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.