Has anyone played War Galley by GMT?

[7eat51]

If you have played War Galley: Naval Warfare in the Ancient World Board Game by GMT, would you mind sharing your thoughts about the game?

http://www.gmtgames.com/p-168-war-galley.aspx

Have you played it solo?

Thanks.

[7eat51]

Has anyone ever played an ancient-world naval game that can be highly recommended?

Any that play well solo?

[CHolgren]

Has anyone ever played an ancient-world naval game that can be highly recommended?

Any that play well solo?

Eric, I bought the Roman Seas rulebook, and ship packs(Roman vs. Carthage) from Drivethrurpg.com and they are pretty nice. Unfortunately they are copyright protected so increasing/decreasing the scale takes time and a lot of scanning/copying. At the unaltered scale it took me about 45 minutes to cut out and put together one trireme. Can't really speak for the rulebook as I haven't had the time to give them a careful read. Seems worthwhile if you're going to be doing this a lot. Also, you can make as large a navy as you want.

[7eat51]

Eric, I bought the Roman Seas rulebook, and ship packs(Roman vs. Carthage) from Drivethrurpg.com and they are pretty nice. Unfortunately they are copyright protected so increasing/decreasing the scale takes time and a lot of scanning/copying. At the unaltered scale it took me about 45 minutes to cut out and put together one trireme. Can't really speak for the rulebook as I haven't had the time to give them a careful read. Seems worthwhile if you're going to be doing this a lot. Also, you can make as large a navy as you want.

Hey Cory, thanks for pointing me to the site. I typed in naval and found a whole bunch of AoS rule systems as well.

[CHolgren]

Well Eric, these are my initial attempts at the Roman Seas Paper craft triremes. Messed up the first trying to multi-task. You can get a good look at the detail and scale. Probably difficult for large scale naval battles, but I leav that up to you.

[7eat51]

Hey Cory, these looks great. I am surprised by the scale. I can see that large battles would require a lot of space. I imagine, though, that one can still have many ships on a dining room table because most battling would be quarters - probably can get pretty crowded. Thanks for posting the pictures. I will definitely get some of these. I will post pictures of my navy as well. I think good times are awaiting.

[CHolgren]

Hey Cory, these looks great. I am surprised by the scale. I can see that large battles would require a lot of space. I imagine, though, that one can still have many ships on a dining room table because most battling would be quarters - probably can get pretty crowded. Thanks for posting the pictures. I will definitely get some of these. I will post pictures of my navy as well. I think good times are awaiting.

I forgot, It took me about 45minutes for the first and some where between 35-40 minutes to put the second one together once I focused. Not a huge commitment as painting a mini.

[7eat51]

I forgot, It took me about 45minutes for the first and some where between 35-40 minutes to put the second one together once I focused. Not a huge commitment as painting a mini.

So what you're saying is that I should set aside a weekend.

Seeing how large these are is a bit encouraging. I bought quite a few packs of Pirates of the Spanish Main minis earlier this year; the first few didn't go so well.

[CHolgren]

So what you're saying is that I should set aside a weekend.

Seeing how large these are is a bit encouraging. I bought quite a few packs of Pirates of the Spanish Main minis earlier this year; the first few didn't go so well.

I was surprised once I got going on the second how much faster things went and much cleaner.

Yeah, when my older son played that we lost a a lot of sails just taking them on and off.

The biremes and monoremes are smaller. I just started with the largest to make sure I could handle that before I nit off more than I could chew.

[DeRuyter]

Hey Cory, these looks great. I am surprised by the scale. I can see that large battles would require a lot of space. I imagine, though, that one can still have many ships on a dining room table because most battling would be quarters - probably can get pretty crowded. Thanks for posting the pictures. I will definitely get some of these. I will post pictures of my navy as well. I think good times are awaiting.

These are 1/300 or 6mm scale. You can optionally rig sails, but no point since they didn't have them in battle anyway. I have played the Roman Seas rules at a convention and they worked well. I think it was an 8x4 table with 6 players each handling a squadron of 4-5 ships. The GM used 6mm Roman and Carthaginian figures for crew, marines and ballista. The rules require a hex mat, which of course you can buy from Hotz Mats. I believe he uses 3" hex sizes for these rules. I based my ships on 3" wide posterboard bases.

You can scale up to 10mm, but you may need to buy a separate pdf I can't recall. I suspect it would take quite a bit rescaling to get the harbour set down to 1/1200.

Eric

[CHolgren]

These are 1/300 or 6mm scale. You can optionally rig sails, but no point since they didn't have them in battle anyway. I have played the Roman Seas rules at a convention and they worked well. I think it was an 8x4 table with 6 players each handling a squadron of 4-5 ships. The GM used 6mm Roman and Carthaginian figures for crew, marines and ballista. The rules require a hex mat, which of course you can buy from Hotz Mats. I believe he uses 3" hex sizes for these rules. I based my ships on 3" wide posterboard bases.

You can scale up to 10mm, but you may need to buy a separate pdf I can't recall. I suspect it would take quite a bit rescaling to get the harbour set down to 1/1200.

Eric

It wasn't easy to get the scale right, but afterward it was too small to be reasonable. the glue flaps were 1/16 or smaller, so I'll have to come up with something different for a SGN harbor. But, I'm looking forward to giving RS a few turns against my older son.

[7eat51]

These are 1/300 or 6mm scale. You can optionally rig sails, but no point since they didn't have them in battle anyway. I have played the Roman Seas rules at a convention and they worked well. I think it was an 8x4 table with 6 players each handling a squadron of 4-5 ships. The GM used 6mm Roman and Carthaginian figures for crew, marines and ballista. The rules require a hex mat, which of course you can buy from Hotz Mats. I believe he uses 3" hex sizes for these rules. I based my ships on 3" wide posterboard bases.

You can scale up to 10mm, but you may need to buy a separate pdf I can't recall. I suspect it would take quite a bit rescaling to get the harbour set down to 1/1200.

Eric

A 4x8 table handled 24+ ships pretty well. That gives me some idea of size. Thanks Eric.

I will be playing with a buddy, so I imagine a smaller space will suffice due to less ships. If I can wrangle 6 or so players together, a 4x8 table is not unreasonably large.

[CHolgren]

I have a 4 x 6 table that I built for my son and his friends, so I'm sure that will work. I also have a bunch of different colored felt we put on the table to simulate terrain. I'll have to look into a 4" Litko template to put on the hexes, not sure otherwise how to have that short of buying another terrain mat with that already on.

[7eat51]

4" template? You mentioned 3" hexes previously. Different set of rules? Either way, with hexes that large, I will need to buy something. I have two very large hex mats for RPG, but the hex sizes are 1".

Sometime this summer, we should put together an ancient naval game day - of course before the release of SoG. We have an Illinois scramble for WoG on 1 June, so maybe in the beginning of July.

[CHolgren]

4" template? You mentioned 3" hexes previously. Different set of rules? Either way, with hexes that large, I will need to buy something. I have two very large hex mats for RPG, but the hex sizes are 1".

Sometime this summer, we should put together an ancient naval game day - of course before the release of SoG. We have an Illinois scramble for WoG on 1 June, so maybe in the beginning of July.

ReRuyter mentioned 3" hexes not me. The rules actually call for 5" hexes. Hotz also goes on to say you could use 3" hexes if you scale to 1:600. I think I can get away with 4"hexes at 1:300, so that's why I mentioned 4" hexes. Mono and biremes are noticeably smaller than the triremes, thus 4".

[7eat51]

I see. Don't know why I missed who posted what.

5" hexes. I don't believe I've ever seen hexes that large before.

I don't know if I want to get into scaling as such, especially for the reasons you mentioned. Besides, I like the large ships you posted. I think it could be fun playing with such ones, and it could make room for interesting rules as far as personnel minis. Different scales might give different flavors to the playing experience as well. Since I have 15mm WWII armor and infantry, WoG, SoG, Pirates of the Spanish Main, something larger would be unique - I think it would definitely make an impact at a convention.

[DeRuyter]

ReRuyter mentioned 3" hexes not me. The rules actually call for 5" hexes. Hotz also goes on to say you could use 3" hexes if you scale to 1:600. I think I can get away with 4"hexes at 1:300, so that's why I mentioned 4" hexes. Mono and biremes are noticeably smaller than the triremes, thus 4".

Yes , my bad, writing from memory not looking at the rules! I was trying to get away with using 3" hexes. I'll have to pull out my ships and measure the bases to be sure, I may also have settled on 4". The triremes are not the larger sized ship either.

[CHolgren]

Yes , my bad, writing from memory not looking at the rules! I was trying to get away with using 3" hexes. I'll have to pull out my ships and measure the bases to be sure, I may also have settled on 4". The triremes are not the larger sized ship either.

I know they're not the largest, but they may be the largest I can get on a 4" hex mat.

[CHolgren]

So Eric, I broke down and bought GMT serpents of the seas to pass the time until until SGN comes out. The duel map makes for a nice compact game as all the charts are on the map. I saw a blog that used 1:4800 tumbling dice minis, which at 1 inch to 200ft, fit inside the 1/2 inch hexes. I'm going to paint these and use them instead of the tokens that come with the game.

I'm working on two Langston minis and have realiZed that I don't have the patience and dexterity anymore for gluing rigging. So ANY aside I'm not sure 1:1200 modelling is for me.

We've enjoyed the flying colors game system, not sure if war galley is that dissimilar, but I would say go for it if Roman Seas hasn't worked out.

[calm]

We've enjoyed the flying colors game system, not sure if war galley is that dissimilar, but I would say go for it if Roman Seas hasn't worked out.

I have "Flying Colors/Ship of the Line" sitting in the shelf, colecting dust

Never had the time or the inclination to learn/play the system. Considered purchasing Serpents of the Sea, but droped the idea for the reasons above

[7eat51]

Do you have their Ship of the Line expansion? I am looking forward to Blue Cross, White Ensign.

I picked up War Galley. I usually regret when I wait too long. The games have a tendency to sellout and then the prices soar on ebay. Thanks to Daniel (Berthier), I was alerted to a cheap copy of Ironclads on ebay, so I should be set for naval games for awhile, unless I start looking at WWI.

I do like the quality of the GMT games I own.

[CHolgren]

Do you have their Ship of the Line expansion? I am looking forward to Blue Cross, White Ensign.

I picked up War Galley. I usually regret when I wait too long. The games have a tendency to sellout and then the prices soar on ebay. Thanks to Daniel (Berthier), I was alerted to a cheap copy of Ironclads on ebay, so I should be set for naval games for awhile, unless I start looking at WWI.

I do like the quality of the GMT games I own.

I don't have Ship of the Line. I wanted to stay away from large fleet actions. Serpents has 1-1, 1-2 and 2-2 ship duels so a lot less to track while you're playing. The duel map has ship status areas for the vessels involved in the battle.

I preordered Blue Cross, White Ensign as well. I'm looking forward to the Swedes rather than the Russians.

I was able to pick up a copy of WHH Trafalgar on ebay for $25, so I have another rule system if I ever find myself finishing a small fleet of the Swedes and Dutch. I found it to be a nice quick reference as well.

[CHolgren]

Eric, I was able to get a few tumbling dice 1:4800 miniatures painted this summer for SERPENTS OF THE SEAS. I'll have to post some new pictures. They're nice enough for the small maps and the details are surprising for the scale. Fast painting as well since I'm not going for museum quality.

[Devsdoc]

Eric, I was able to get a few tumbling dice 1:4800 miniatures painted this summer for SERPENTS OF THE SEAS. I'll have to post some new pictures. They're nice enough for the small maps and the details are surprising for the scale. Fast painting as well since I'm not going for museum quality.

Hi Cory,
Lets see them shipmate
Be safe
Rory

[7eat51]

Cory, these are a must see.

I have mentioned about trying to get my mind around scales, and you bring up 1:4800. Does the madness ever end?

[CHolgren]

Rory and Eric,

This is the best picture I could get. There's a dime for reference.

Primed white, hulls are brown, masts, ratlines and spars are black. Water isn't completely finished on all models. Three frigates, one brig, two sloops and a cutter. These work perfect for GMT sea maps. The hull fits with the base just going over the hex borders.

I think these give the game a better aesthetic without a huge time commitment to get them game ready.

[7eat51]

Incredible. Thanks for sharing Cory.

Here is the link to Tumbling Dice naval minis: http://www.tumblingdiceuk.com/produc...ry/12400-naval

[Devsdoc]

Nice Cory,
What size thread do you use for rigging. Love the ships, love the price.
Be safe
Rory

[CHolgren]

Nice Cory,
What size thread do you use for rigging. Love the ships, love the price.
Be safe
Rory

I was thinking spider silk. I could just go outside find a spider and let it spin a web.

[7eat51]

I just came across this website: http://ncc1717.wordpress.com/past-mi...naval-warfare/

The host wrote some ancient naval rules and provided the following links to the pdfs:

http://ncc1717.files.wordpress.com/2...revision-3.pdf

http://ncc1717.files.wordpress.com/2...1-3-border.pdf

[7eat51]

Eric, I was able to get a few tumbling dice 1:4800 miniatures painted this summer for SERPENTS OF THE SEAS. I'll have to post some new pictures. They're nice enough for the small maps and the details are surprising for the scale. Fast painting as well since I'm not going for museum quality.

I just ordered quite a bit from Tumbling Dice. I am really looking forward to trying these out, both in terms of game play and painting.

Cory, what type of primer and paints did you use? Any specific brand? Thanks.

[CHolgren]

Eric,

I used Armory primer that I bought from www.thewarstore.com. No particular reason, I think I was ordering figures that I needed to prime and paint. I Think it works just fine,but Ican't comment on other brands.

I've used Tamiya acrylic paint, in the flat variety, I always ordered it from tower hobbies, for all the painting I've done to this point. Again, no particular reason, just what I had on hand from previous painting. I hope that helps. If you order from tower it shouldn't take too long since they're in Champaign.