Playing the Battle of Actium

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 | Minis | Actium 95 | History

Rules

I have found rules, at Board Game Geek, also at Navwar which push Featherstone and Bath’s books. Navwar also have 16^th century Mediterranean galley rules and also offer minis.

See also

1. 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 for sale, at this US site. Tony Bath is credited with much invention & given a design credit in Featherstone’s book. Featherstone’s rules use measurements not hexes.
2. 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

1. Ancient naval wargames rules 500bc to ad500 which is commented as designed for speed of play, available at uk.nobleknight.com ~£30
2. 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 is advertised as available for trade at $75 – $150 USD.
3. And Bireme and Galley, see the short list below.

Apart from Featherstone’s rules, this is my short list also at Board Game Geek,

1. Trireme: tactical game of ancient naval warfare which is available for sale via the BGG market place and is on my wishlist. $10-60
2. A 16th century Mediterranean galley wargame for which there seems no BBG market, although claimed to be available at NavWar at under £5.00
3. The compendium mentioned above also talks of Bireme & Galley which is available via Board Game Geek and Noble Knight too. @ $35 or $125. Designed for scale.
4. Ancient naval wargames rules: 500 bc to ad 500, available from Noble Knight for ~$12.00 USD

I also considered one page rules, which AI suggested has an appropriate rule set, but on inspection, it seems not; one would have to check if Grimdark Futures: Warfleets could be adapted. However, I was also pointed at Mantic Games’ Armada, which is designed as a fantasy world naval game; I wonder if the rules could be adapted. NB The basic rules are free to download once one has registered with them and images of ship record cards are also available on the internet. Otherwise they charge for these and they are highly tuned for Armada/Mantic’s fantasy world.

Minis

Nav War sell Renaissance naval miniatures at various scales, such as 1/1200, or 1/300, as do Lasercast; their 2mm scale triremes and quinqueremes page, they are Australian, and while quite cheap per model, their delivery charge is high. (I have bought a pack from them). See also Skytrex who sell 1/600 scale ancient vessels, including Roman. (I have bought a pack from them). When they arrive, I’ll post pictures.

But the battle consisted of about 900 ships, so we really need cheap (and small).

Actium 95

Actium 95, seemed to be a symbolic representation of the battle, and thus seemed more accessible than many other rule sets. But, it seems out of print with little 2^nd hand market. But here is the internet archive copy of the game publisher’s page., dated 2016. It’s also covered on Board game geek.

What actually happened?

Wikipedia has a page and section dedicated to the battle. See also an article at https://brewminate.com/the-defeat-of-antony-and-cleopatra-at-the-battle-of-actium/, at brewminate which I have not yet finished reading, but has good notes on the conduct of 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, ramming, and morale because Anthony’s fleet was of low morale and suffered multiple desertions, arguably including both Anthony & Cleopatra themselves.

Lepanto

It has been suggested that Lepanto might be another scenario worth considering albeit, 600 years later.

Image Credit: by George E Koronaios CC 2019 BY-SA via wikipedia