Some Games Played

While my college friend was in town for a business trip we played a few games of Galleys and Galleons.  We played a quick intro game one night with one ship per side, a galley and a pirate junk.  We missed some key rules, but he decided that it was worth playing again.  He sent me a 200 pt. fleet, which I designed and 3D printed.  His fleet featured several creatures, while mine was comprised entirely of galleys.  Over then next few days we played most of the scenarios.  There seemed to be a fair balance between designing a fleet, making decisions on the table, and lucky dice rolls.  I seemed to make a lot of bad dice rolls, with several of my galleys surrendering before inflicting much damage.  In the "Treasure Island" scenario none of my explorers found treasure, and two of the crews were "invited for dinner".  His explorers discovered two treasures.  They ended up being fun, but the coffee table we played on was a bit cramped.
The gridding project has also made progress.  The wife and I went to a fabric store and purchased a 3' length of duck cloth (heavy canvas).  She designed a hexagon grid stencil which was cut out on her Cricut.  The next step is to tape all the stencils together, lay them over the fabric, and spray paint the grid.  Hopefully, this will be accomplished soon. 
My galley fleet is in the process of being painted.  The hulls and superstructure are red, while the oars and rams are yellow.  Being styled after ancient galleys, they all have eyes which will be painted white with black pupil.  My friend's fleet is probably too eccentric to have much reuse value, but my wife has claimed the monster shark for her yet-to-be-designed fleet.  Her fleet will be pirate themed and feature mostly square rigged vessels. I'm also designing other fleets to play with which will likely include; a merchant fleet, a "Royal Navy" of large battleships, a "Swedish Archipelago" fleet of galleys, and hopefully a Viking themed dragon fleet.  None of these fleets will pay much attention to being properly historical.  The initial intent is to contrive a world in which they would all interact with each other. 
Now that I write this all down, it seems like I have a lot of plans.  Hopefully they all come to fruition. 

A Sudden Change In Direction

This blog may be rapidly changing directions.  I was getting a little tired of trying invent rules that I could play solo or with a friend, especially when the wife isn't interested in military history.  The blog won't be going away, but it won't be predominately Napoleonic anymore.
While re-watching Pirates of the Caribbean, I asked my wife if she'd be interested in a game where she controlled a few pirate ships.  She seemed somewhat interested so I went looking for a simple naval ruleset.  I found Galleys and Galleons a few days later.  Since then, I have been designing my own ship models, in the same clean, simple, cartoonish style as my Napoleonic model ranges. 
I have played a few test games with a buddy and enjoyed them, but think I might adapt the rules to hex grids to make the game less tedious for my wife.  It should be relatively easy since the ranges are almost perfect multiples of the short range. 
My goals of a cheap and compact wargame remain unchanged, but the focus will likely shift from Napoleonic to Naval Piracy.  The level of concern for historical accuracy will also likely diminish.  Our fleets may be more galley heavy than historically accurate.  My proposed fleet even has a few bireme style ramming galleys without cannons. 
In conclusion, I still intend to post updates here, but the Napoleonic project has been pushed to the back-burner for the foreseeable future.