These counters will be placed beside a ship model to indicate damaged or wrecked oars on one side or the other.

I'll make tokens for damaged and wrecked steering too.

I love it when something gets my mind working like this.

Paint, paint, paint your boat...

As I've blogged recently, my current active project is writing war-game rules for ancient galley warfare and painting the wee ships to play them with. I have three ships completed with another six in progress.

My models of choice are the Xyston 1:600th scale range. Most ranges have a limited number of the larger Hellenistic giants and Xyston is no exception. The single large ship in the range is a hepteres, also called a septireme or "seven" because the rowing arrangement put seven men on a single file. The exact way this was done remains a mystery. It could be a single bank of oars with seven men on one oar, two banks with four men on the oars in one bank and three on the other, or three banks of oars with rowers arranged 3-3-1 or 3-2-2.

Most of the ships are quinqueremes, also called penteres, or "fives" because they have five men per file. This is mostly thought to be two banks of oars arranged 3-2, although it could be three banks arranged 2-2-1, or a single bank with five rowers per oar. Xyston makes Greek, Phoenician, Hellenistic, and Roman versions of the quinquereme. These really amount to different styles for the bow and stern. The styles are somewhat fanciful and I assume that I can mix 'n' match in how I compose ships to use in a game. The only real differences are that the Hellenistic quinqueremes come with towers and bolt shooters and the Roman quinqueremes come with a corvus.

The second largest group of Xyston ships are triremes that features three banks of oars with a single rower on each oar. This is the warship of the classical era and was the mainstay of the fleets in the Greco-Persian wars and the Peloponnesian War. It's unclear whether it was completely superseded by the quinquereme in the Hellenistic era; however, the later trireme was heavier than the type Themistocles had built for the Athenian navy, which was light, fast, and highly maneuverable. When the fight on the seas during the Peloponnesian War devolved to the ugly slugfests in Syracuse harbor, the Athenians, who were the masters of battle in open waters, were at a disadvantage against the heavier Syracusian triremes and the newly-developed quinquereme.

Finally, Xyston makes a hemiola and trihemiola, which are light ships that were mostly used for dispatch duty, piracy, or anti-piracy.

Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

The Xyston models come with lots of bits. I'm not a fan of lots of bits on the models I use for gaming. This is one reason why I eschew plastic figures—too many parts to glue on and break off. (Although the main reason I eschew them is that they're plastic.)

Xyston ships come with masts and sails that can be furled or unfurled. The unfurled sail uses more lead than the main hull of the ship model. The furled sails look better, but the mast is cast metal and I fear it will bend or break with the kind of handling miniatures go through. After playing around with replacing the cast mast with brass rod, I decided to forego the masts and sails. This look probably isn't right for Hellenistic navies. The classical navies generally stowed their masts and rigging before battle, but the later navies may have kept them up, even though motive power in a naval battle was always by oars. Cleopatra's rapid departure from the debacle of Actium was facilitated by readily unfurled sails.

The models also come with some kind of railing or gunwale with shields on it that looks more like it belongs on a viking longboat. I haven't seen anything like this kind of gunwale on drawings I've seen of ancient galleys and I suspect that Xyston made it up. What I have seen in drawings is a very flimsy railing that looked like it served no other purpose than being a convenient thing to grab when a seasick crewman leaned over and heaved ho. Like the masts and sails, I left these off the model. Too fiddly to put on and I didn't like the look. Of course not using these bits means having a lot of lead jetsam (that I paid for) going unused.

Where Knelt the Vanquished Foe...

Apart from leaving things off, I did make one addition to the models. The Xyston ships are finely cast with some nice detail, but they don't have decking that looks right. The models just have a flat slab of metal for the deck. After looking at that for a while, I decided it just wouldn't do.

To remedy this I cover the deck part with thin styrene plastic card that comes scored at 1mm intervals. The result is something that looks like deck planking.

Basing and Assembly

The quinquereme hulls come in one piece, not counting any towers and artillery I might put on. The hepteres comes with a center section and two ends that have to be butt-joined, but on the one models I completed, they went together nicely with no visible seam. The triremes have the rowers' boxes separate. The space cut into the hull for these parts is bigger than the part itself, so there's a bit of a gap that has to be filled with Testor's green putty.

The oars don't actually attach to the hull. The oars should be coming out of the outrigger, but the area where they connect is minimal. What I wound up doing is priming the oars separate from the hull. I glue the hull to the base and then glue the oars to the base positioned correctly in relation to the hull.

The steering oars come separate and are kind of fiddly to attach. I prime them separately and glue them on to the ship and base at the same time. The steering oars are one size "fits" all. The hepteres is a tall model and the steering oars fit just right. For the other ships, I had to cut down the paddle end to get it to fit right. I normally loathe dealing with fiddly bits, but these turned out OK.

For bases, I use .030 sheet styrene with Litko magnetic sheet on the bottom. The bases are just big enough to fit the model, I don't leave a lot of space for seascape. The fit on the hex map is tight enough, that I can't spare any room for aesthetics.

Painting

The models paint easily. I paint the decks with Vallejo Iraqi Sand and then give then a wash of burnt umber (or is it raw umber or burnt sienna?). I paint the hull and oars overall in Vallejo Light Brown. All the paintings I've seen show the ships to be mostly in natural wood.

The detail is in the strakes that stand out from the hull. I paint these in somewhat muted colors: browish-yellow rather than fully saturated yellow, gray-blues, olive greens, dull reds. Ancient pigments didn't allow for the kind of deep, rich colors we have now, so the colors I use make a subtler contrast. It also helps to mask the errors.

I've been building and painting these models down on my dining room table because I can spread out a little more (put another way, my painting table upstairs in the den is too cluttered). This appeals to Rhiannon who likes to sit in the chair next to me and cuddle—when she hasn't simply stolen my chair and prevented me from sitting at all. However nice an arrangement it is, she insists on my petting her and if I am remiss, she head-butts my painting arm to remind me of my duty.

If I'm not looking out for the head-butt, I can easily get a streak of gray-blue across a deck or into the oars. Six years of life with cats has already made me adept at predicting feline behaviors and getting out of the way. For the few times I'm too slow, I have become adept at touch-up.

I dry-brush Iraqi Sand over the oars after I've painted everything else in order to call them out a lithe more. The rams are painted antique bronze and other highlights are painted however I feel. For example, the Carthaginian quinqueremes come with tent-like thingummies at the stern. I thought about making them look circus-tenty with stripes and doodles, but opted for more military-looking solid colors like deep red and olive green.

I painted the towers on the hepteres and Hellenistic quinquereme I've finished so far in red and green. Although I have read that they were often painted gray to look like a stone tower. I have more towered ships to paint and I'll probably stick with gray for the rest. If I want variety, I'll use different shades of gray.

I paint the bases a solid turquoise color and then go over that with the same color lightened and thinned. I daub this on to make puddles that give a mottled appearance when dry.

At this point I give the ships two coats of Krylon Matte Finish. Despite it's name, it leaves a very slight satin effect, which I find more attractive than the lusterless look of the Testor's dullcote.

When the matte finish is dry (I usually allow 24 hours between coats and after), I go over the base with heavy gloss gel medium that I get at Michael's. I glop it on with a brush and it's semi-opaque when first applied, almost like white glue.

The glop dries glossy and transparent with a texture that looks like a gently rolling sea. I finish up on that by applying a watered-down off-white around where the model meets the base to represent the foam stirred up by the ship and oars.

Ready to Play

I have three ships ready to go and another six almost there (just the basing left to do). The rules aren't complete, but I'll have something to play-test with.

I've only got the 1.5" hex mat for now. Monday Knight Productions has to do a production run of the 2" hex mats before they send mine to me. The ships are a little tight on the smaller hexes, especially the heptereme, but it works until the larger hex grid is available.

I plan to male some terrain in the form of coastline and little islands and rocks that will break up the playing area. I'll base the land pieces off the 2" hexes so that they conform to the hex grid.

Storage

In the song "I'm So Tired" John Lennon calls Sir Walter Raleigh "such a stupid git." However, the popularization of tobacco products over the intervening centuries has produced one highly beneficial result: cigar boxes, which are just perfect for storing a miniature navy.

For these models I used a wooden Padron 1964 Anniversary Series Imperial box. Apart from the cigar getting a respectable "95" rating from Cigar Aficionado, the box is just the right size for my need. Wide and short, I can fit several ships inside. I line the bottom with Litko Aero Systems flexible sheet steel, so that the ships' magnetic bases stick like glue for disaster-free storage and transport. (Thanks, Wally.)

I only have the one box, so I'll need to scour the cigar stores looking for at least one more. I'm not sure how many they'll hold, but I foresee having one more model than I can fit in the box. It always happens.