"Poseidon's Warriors-new Osprey book arrived today." Topic

Poseidon's Warriors, rules for Classical Naval Warfare 480-31BC by John Lambshead and published by Osprey Games, has just arrived at North Star. We weren't expecting it, so it's a nice surprise.

You can order it here:
link

We are offering the book at a special price this weekend only.

Any first impressions or reviews?

I don't think this is officially released until the end of the week, but I wish there was more info available on this game. For example, what sized fleet is recommended?

I also ordered from osprey but it can only be delivered after 16/6. i am also a little puzzled that non of the blurb or marketing says anything about the scale of the game. Still, looking forward to a rare event.. a galley warfare book !

I'm going to wait for a decent review of the rules before going out and buying them. My experience of the Osprey rules is that they tend to be a little clunky.

I am not a galley player but have the rules. Scale is 1/1200. Squadrons are 5 ships or 3 for quadrimes and quinqremes (spelling?). Larger ships are individuals. Looks to me like you will be playing about 6 squadrons or 4 for a very small game.

You have to keep track of the number of oar banks and marines each ship has lost if that is a problem for some. I really enjoyed the primer material on the subject as a someone who has an interest in the period but has read very little about naval warfare.

I've read through the rules, and they look like a good set for fleet actions. They are at a higher level than Corvus (which is great for up to a dozen ships a side).
I'd think Poseidon's Warriors should work for up to 50 or so ships a side.
Hard to say how they play until we've played them.

I'm tempted to try this as a club game using the Roman Seas ships; are the rules scaleable to 1/300th?

The rules suggest doubling the distances and playing on a very big board. I understand the Roman seas can be printed at 1/1200.

I just got my copy, and I'm looking forward to playing.

I do wish that they had given some guidance for number of points for a standard game, or for the size of playing board expected though. You can infer some of that data by reading between the lines. Some references to a "standard 5-6 squadron game" are made, and at around 150pts per squadron (on average), you could expect that after upgrades they might be expecting 1000 point games. Or 750.

Same with table size. I *guess* they're expecting a 4x6 foot table, since some scenarios mention 24" between shorelines, and a "long edge" is mentioned in another scenario.

Maybe I missed the paragraph that spells these things out though, since I was sort of skimming through to get the flavor of the system.

One other odd thing to me was that in trireme battles, a head-on ram is going to kill both ships. There's no roll for successful ramming. If you can make contact and you want to ram, it happens. Likewise, a side-ram will kill a trireme every time. There's little reason with such small ships to bother with oar rakes, though against the really huge ships, it may be the only way to keep their fearsome rams under control.

That seems odd, but it also makes tactics interesting in the "pawn swapping" sense. Larger ships can possibly withstand more damage of course, but for my favorite period (the earliest part of the book), managing those 5-ship squadrons is going to be a challenge.

I haven't played yet, and it may well turn out that my questions are answered on the table. The fact that there is little book keeping in my period is greatly appealing to me, so I'm not that concerned.

(Though I may add an optional rule for side-rams that allows ships to become stuck….)

Head on ram killing both ships sounds about right for triremes. It's a fast play set with lots of ships on the table, which I guess is why there are no rolls for ramming success and the like.

Can I ask a question?
I realise these are "fast play" but unless i missed something ramming is automatic. The rammed ship has to roll a save or take a hull point hit.

Sounds reasonable BUT nearly all ships have a save of 6+ only some don't have a save at all. Most average size ships have 1 ram and 1 hull. i.e. in 85% of cases if you ram your opponent you will instantly sink it.

Whilst not impossible, 85% certainty of sinking a ship on contact seems a bit excessive.

It means i can't see any opint in oar raking or even boarding?

Have i missed something obvious?

I think you have the choice to not actually RAM the ship you're coming into contact with. Then, you could attempt to board, I supposed.

If you hit from the side, you can attempt oar raking, though that only seems useful against really large ships. Triremes with their single hit should probably always just be rammed from the sides.

I run a FB page on this. the author is answering some questions