These rules are described as advanced because we feel that some basic understanding of the concept of wargaming and naval battles as well should be generally accepted as understood. This is not a beginners guide to this period. What follows is the turn sequence and the core rules. On the reverse will be a sample control sheet for the fleets involved. TRIREMES 1. Roll Initiative. 1D6 roll. High die roller moves first. 2. High Die Moves ships. Move ships according to plotted speed. Speed range from -2/0/+2/+4/+6. Each speed has a turning limit. -2 turn 90 degrees/0 turn 180 degrees/+2 turn 90 degrees/+4 turn 45 degrees/+6 turn 20 degrees. 3. Bow Fire. Both players fire archers simultaneously. Bows have a 1" range and score a hit on a 1D6 roll of 5 or 6. The target ship will record the casualty against any component on the target ship. 4. Ram Attacks. Ships that came into base to base contact resolve a Ram attack. The attacker consults the positional chart for his base D6 roll. A 90 degrees ram uses 2D6, a 45 degrees ram use 1D6, and anything less uses 1D3. Roll these die and record the damage on the appropriate section of the target that you hit. Use these modifiers: Speed 2" -1D6, 4" + 0, 6" + 1D6. Damage to a target causes these results: 2 sections out on one side of ship = Capsized and sunk. 2 adjacent sections out = Broken and sunk. After Ram attacks. Attacker rolls 1D6 + speed = 10 or greater than the ships are stuck fast and will Melee. Melee is 1D6 oppossed die roll. Looser records difference on his Marine component. 0 Marines means the ship is captured. Ship speed after a Ram. Attacker speed is Zero. Target speed remains the same unless they became stuck. 5. Low Die Roller repeats steps 2-4. 6. Check speeds. All ships plotted to move 6 this turn are moved to 4 for the next turn. 7. Plot new turn speeds and then go to 1 above. What appears below is a ship control form. The sections record the amount of damage the Trireme can sustain in any one section. The numbers in bold are the current speed of the ship. We like to put this sheet over a piece of cardboard and use a push pin to record the current speed. This is a scale model of a Trireme that I edited from a clip art program. Cut it out fold it in half and glue to a 3/4 by 2 inch base. Write the name of the ship on the blue base area. Here is one for a "Red" fleet. Red fleet blue fleet….you know the rest. Here are all of the Greek sounding ship names we used for this game: Democritus, Aristarchis, Lycurgus, Alcibiades, Pelopidas, Epictetus, Eratosthenes, Carneades, Lysippus, Pisistratus, Cleisthenes, Phidias, Hippocrates, Olympias, Draco, Diogenes, Pyrrho, Heraclitus, Apelles, Archimedes, Leonidus I, Miltiades, Parmenides, Thespis, Dionysius, Epicuris, Euclid, Pericles, Aristedes, Anaxagoras, Damocles, Cimon. Back to Table of Contents Penny Whistle #43 Back to Penny Whistle List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Lion's Den Publications. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com