General Wargaming

Galley proofs

Posted by Ochoin on 03 Jan 2017, 06:32

My scratch built Mycenaean galleys.

They began as a way of using a flank march but naturally (much like aerial warfare in WW1) progressed to the two sides trying to interfere with each other.

I'm currently expanding the small fleet & working out some basic (very basic!) movement & melee rules. The concept is to keep it as a skirmish so not to distract too much from the core battle on land, using the core FoG rules.

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donald
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Ochoin  Scotland
 
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Posted by Fire at Will on 03 Jan 2017, 09:15

Nice, but to my eye the masts are much to large
Fire at Will  United Kingdom
 
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Posted by Ochoin on 03 Jan 2017, 10:27

Fire at Will wrote:Nice, but to my eye the masts are much to large

Thanks for the complement & criticism. Both are welcome: particularly from a gamer/modeller of your stature.

As you can appreciate, there is a limit to the amount of information on 3000+ year old ships.
I consulted the archaeological evidence (shipwrecks), various period paintings from Thera, Egypt & other Bronze Age sites & a fair amount of historical comment.....all of which sounds fairly impressive but there is room for lots of guesswork.
No two recorded boats are exactly the same nor is the distinction between merchant & warship always that apparent. So sometimes arbitrary decisions needed to be made in model making for this era.

For example, I decided to leave out rams. These items, debatably used this early, were expensive lumps of bronze & not overly effective: I gather they could tear out, plugging the hole they'd made in another ship, & thus sinking themselves with water rushing in where the ram was. So I'm "guessing" melee was the way most/all combat occurred (see Ramses III's tomb paintings).

The boats themselves were without true keels, which can make sailing difficult. It appears a single, pretty large sail was used on the larger ones. This was strengthened by ropes connecting the mast to the prominent fore & aft posts you can see (this standing rigging has been left out). The running rigging (which I've also left out to facilitate gaming) needed to connect the sail with at least 6 halyards, whilst the whole rig seemingly could be raised or lowered & may have been affixed to the mast with a variable connection.. This quite sophisticated design gave the BA sailors a lot of variation in how much sail was used & which direction it faced.

So the short answer is the mast is tall, the sail is large & this *may* be accurate. Clearly so much has perished from wrecks & "artistic Licence" may distort reality terribly.

cheers, donald
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Ochoin  Scotland
 
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Posted by Peter on 03 Jan 2017, 13:33

Great looking ships Donald! :thumbup:

Now a few more fishermen on them and it will be fantastic! ;-) :joker: :-D
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Peter  Belgium

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