Galleys and Galleons

With my very limited, but very positive experience of the mechanics of the Songs of Blades and Heroes game family I was interested in how Galleys and Galleons might play out.  For the cost and download can't go wrong.  Ganesha Games

I took my tweaked French 1st rate and gave Stephen my partially tweaked British ship-of-the-line.  These are the Sails of Glory models.

We had a 120cm by 120cm playing surface and used the appropriate measuring sticks and things fitted well.

I had partially read the rules and and had some familiarity with the mechanics.  Stephen hadn't read the rules and had only the briefest familiarity with the mechanics.  So, understandably we got off to a slow, but positive start - the rules are laid out well and easy to follow.

I classed both ships as War Galleons, which meant they were Quality 3 and Combat 4 which seemed right.  They had a host of abilities, but these were easy to keep track of.

With just one ship each, we found it best to just roll our three dice each move.  The more we played the quicker it got.  After starting with some long range broadsides we circled round and closed for action.  Stephen finished off my crippled ship with a last blast from his mutually crippled ship and my boat lost its battle with the waves and sank.

I need to make a template for the wind effect on the ship and I'm looking forward to playing again with more ships.

What I liked was that it was simple with meaningful moves and decisions.  It also has lots of promise for multi-players, different ship types, fleets and monsters.

Only issue might be its suitability for Napoleonic naval warfare.  I will have to give that some investigation.

This blog has a lot of good stuff on the rules:
 http://doctorphalanx.blogspot.com.au/search/label/Galleys%20%26%20Galleons