Slitherine

The Lepanto 1571 historical scenarios (single and multi-player) are great. It would be wonderful if it was developed into a skirmish battle, so that it could be used in a MP campaign to resolve naval battles.

William,

the skirmish is fun as long as you don't think its a recreation of Lepanto. This is a mobile artillery fight where the shooting is devastating and its almost impossible to reach the enemy fleet for a boarding fight.

the actual battle was fought between two huge galley fleets. The galleys had a few light guns that did a little damage before the ships crashed into each other and fought a series of hand to hand battles. The galleys didn't have rams like the Greek and Persian galleys of classical fame.

The only really effective artillery was carried by the Allied Galleasses who fired broadsides as the Turks rowed past them. In this game the Galleasses fire to the front the same as the galleys. The Turks rowed past them because they were too high to board, they survived the battle virtually unscathed. In this game the Turks sink them with cannon balls.

The Christian fleet won the hand to hand combat for a number of reasons. The Knights of St John wore full armour and were almost invulnerable to the Turkish weapons. Most of the Christian rowers were free men, the ships that used slave rowers freed them before the battle, the rowers were armed and fought, so a Christian galley had many more fighting men than a Turkish one. The Turks did free some rowers, but as they were Christians their reliability was questionable. When the Christians boarded a Turkish galley they freed the rowers and they grabbed weapons and joined in.

The creator of this game did a lot of work creating an interesting game, and I'm not trying to put him off creating other games, but as a historical refight it doesn't work for me.

If you wish to use a modified version of P&S to fight battles in our Italian wars campaign this would not be the one to use.

Andre

Lepanto is set up as a historical battle, so the units on each side are fixed.

By the way, the Galleasses can fire broadsides too. 100% recreation of Lepanto would be too lopsided. That is why the Turkish have more firepower... which actually is adjustable based on difficulty setting. The battle is still decided by boarding.

Let me think about a skirmish version.

jomni wrote:By the way, the Galleasses can fire broadsides too. 100% recreation of Lepanto would be too lopsided. That is why the Turkish have more firepower... which actually is adjustable based on difficulty setting. The battle is still decided by boarding.

Let me think about a skirmish version.

Don't go to too much trouble. I am running a "Machiavelli" campaign with potential sea battles. It can be resolved with a die roll, but I was dreaming of a P&S naval resolution instead.