Today Son #2 and I were trying hard to balance work with banishing the sinking feeling which comes from the night before school starts!  So today we set out to play a game as a way to celebrate summer.  I have a table full of Epic 40K set up – an entire imperial city planetscape ready for the Eldar invasion – but no….

So at 5pm we primed and began painting the  starter set from Blue Moon/ Old Glory Shipyards for their Greek vs Early Persian Galley Wars game.  This set comes with one each Persian and Greek triremes, crew figures (7 each) and rules and D20 dice.  This has been in our unpainted inventory for 18 months, but why not….

(Persian vessel above – commanded by the humble Erfan Azar – a captain with little reputation – having only been painted before dinner….)

Below his Athenian adversaries.  The Greek crew had two javelin men, two slingers, the commander and two marines.  Erfan had a slightly different crew composition – one archer, two slingrs, three marines, and his humbleness.

Erfan’s crew would only be whole for one turn – taking one casualty from missile fire for the next three turns in a row.  Straight in said the doughty  Erfan….

The Greeks struck the port side of the Persian vessel, but unlucky rolls meant no penetration – only a glancing blow.  The Greeks decided that grappling was bad – they still held a 4-3 advantage in missile troops and at close range can pick their targets.

A pause to say that the rules used were Galley Wars by Steven Thomas – given their typeface and general style – I would guess late 80’s or early 90’s – but great fun.

A persian marine grappled the Greek vessel on his first try – giving his fellows a chance to begin the arduous task of taking the Greek vessel by storm…

The first round of combat failed – the Persian in the lead failed to cross the gap against his foe.

The melee was linear but eventually the Persian commander was able to cross to the Greek ship and take on the Greek Commander and his two remaining javelinmen….

The javelins cooly took out Erfan’s remaining slingers, leaving the captain to write his own fate…  At this point, because we only had 14 figures in the game we adjusted the melee roles slightly to make them opposed.   In short, if the attacker hit to kill his target, the opposing player got a die roll and if rolling lower than the to-hit die, the defender managed to parry the blow.  Below was the pivotal round when the Greek commander dealt a lethal blow to Azari but he managed a miraculous recovery roll (1 vs the 7 to hit!)

In the end Erfan slew the Greek, then calmly dispatched the slinger and javelinman to become master of  two triremes all to himself….  The name Erfan Azari will live in legend in our Galley Wars game….

Two ships and 14 figures painted in about two hours (while jamming school supplies in backpacks, making dinner etc….)  Tons of fun and a small legend – don’t say anything, but I finally won a game against my wily opponent!

But of course how can one man crew two triremes alone….