Paper ships for next 6x6 gaming challenge - games 1 and 2

With a few paper ships made it was time to play a couple of games using the Galleys and Galleons by Ganesha games, which is my next 6x6 gaming challenge. I played two games, the first one with my daughter who was visiting over Easter and was kind enough to offer to play,  and the second was a solo game.

Spanish Galleons

English Galleons

The first game was a bit of a hoot as both players tried getting to grips with the sailing rule mechanics of the game. Some missed activations saw one of Spanish galleons merrily sailing off the board.  The remaining Galleons fought  it out with the English who suffered badly after a successful boarding action and some excellent broadsides by the remaining Spanish galleon. A win to the Spanish and my daughter who was delighted to have won.

Game 1 - only one photo was taken of the game itself

Looking up and remembering the multiple special rules was quite frustrating in the first game. So for the second game I converted these various special rules into some galleon statistics. So rather than just quality and combat, I had quality, shooting value, boarding value, and defence value. This helped speed up the combat quite significantly in the second game.

Start of the second game

Spanish galleons split by the reef.

A successful boarding action by the Spanish

A second Spanish win

By the end of the second game, a second Spanish victory, I had certainly come to grips with the basic rules. I liked the activation approach which works very effectively as the galleons manoeuvre to try and gain the advantage over their opposite number. The effects of combat also get factored into the activation process and the level of risk you want to take when rolling for successful actions.