Years ago at MOAB I was fortunate enough to be able to by off a retailer a stack of 1/600 scale ancient galleys for a very reasonable price. He was keen to offload them and I was more than happy to take them off his hands. An amicable arrangement was struck and I was duly supplier with a bunch of ancient galleys.
Then they just sat around for a few years forlornly longing for the day when they would be painted and make it to the war gaming table. Well my friends, that day is finally upon us! And what a glorious day it is for the Roman Empire!
Having been bitten by the war gaming naval bug recently I have set upon the unenviable task of getting these lads to the gaming table. So far I have nine Roman galleys painted and others of a non-Roman persuasion are still on the painting table. So more posts to follow on this.
Given these are Roman ships I have given them a consistent paint scheme to differentiate them from non-Roman galleys. The obvious choice was to go with a red colour scheme. Sadly the highlighting in a different red hasn't really stood out and so the paint job doesn't quite pop the way I was hoping it would.
I posted about some of these ages ago when I first started to paint them. But I then put them on the 'to-do' shelf unfinished. Finally I have kicked myself into gear and gotten back on to these lads.
Above is a Skytrex Roman Quinquireme. This will be a command ship for an admiral or sub-admiral and so I have mounted it on a base and had the sail permanently affixed to the model. This is to make it stand out on the table when the inevitable carnage of ramming occurs and knowing just where the command ships are will become important in the game.
Above is a Xyston Roman Trireme. Given that most ancient galley battles would have occurred with the sails and masts left on the nearest shore in order to save weight and increase rowing mobility, I felt it better not to add them. I am experimenting with rare earth magnets as an idea of being able to attach a sail when the scenario calls for it, such as chasing pirates. If it works I'll post about how I was able to do it.
And lastly, we have a Xyston Roman Quinquireme with a Corvus. Still at a scale of 1/600 this lad is smaller than the Skytrex model. But given there were something like fourteen different versions of a Quinquireme apparently, that doesn't matter. In fact this will also double as a Quadrieme.
Once I get through the current lot of galleys, I hope to add to the individual fleets and amass of small (very small) naval power. My plan is to use the Uncharted Seas rules for this as it lends itself to large naval engagements and I couldn't be bothered learning a dozen different rule sets to play at various fleet scales.
I'll have to come up with some house rules for galley rowing and fatigue, use of the Corvus and some specific Critical Tables for Oar Ranks, Broadsides and Rudder Strikes. So more on that someday in to the future.
