All at sea and stepping up to the streets...

This weekend, an ancients version of 15mm Galleys & Galleons got another run out at an Italian games convention, this time Ludica Marche in Tolentino. The photos of those games (above) give a good idea of what can be achieved with a bit love and time.

Meanwhile in Ireland...

We also had the ancient war galleys out for Galleys & Galleons, albeit much smaller (1/1200) ones. 400 points worth of painted ships in the service of Rome were escorting two merchant ships filled with denarii for the Roman army campaigning in Sicily. The 450 points worth of grey ships in the service of Carthage were attempting to intercept the payment before it reached the hands of the near-mutinous maniples. It was a pretty fast and brutal affair with Carthage sinking one merchant and the other sailing off the board, but not through the required exit zone, thus ensuring a Punic victory.

We chased it down with another play-through of the (now finalised!!!!) Faustus Furius rules which should be out at the end of the month or start of July. There were three of us playing, each running two chariot teams in a street race. Above you can see the 'fast' flying carpet. the 'agile' british chariot, 'heavy' Sumerian battle cart and Chinese 'archer'. Not in this shot were the Persian 'scythed' chariot and the Roman 'heavy archer' carroballista.

As a street race, we had an official start line (red line) and basic track (curved orange arrows), but chariots were able to make use of alleys to take sneaky short cuts as the opportunities arose (purple arrows). I hoped that my agile Briton would be able to zip around through the alleys and make for an easy win. Indeed, she was the first across the finish line at the end of the first lap, well ahead of all the competition. Then the poor girl had a nasty altercation with the front of a temple and in the ensuing crash, had to look on as she was past by everyone! She did manage to flip her chariot over and start up again, but the advantage was lost. After two laps, the Sumerian heavy chariot came through to snatch first place, followed by the archer, with the fast carpet placing third.