Siege of Rhodes ~ Game #2

Different day ~ Same siege.

I took my Siege of Rhodes to my club, NWA for another play test before presenting it a Little Wars Melbourne next Saturday. It was a cold rainy day in Melbourne but the inside of Croydon RSL was warm and dry and the game ran well, if a little slow.

Since it was last played I reworked the naval rules and the improvements worked well. I did away with the d6 and brought the rules in line with Age of Hannibal and the use of d10's. It saved a lot of confusion about which dice to roll. I also added a small damage matrix because the difference when rolling d10's could be too severe.

As a result of this re-write, I've been working the rules a bit further to create my own set of ancient naval rules. There's still a way to go with them but the basic concepts seem fairly sound.

The Game

There was a bit of confusion with players for today's game. It started with James and I and then Mark got roped in. Then Tom (who played the first game) joined in. Then Tom had to leave and Pete took his place. Then Mark was called away... So I ended up playing several of the commands and ended up as Rhodes on the landward attack & Demetrius on the harbour attack. No bother, I my real goal was to the test the game. It actually turned into a good test with players dropping in and out. It proved that the rules are easy to pick up.

This time Mark brought on the naval attack and James the land attack. I started as the Rhodians on both land and sea (until Tom arrived only to be replaced by Pete).

I won't give a detailed account because it was a pretty confusing day. But in brief:

Mark took a different approach compared to the last game. He concentrated on the naval aspect as opposed to the marine landing. As a result ships were maneuvering, shooting, ramming & boarding all over the place. The siege ships managed to batter down the harbour gate. The Rhodian navy took a bit of a hammering but came back swinging.

James' attack on the walls started slow and I thought: Nope, he's not going to get anywhere like this.
But his attack steadily took its toll and he smashed down the gatehouse and a wall section. He got troops onto the walls and I threw them back down. He pushed troops through the breaches in the walls and they took on Ptolemy's veterans and the Rhodian militia with some success. On the right I set one of the siege towers on fire but the wall was brought down and the Macedonians poured into the city resulting in one of the Rhodian generals being captured.

Here's a bunch of pics:

One thing I think I need to make is a few Moral Clocks. Using a d12 works but I kept picking up the dice and rolling it. And I'm the dunce who's supposed to be running the game! Besides that, they'll look better than dice sitting there looking ugly.

And another bunch of pics I stole from our resident club photographer Russel: