Oarful Seas - Ancient Naval Ruleset

 Oarful Seas - New Ancient Naval Ruleset

Hi Everyone! 

Oarful Seas is my new Ancient Naval Ruleset. Primarily used for fighting Punic Wars battles using 1/1200 scale figures. The following is a brief introduction to the ruleset. You can buy a pdf of the rules for $15 AUD at Wargames Vault: https://www.wargamevault.com/product/476638/Oarful-Seas?affiliate_id=3828732

Introduction

Oarful Seas is a fast-play ancient naval ruleset for wargaming fleet actions of 20+ ships per player. Players command multiple squadrons of oared vessels as they ram, shear, board and shoot missiles in an attempt to sink or capture enemy ships.  

The ruleset is designed for 1/1200 scale miniatures using a 6x4 table. A typical game of Oarful Seas will need approximately 20-30 ships per player. Apart from ships, players need a measuring tape in inches, at least two 6-sided dice (though a few more would be useful), and some way of marking slowed, immobilized and wrecked ships.

Ships in Oarful Seas come in various sizes from small biremes to large deceres. Each ship has 5 stats which act as modifiers for various dice rolls throughout the game. The five modifiers are Move, Ram, Grapple, Board and Missile. In general, Roman ships have a lower move modifier, and higher Grapple and Board modifiers. Carthaginian ships generally have higher Move and Ram modifiers, but lower Grapple and Board modifiers. These modifiers can be changed to represent other nationalities, or to represent particular scenario effects (heavily laden ships, ships with larger marine contingents etc.)

In Oarful Seas a Squadron is defined as a unit of approximately 10 ships. A squadron can be smaller than this or larger than this, but 10 should be used as a guiding figure for when planning your orders of battle. Several squadrons form the fleet which the player controls. Typically 2-3 squadrons (approximately 20-30 ships) should work for a 2-hour game. Ships can vary in size within a single squadron.

Generally, two to three squadrons can be comfortably controlled by a single player. Larger games can be played with multiple players controlling 2-3 squadrons each. For larger multiplayer games, it is recommended that each player on a side activates one squadron at the same time. This will speed up the game and ensure that more players are actively focused on the game at a time. For larger games (or even regular games), it might also be useful to have ‘activation tokens’ to place generally near each squadron to keep track of which squadrons have been activated.

There are four scenarios contained in the ruleset to let you fight naval battles inspired by various real punic wars engagements.

Here are some photos from the games I've played. The rules are pretty easy to use, and allow you to take control of quite a number of ships with ease. This game was a Carthaginian victory. The miniatures are 3d prints from the amazing Henry Turner, which can be found here: https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-1-1200-ancient-galley-set-blender-exporter-an-1-292988

The setup for a clash between 25 Roman Ships with Corvus against 28 Carthaginian ships.

A Successful Sinking of a Roman Quinquereme by a Carthaginian Quinquereme. to the right, three ships are grappled and will be conducting boarding actions.

Carthaginians having broken the Roman red Squadron. Their flagship, a Hexareme is beginning to look surrounded.

Thanks for reading about my new ruleset. I'm quite happy with the number of ships it allows me to control fairly easily. Here's the link to buy the rules if you've got this far and are still interested:

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/476638/Oarful-Seas?affiliate_id=3828732