Eve of Lepanto

A fun evening at the Berkeley Vale club last night and a welcome chance to get a game in after a few weeeks of enforced absence. Dave N and I took to the Mediterranean yesterday as we tried out my fast play Renaissance galley rules. "Lanterna", a set that some readers may be familiar with,  is a set I wrote some 15 years ago  which were featured in Wargames Illustrated, but which I had largely forgotten about in the intervening decade. A chance find of my old galley collection and a bag of unpainted models that had languished in a box for a decade got me painting up a new mass of ships and fired my interest in developing the rules further, so what we played with was a slight tweak of the original.

Dave and I set up between a string of islands in a fairly traditional linear formation. My fleet had the initiative in the early stages but I wasted the opportunity and over extended which allowed Dave to sweep in and fire the opening shots, which were quite telling as two of my galleys and my Lanterna (flagship) succumbed to incoming fire and were wrecked. I pushed ahead into melee with my right flank, my left holding off and shooting Dave's ships from a distance. 

My flagship and galleass in the centre, a gaggle of bergantias in their wake

My right wing closes to attack. Gaps indicate loses in the gunnery phase of the previous turn, and where has my flagship gone?? (sunk!!)

On both sides the casualties mounted and for a while it looked as though my attack on the right was bearing fruit, but Dave's ships on his right shattered my left wing and my galleass (the Renaissance version of a battleship) succumbed to a boarding action from three enemy galleys and surrendered. As the battle ended my two surviving galleys on the right boarded and destroyed Dave's last Capitan (large galley), but were then hit by a hail of fire. With defeat inevitable my remaining ships surrendered.

My right wing engages. Green markers indicate ships that have fired their main guns (slow reloading), red markers indicate ships that have suffered heavy crew casualties

Near the end. My left wing and centre has been wiped out, only my two galleys on the right (attacking Dave's Capitan) survived to this stage

A fun and very quick game, played to a conclusion in about an hour (one of my aims was to have a set that was quick and easy to play, and suited to aa one day or weekend campaign). I think the rules worked well, as with all things a number of quick and easy improvements were noted and have been embodied in the next draft of the rules.

Thanks to Dave N for an excellent game.

DM