I ventured out to the Barn today to give Galleys and Galleons, by Ganesha Games a try. The game seems fairly simple, but there is more to it than meets the eye. The primise is that the active player desides how many "Action" dice he wants to roll (1, 2, or 3) and he can perform one action for each die roll equal to or higher than the vessel's quality. This means the player can take one action, (turn, shoot, reload, grapple, etc.) for each passing die. However, if an activation roll has to dice below the ship's quality, the opposing player becomes active. But, before that happens, any ship on the side that has failed the ativation roll must move any of its vessels that have not yet moved in the turn. That's all they can and must do, move. Unless a vessel has a special ability that allows it, a ship can only make 1 forward move and 1 direction change per turn.
With that understanding, Let's look at the game. I pitted 3 Race Built galleons versus 1 War Galleon, 1 Carrack and 1 merchant. The Race Built ships can spend and activation die to move an extra short move during its turn. The Carrack can only turn 1 point instead of two. The other two galleons have no modifiers to their movement.
A Race Built Galleon
Each side started in opposite corners, the Race Builts won the initative, and moved first.
Numbers and Compass Rose by Litko
Ship 1 rolled two passes on activation and used one for the Razee bonus (the extra short move).
Movement and shooting ranges are measured with the three range sticks. The red one is for long range / fast movement, the green is for short range / slow movement, and white (not shown) is for medium range or movement (note: the colors are notspecified, its just what I did). In this instance, ship one passes on its second activation because it doesn't have anything else it needs to do.
Ship 3 rolled triple 5s. This is 3 activation passes and any pair or more causes the wind to change direstion by a compas point (not the two shown above). So, he makes a turn to starboard and uses the Razee bonus move.
The other side rolled poorly, failing two of the three activation dice. Ship 4 (the one rolled for) got to use its one pass to turn, then all three made their mandatory forward move.
Skipping forward a bit, Side 123 is moving between the islands while side 456 tries to regroup. Then, disaster!
Ship 1 fails on two activation dice. Since he was the first roll for their side it means ships 2 and 3 can only move straight ahead. So, while Captain Foghead contemplates the shapes of the clouds, his ship plows into the island at fast speed. The Queen will not be amused. For his one action, ship one fires a shot for no effect.
Fleet 456, gaining some semblence of order (for a moment), have Ship 1 nearly surrounded. Ship 2 is sailing to the hinterland and Ship 3 has taken up residence on Gilligan's Island. Fleet 456 fires at Ship 1 and inflicts one point of damage.
While ships 4 and 6 merrily sail on their way, ships 1 and 5 continue to fail activation rolls and sail off the edge of the board. Neither the Queen or the King will be amused. (Ship 5 was the War Galleon and managed to keep him self well away from the two merchant ships he was supposed to protect, as well as from the enemy for the most part.)
And Ship 2 watches his intended prey sail off into the sunset.
As I said at the beginning, there is more here than meets the eye. I now see that rolling three activation dice when a ship only needs one, is courting disaster. Rolling one die may mean that that ship only moves straight ahead, but it will give the other ships a chance to activate. It is also wise to choose which ship to activate wisely.
The mechanics are easy to grasp and the rules are generally well written, though there are a few holes needing patching (for example, they allow chain shot to damage rigging, but don;t tell you how this damage affects the vessel. In all other instances, damage is damage which affect the ships overall ability to function and is allocated to the vessal as a whole and not a particular area of the ship.)
When I bought these rules, I was looking for something to recreate "Spanish Armada" style actions. I think with the "Special Rules" (like the Razee option) and a couple of other minor tweaks these rules would make for an interesting fleet game.
In the future, I'll do two things differently. First, I'll make square measuring sticks so that they don't roll off the table. Second, I'll make 1 and 2 point turning guages.
Thank you, and happy gaming.
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