"Recreating the Battle of Artemesium? Suggestions?" Topic

I'm looking to do some ancient Naval stuff, or at least to indulge my interest in the topic by reading some books about it.

I have this urge to build a ship or two for my Wargods stuff, something like this one:

link

But I'm looking for more photo references, design pictures, something I can use as a base (to modify so that figures with 20mm square bases can fit in it). And I'll need to build an enemy ship or two, too, but I haven't had any luck at all finding pictures of Persian ships.

Can anyone reccomend a good book or three on the subject? Maybe a set of rules that might work? It doesn't have to be a 28mm ruleset, I can make almost anything work by modifying it (which I'm going to end up doing anyways… most of the games that I play end up being half homemade rules, anyways…)

-Alex

Flagship Games' Pirates! rules include an 'ancients' section, covering biremes and the like.

link

If I understand your goals, Pirates! should satisfy your requirements, as they combine ship to ship actions (especially ramming) with boarding actions using 28mm figures.

For reference material, I'd start with the two traditional wargaming sources: Peter Connolly (Greece and Rome at War) and, of course, Osprey link

Hope that helps for a start!

I'm in no way an expert: but I think most of the Persian ships in 480 were Phoenician, and many were Eastern Greek. There were probably omly cosmetic differance between them. If you can, get a copy of Coates and Morrison, "The Greek Trireme", which covers the research that went into builting the "Olympia".

My 28mm fleet consists of seven 1/75th Heller plastic kits, the "Bireme Imperator"; a little dolled up for Greek ships, but I just passed on picking out the glittsey parts when painting. They have two banks of oars, but feature an outrigger – the hallmark of a trireme and something a bireme doesn't need. I think the sculptor was going by some artwork of a trireme with it's lower oars pulled in because of the weather – or at least that's what I told my game Group…

BTW, I love the boat in the Pics.

Well, depending on how ambitious I get with the project, I think I'd like to build two or three Greek Ships, two or three Egyptian ships, and three or four "enemy" (probably Persian-ish) ships. Then somehow add naval stuff to my Wargods campaign (skirmis-sized to begin with).

More realistically, I'll probably just buy a couple of books on the subject, buy a resin Trireme (and assemble – but never get around to painting it!), half-build one Egyptian ship, scratch a page or three worth of new rules in my notebook, but never get around to typing them up, and eventually just stash everything in my closet with a dozen other half-finished projects.

But, HEY! That's the hobby that I love!

-Alex

Hi Alex,

That's MAJORLY AWESOME!

I have to give thumbs up for "Flagship Games' Pirates!" as well!

The best book I have on ancient ships is "Black Ships" by Rosemary Sutcliffe and illustrated by Alan Lee (Tolkien artist).

link

link

It's a kids book with illustrations, but Alan Lee is an amazing artist!

You can get it used for about ten bucks plus shipping… which would be a really good buy at much more.

I have other books, mostly historical books, but none have the rich inspirational value that "Black Ships" does…

And that's really what you're looking for… if I'm not mistaken.

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
6mm-minis.blogspot.com

You are correct, Maxim – pictures that I can use as a basis to build a ship from are exactly what I'm looking for.

Thanks for the links, folks.