The battle that set the next 200 years of history, a sea battle of the coast of Greece in 31 BC. Are there any games that allow it to be recreated. It is most famous as a naval battle, but there may have been a land engagement. Famously Anthony & Cleopatra ran away/strategically retreated.
Rules
I have found rules, at Board Game Geek, also at Navwar which push Fetherstone and Bath’s books. Navwar also have 16th century mediterranean galley rules and also offer minis.
See also
- https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/86872/a-16th-century-mediterranean-galley-wargame#buyacopy also at Nav War http://www.navwar.co.uk/nav/default.asp?MMID=106
- Donald Featherstone’s Naval War Games ebook, from Amazon, I bought this; Chapter 8 is Ancient Battles, with rules for wind, moves, complement, ramming, grappling, boarding, missile fire, grounding; this seems to require quite a lot of accounting which would make large scale battles a pain. The book is also advertised at http://www.wargaming.co/recreation/details/dfnaval.htm, Tony Bath is credited with much invention & given a design credit in Featherstone’s book. Featherstone’s rules use measurements not hexes.
- Games Workshop’s “Man O’War”, now out of print, while containing strong fantasy elements, deals with the accounting well. It’s expensive, although the rules are available separately from the fleets and their score cards.
Brian found this compendium on board game geek, which includes
- Ancient naval wargames rules 500bc to ad500 which is commented as designed for speed of play, available at uk.nobleknight.com ~£30
- Via two battle games in the list, I found War galley naval warfare in the ancient world which is described as historically comprehensive and yet quick and easy to play, and having a bunch scenarios including Action, the two scenarios, implemented as separate games listed in the compendium are Salamis and Arginussae.
- It also talks of Bireme & Galley which is also available via Board Game Geek and noble knight also. $35 or $125. Designed for scale .
Mini’s
Nav War sell miniatures at various scales, http://www.navwar.co.uk/nav/default.asp?MMID=79, as do Lasercast; https://lasercast.bigcartel.com/product/2mm-scale-triremes-and-quinqueremes
But the battle consisted of about 900 ships.
Actium 95
Actium 95 seems out of print with little 2nd hand market. But here is the internet archive copy of the game publisher’s page.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3789/actium
The publisher’s page is on the internet archive
https://web.archive.org/web/20160221035317/http://www.historienspielegalerie.de/ dated 2016
from the pictures this maybe more like go than a decent battle game
What actually happened?
Wikipedia has a page and section dedicated to the battle.
I think any battle specific rules would need easy to define asymmetric victory conditions, and would need rules for artillery i.e. ballistae, boarding and melee, and morale because Anthony’s fleet was of low morale and suffered multiple desertions, arguably including both Anthony & Cleopatra themselves.

Image Credit: by George E Koronaios CC 2019 BY-SA via wikipedia
I updated the comments about Featherstone’s book, which i have now bought, and added a comment about GW’s Man O’War.