Cruel (Grey) Seas: Ambush Battle Report

This weekend, Mike, Stan and I got together for a game of Cruel Seas. Mike has already posted the British point of view on his blog here. I had hoped to have my new submarine painted for this game but I had only got as far as basing it.

We had some more large ships painted up so we decided we would play scenario 6: Ambush. I was going to take both the Minesweeper and the Flak ship as the 2 large ships but decided that would be to unbalanced so ended up with the Flak ship and the Tanker that we used in the previous game. For an escort I took and S-38 and an S-100 with a veteran crew.

The British had a Farmile D with a veteran crew and 3 Vosper MTBs (I think one of those should have had an inexperienced crew but we forgot about that)

The British start on the far side of the table and the Germans will enter on the bottom left corner and will move to the left until they spot an enemy vessel (which happens if any go faster than slow or get withing 60cm).

Since the large ships are so slow, my plan was to bring out the S-Boats first  and try to sink the British before they fire their torpedoes or at least to force them to fire them earlier than they otherwise would.

The battle started in earnest when the Farmile launched a torpedo hoping to catch the tanker as it cleared the island. My S-100 fired at the Farmile but missed.

The S-38 faced off against the 3 Vosper MTBs

The S-100 got an engine critical hit on the Fairmile

 Both of the big ships are now on the table and the torpedoes are starting to head towards them

The Fairmile managed to finish off the S-100 but it did suffer a second engine critical from  the Flak Ship.

The next turn has a lot more destruction, the Fairmile is finished off by the Flak Ship and the S-38 is taken out by the Vospers -- but since a bunch of British dice were drawn in a row, on of them ended up crashing into the burning wreck of the S-38. At this point both my escorts were done and I had been quite lucky dodging the torpedoes from the Fairmile.

This luck would change as 3 torpedoes from the Vospers hit the tanker --48 dice of damage later the tanker was just a burning wreck.

The Flak ship had also taken a torpedo hit but was still steaming forward at 12kts. It completely outguns the remaining 3 Vospers but it is big and slow and easy to hit.

At the end the Flak Ship is overwhelmed but there is only one Vosper left. The British have won but at great cost.

I think we have a better sense of balance for the game now. I had another issue with the use of the speed bands on the to hit tables. My flak ship was traveling at full speed (12 kts) and was not easier to hit even though that speed is slower than most craft would be at slow speed -- where they would be penalized. I am not sure yet how I want to tune the to hit tables to match that -- we came to an agreement about what was "fast" and "slow" but this will need to be codified by the time I run the game at Cangames.

Keeping the wrecks on the table was interesting (and I think makes the table look a lot better). I think according to the rules the ships should be removed immediately but this seems to be more fun so we will stick with it for now.

Hopefully next game I will have some targets to fire my torpedoes at and we probably should try the aircraft rules, though I am not sure that having air attacks in the middle of a naval battle makes any sense (even in a game that is as "cinematic" as this)

Cruel Seas -- Review

I have always had an interest in Naval Warfare – when I first got into miniature wargaming in a serious way some of the first models I got were 1/2400 ships. At the time there were several people in the club into naval gaming and we played a variety of different games: WWI fleet actions, big WWII battles, smaller actions from both wars and some Napoleonic Naval. We used a variety of rules from General Quarters to Command at Sea to Seekrieg and a homebrewed mix of Seekrieg and Command at Sea. As people moved in and out of the club and interests changed naval games fell mostly to the wayside.

I gave some thought as to what I wanted out of a naval game and realized I was more interested in smaller ships such as destroyers so I picked up a few 1/1200 miniature ships as well as some 1/700 models and looked around for some rules but never really found anything that made me bring the ships to the table.

Unsurprisingly, when Warlord Games announced Cruel Seas last year I was interested. I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the money but when Mike told me he had pre-ordered the starter set, I agreed to split it with him and paint up the Germans. We played 2 games at the club and decided to buy the German and British fleets. I played with the “larger” ships that came with the German box last weekend and that played well.

I really like this game and the models. I think it evokes the speed and chaos of a duel between these small ships, there are enough important decisions to be made that it is not decided completely by luck but at the same time there is not much that is tedious in the game. The miniatures are really nice and the choice of scale (1/300) is very good for ships of this size – and lends its self to creating some interesting terrain which is something that is often missing in naval games. Having said that, I will go into a bit more detail with some of the components and ideas in the game but even though I have a few issues in some areas I would still recommend the game to anyone with an interest in World War 2 naval gaming.

Miniatures

In the starter set I got 4 plastic German Torpedo boats (2 earlier S-38 and 2 later S-100). The boats went together well and look really good when they are finished. I was a little annoyed that there really was no choice in the armament – there was choice on the data card but there were no extra guns on the sprue. Warlord has since announced a weapon set for each nation which has a selection of weapons which could be used to have some variety but after playing a few games I am not sure that it really matters that much (although the metal guns from the weapon set have crew which I think does improve the look – if I were to get more S-Boats I would buy the weapon set just for that reason.

The British got 6 Vosper MTBs in the starter set and they look good as well – I am not sure what choices they have for weaponry but there is a weapon set for the British as well. The Tanker hull was apparently a bit warped when it arrived but Mike straightened it out in some hot water and it looked good when I saw it on the table.

In the German fleet box, I got another 4 S-Boats as well as a Vorpostenboot flakship and an M-Class minesweeper. Both of the larger ships were resin hulls with metal details. They both went together well and there were no real problems with assembly – there were some ladders that could be cut up and added to the flaskship but it was not really clear where they should go, so I didn’t bother with them.

There are a large variety of camouflage patterns that you can find to paint the ships. Ed actually painted the ships for me. He said that they painted up really well and there were lots of details to paint up but they still painted relatively quickly.

There is a good breadth of miniatures available from Warlord with fleets from Germany, Britain, Italy, the US, the USSR and Japan though the number of ships for each nation is on the small side. And weirdly, given that the Italian navy had quite a large range of smaller vessels, 2 of the Italian ships are actually German (the Motozattera is a German lighter and the Marinefahprahm is a FlaK lighter).

For some more variety there are some 1/300 and 1/285 landing craft from the manufacturers of ground forces in that scale (GHQ and Heroics and Ross spring to mind but there are others). For larger ships, Warlord recommends 1/350 models – Trumpeter seems to be the main maker in this scale. I have ordered a Liberty Ship to see just how fiddly these models are.

I am planning to base the ships – both to provide a bit of protection to the model but also to have somewhere to put the name or hull number so that players can more easily keep track of which ship is which

Rules

The rulebook is a bit sloppy and there was a bit of a fuss about the length of the errata sheet that Warlord released but it didn’t have much affect on most games (it was mostly about mines and some clarifications). I think the rulebook does work out of the box but it would have been nice if there had been a bit more editorial effort – The background information which is otherwise quite interesting suffers particularly from this

Initiative is determined using the “Bolt Action” method where one die is placed for each ship on each side in a container and then each time a die is drawn one ship on that side is activated for moving and firing.

A ship can be at one of 3 speeds (Slow, Combat, Full) and can change one level each turn. Turning occurs on each 1/3 of Full speed and at each increment the ship can turn up to 30 or 45 degrees. The ship must move its full movement each turn which combined with the turning rules does restrict movement quite a bit but since there is no pre-plotting it seems to work well – We have had some interesting traffic jams in our games and collisions in 2 of them.

For each knot of speed the ship moves 1 cm. Since the torpedo boats have top speeds of 40+ knots and the larger ships have top speeds between 10 and 20 kts the faster ships really do set the tone of the battle (which is very appropriate for the game).

The weapon ranges help with this feeling a 20mm gun (one of the more common calibers) has a range of 50cm so the torpedo boats can move in and out of range in a single turn. Larger guns have a larger range (and some of the biggest guns have a minimum range). This works well for the game but I would have to guess that for these battles in real life the range of weapons would be more about aiming than the calibre of the gun and most weapons would be effective as far as the crew could see.

The damage for the different guns also seems a bit arbitrary but again it seems to work well for the game. Damage ranges from 1d6 for MGs to 8D6 for 4” or greater guns (and mines and torpedoes do 12D6 and 16D6 respectively). The German S-100s have 65 hull points and the Vosper MTB has 40 hull points so it doesn’t take many hits to sink the smaller vessels. There is also a critical hit system where each 6 that is rolled on a damage die will cause a critical hit which can do extra damage, start a fire or damage some equipment on the target vessel. 

Combat resolution is straightforward, each gun will hit on a 5 or less with a set of modifiers based on range, crew quality,  speed of the shooting vessel and the size and speed of the target vessel. For the most part these modifier work well for the game except there is a -2 modifier if the firing ship is at full speed (all the other modifiers are based on actual speed value not on a speed setting). While this may make sense for an S-Boat at 42 knots (the bow is so high at this speed that the forward gun was considered unusable) but it doesn’t make any sense for a freighter going at its top speed of 12kts. I think I will keep the -1 modifier for firer at over 30kts and have the -2 for firer over 40kts.

Torpedoes will play a role in most games. Any torpedo armed ship can launch torpedoes at the end of its movement if it is not moving at full speed. Then on every following turn before the launching ship moves, the torpedoes will move 40cm in a straight line. If the torpedo reaches a model that is not shallow draught you roll to hit and then if it hits roll to see if the torpedo is a dud. Given the relative speed (and size) of the torpedo boats to the other vessels, torpedoes are quite effective.

There are also rules for terrain, crew quality, mines and aircraft. All of these seem simple enough and probably won’t occur in all (or even most games)

Components

As well as the rules and figures you get some carboard terrain counters which are good for what they are, wake markers which indicate how fast the ship is going, ship data cards for each vessel, cardboard measuring sticks and some plastic splash markers which indicate misses.

The wake markers are attractive and useful but I think I will laminate them to make them a bit more durable and easier to manipulate them during the game.

The ship cards are attractive and functional (damage is recorded by shifting clips on damage tracks on the top and bottom of the card) but are very hard to read. The font is a little on the small side and the way the information is arranged is not really super useful. I am tempted to make my own that are slightly larger with game information about the weapons as well as firing modifiers directly on the card but, sadly, my graphic design skills are essentially non-existent so that would not look as good as the existing cards

Scenarios

There are 8 scenarios included in the game. The first 3 are teaching scenarios and then the last 5 provide particular situations where torpedo boats would clash such as a convoy battle or one group ambushing another. There is also a basic crew improvement system that could be used for a campaign but could also be used to re-create historical crews or provide balance to existing scenarios.

In conclusion, I think I am hooked on this game but it is likely to remain a side project type game. I am planning to make some terrain for the local con, Cangames, in May but I am unlikely to buy any more ships before then. I have some ideas that would involve landing craft or a sinking larger vessel but I will put off buying anything for them until the time that I want to run them.

Cruel Seas -- Training Mission

Another Cruel Seas battle. Mike counldn't make it today (with the British Fleet and the water coloured battle mat) so Jim and I played a German training battle in the muddy inland waters of the Dutch coast.

I wanted  to use the newly painted ships so I took the Minesweeper, the Flak ship and an S-38. Jim had 4 S-100s. I was going to give one S-100 a veteran crew and Minesweeper a green crew but I forgot (as it turned out it wouldn't have made too much difference)

We started with the minesweeper and its escorts sailing across the diagonal of the table with the 4 S-100s in the opposite corner at slow speed. The objective was for the minesweeper to get off the table at the corner where the S-100s were.

The attacking boats split into 2 groups with one coming straight at the minesweeper between the 2 islands and the other coming around the island to hit the convoy from the side. I accelerated my S-Boat to meet the 2 in the centre. I kept the Minesweeper at 12 knots so that it would not get further away from the flak boat (which has a top speed of 12 knots)

The first gunfire happens between the islands but there are no hits on either side. The lead attacking boat has launched some torpedoes. Given the size of the minesweeper there is no point in trying to turn to avoid the torpedoes, it is better to keep straight towards them and hope they pass on either side.

The minesweeper gets a shot from its 3" guns but it misses as well. The 88mm gun on the flakship does manage to get a hit and damages one of the attacking S-boats

On the next turn the torpedoes reach the the minesweeper but one is a bit wide and the other misses its roll to hit. The S-Boat that fired them has a bit better luck and gets a few gun hits on the minesweeper.

I tried to delay moving my S-boat but kept drawing dice that activate my ships so I ended up colliding with the other S-boat. We both took a fair bit of damage in the collision. (and it prevents the enemy boat from firing at the minesweeper this turn so that is something).

The other ship in the collision was force to turn hard to starboard and head towards its partner but sadly one of its torpedoes hit the minesweeper. It wasn't quite enough damage to sink the ship but in the following turn the other S-boats managed to do enough with gunfire to sink it.

My S-boat also had some rudder issues from the collision and ended up behind the island and wasn't going to have much effect on the rest of the fight. The flakship collided with another S-boat (at least in this collision the bigger ship does more damage to the smaller so I come out ahead -- but don't get to fire any of the 5 guns that are on the ship). One of the flanking ships fires torpedoes at the flakship, and lights a fuel fire with gunfire

The following turn the torpedoes hit the flakship and it is sinking as well. My remaining S-boat decides to flee since it is already heading off the board so it is an overwhelming victory for Jim.

The bigger ships are interesting and I think if they had better luck with the to-hit rolls they could have had a bigger effect on the game.

SAGA Battle Royale: Spanish vs Crusaders vs Eastern Princes

Last weekend Mike, Stan and I got together to play some SAGA. (We had planned to play the weekend before but we decided to postpone because of the snow). Mike has already posted his battle report.

My Spanish force consisted of the warlord, 2 units of 4 hearthguard, 2 units of 8 mounted warriors, 1 unit of  8 foot warriors and 1 unit of 12 crossbow levy. I hadn't really thought about painting a Spanish force but the Spanish mounted warriors and crossbow levy can be in a Moorish force and I had the hearthguard that Ed had painted up long ago when we were going to do a Warhammer Ancients Battle El Cid campaign (a big part of my Saga Moors come from that project). It turned out that I had a big block painting the mounted warriors though. I started painting them just when the new SAGA came out last year and just finished them for this game (and they were sitting on my painting table for most of that time.

As we were starting to set up we realized that the terrain table for the multi-player games (which are played on a  4x6 table rather than usual 3x4) had more terrain types than the basic terrain table and so, naturally, Mike and Stan were demanding lakes and crevasses which I had not made in my terrain making frenzy over Christmas 

After we selected terrain that was actually available we set up. We didn't put a great deal of thought into the setup of either the terrain or our forces and we ended up with me on one side between some wood, Stan in the centre around the rocky hill and Mike in the corner.

The turn sequence of the Battle Royale scenario is quite clever. Each player starts with 6 tokens and when you take your turn you give up one token and then you pass the turn to the player with most tokens (and you can choose if there is more than one with the same number)

In the first few turns we did some manuevering. I got some good use of the Iberia ability which allows the Spanish Jinites (mounted warriors) to react to an enemy movement or shooting to move or shoot (and it is a basic ability so you can put multiple dice on it.

Mike moved a force on my left which did some damage to my but it was isolated enough that I could gang up on it and wipe it out with no further loss to myself

There were no clear sides in the fighting in the centre with everyone attacking everyone else. I probably got involved a bit more closely than I should and took some losses (but so did everyone else)

On the second last turn I used the Jinites! ability which allows a unit of Jinites (no surprise there) to activate as many times as you want (it still suffers fatigue for each activation) and reduces the armour of all its shooting targets by one -- you can only shoot each target once in the turn though. I did quite a bit of damage to both Mike and Stan with this but I didn't get far enough away at the end so Mike managed to catch and kill the exhausted unit. It was quite a fun exchange of Saga abilities and fatigue discarding since Mike had an ability which added the attack dice of another unit (in this case, his Warlord) and I had an ability that removed all his attack dice (Treachery) and it would be better for me if he played his first (it worked out the other way in this case).

The victory points were based on Survival points and Stan had quite a bit more left than Mike or I so he was declared the winner.

My warlord survived the game (which is unusual for me) and I really enjoyed the Spanish board. If I were going to play again I would take 2 units of Hearthguard again but go for 4 units of Jinetes. Since I had such a struggle painting them this time, I probably won't be rushing into actually doing that any time soon.

The Battle Royale scenario worked really well and I will certainly play it again (and who knows, maybe I will have made lakes and crevasses by then)