RAM SPEED CYBERBOARD GAMEBOX

RAM SPEED

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This is a gamebox for Metagaming's RAM SPEED game, a nifty little entry in the Microhistory series from Metagaming. Since I'm lazy and wanted to do the naval microgames in my collection first (blue hexes for the maps...), I converted Ram Speed into a Cyberboard gamebox next.

What's

In the Box.

RAM SPEED is copyright, Games Research Group, 1980..

Designer: Colin Keizer
Editing: Howard Thompson

This gameset goes beyond the designer's intent for the rules and countermix, mostly because I needed to add a few items to accomodate the turn sequence. To make life easy for the players, I included Status Pads for the ships, markers for double speed and triple speed, etc.

The Action

A

Tense Moment in RAM SPEED

The graphic above shows a pretty hot but unbalanced engagement-- 1 bireme, 1 pentaconter, and 2 Triremes (white force) taking on a Quad and 2 Triremes (brown force). One pentaconter has engaged the force already and lost oars, and is now adrift. The white bireme has suicidally charged into the Quad, taking some hull damage but managing to grapple. The two white triremes have picked up the speed (double and triple) a bit in hopes of shooting for a ram.

Status Boards and Weapons Complement

I also added Ship Status Boards and Ship Status Pad markers to put on the board. The players can keep track of their ship's status without having to resort to pencil and paper. In this screen shot, the white force pictured in the action shot above is displayed. Bireme K has suffered 2 points of hull damage (the pink circle with Roman Numeral 2), and is grappled. K has two marines and a catapault aboard. Pentaconter L has received some rowing bank damage, and cannot steer, thus the drift marker. L has two marine units, and two archers. Trireme Q has taken no damage, has four marine units, 2 archers, 1 arbelest, and 1onager aboard. Trireme S has also taken no damage, and has a host of marines-- 8, plus an onager aboard.

Status Cards

How to get the files

Download Gamebox:

Ram Speed Gamebox (zipped) (O'Hara version-- closer to the original Metagaming graphics)

Ram Speed Gamebox (zipped) (Deponti Ezio version-- different graphics)

Download Scenarios:

There are no historical setups for RAM SPEED, which is a lot more "ad-hoc" of a game than FIRE WHEN READY. I'm going to get to Actium one day, though...

But WAIT! There's MORE!

Related Links:

Ships of the Ancient Greeks (A WONDERFUL site... lots of material, images, etc.)

Ancient Galleys (An article by Stephen Schulz.. nice technical descriptions of the ships in RAM SPEED)

BIREME: history of the ship (syllabus, notes and pretty good bibliography for UK archeological course)

Ancient Greek Boating and Sailing (good easy to digest overview of nautical technology of RS)