MOVES : HOW TO..

At the ground scale of Hotz ships (1/300) it is not practical to have a long time scale. With a long game turn the models will simply travel too far each turn and the table needs to be very large.

With a shorter turn ships stay within the table area but the trick is find a period within which something meaningful can happen without stretching things too far.

I chose a 'ship's length' : the length of a trireme, as an arbitrary unit of distance. This is circa 35m and roughly equates to a Greek plethron which was 100 feet.

The fastest ships can make circa 10 knots in a burst of hyper-energetic rowing.

I mashed some figures to give ship speeds of 1 to 5 ship lengths corresponding to a range from 1 to 10 knots ( ish ). 5 ship lengths is 575 feet which would take 95 seconds at 1 knot or 9.5 seconds at 10 knots. This arithmetic mess allowed me to justify an average game turn of one minute! ....phew

In one minute two warriors can exchange blows with time for one to despatch the other. An archer can shoot several arrows, a light bolt shooter make a shot and marines can run along the deck of a ship some distance. Enough.

This was not enough to allow movement to be executed in an interleaved way which gives a sense of simultaneity. For this I chopped the game turn into 5 phases - these ended up at 12 seconds on average - short - but could represent up to 30 seconds at a pinch.

Again, seeking to rationalise/justify this I would say that a game with 1/1200 or smaller models could be played with un-segmented moves , a simpler system but at 1/300 the extra resolution is necessary to make an exciting game with fewer ships on the table. If a squadron of 15 ships gets splattered at 1/1200 scale there can be several moresquadrons still available. At 1/300 a side of more than 15 ships is difficult for one player to control unless the rules become very simple indeed. (At this point I have had visions of using Periplus as the basis for a Hotz game to make everything much more simple...........

The final turn sequence:

Move phase
Move phase
Deck Action
Move Phase
Move Phase
Deck Action
Move Phase
Move Phase
Deck Action

Where did the sixth Move Phase come from ? That is a card for FATE. When it is turned players must take a FATE / Random Events card which allows the injection of some atmospheric 'colour'.

Then the cards are shuffled and next turn starts.

Now what happens in each phase ?

(photo from Olympias site)