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)

Cruel Seas Battle Report

Mike and both had our forces for this painted (admittedly, mine were painted by Ed) so we decided to give the game ago at the OMG.

We got two games in. For the first we played the introductory torpedo scenario where I had a tanker escorted by a single S-Boat and Mike had 2 Vosper MTBs that were trying to sink the tanker before it got off the table

My plan was simply to move the tanker as fast as it could go (not particularly fast!) and try and sink the British before they could fire their torpedoes.

I turned towards the British boats and opened fire. I soon realized that firing when traveling at full speed is not likely to hit but when I slowed down on the following turn I got some good hits wiping out one of the British Boats

The remaining boat launched one torpedo (Mike had forgotten to launch at the appropriate time and felt that firing only one was a reasonable compromise when I let him fire then later). The torpedo hit and wasn't a dud doing a lot of damage to the tanker but not quite enough to sink it

Closing in the British were able to sink the tanker with gunfire while the S-Boat was turning around

For the second game we were joined by 2 more player and used all the ships we had 2 S-38s, 2 S-100s on the German side and 3 Vosper MTB 1 and 3 Vosper MTB 2 on the British side.

We (the Germans) went around different sides of the island but the British tried to concentrate against Johns S Boats

There was a collision between one of the S-Boats and one of the Vospers (the smaller Vosper, unsurprisingly, came out much the worse) and some fierce gunfire on both sides. The Germans had an advantage both in firepower and luck and all the British boats were sunk to no losses to the Germans (though 2 of the boats were damaged)

Overall the game was a great sucess and Mike and I have decided to buy the British and German fleet boxes respectively.

I think I will run this at Cangames with some larger ships as targets (either Liberty Ships or something like a Monitor)

Plans for 2019

I didn't do a planning post last year and managed to avoid going terribly off course so maybe I am courting disaster by doing one this year but since one of my goals is to use the blog to keep focused I will go ahead anyway.

My basic goals for the year are to play more and buy less. I would also like to paint more but I have realized I need to be in the right state of mind to do that so I am not going to push that but I will make sure I have my painting setup ready to go when the mood strikes!

These are the games that will be in my mind (and hopefully on the table this year)

SAGA

This was my most played game last year and with the appearance of  the Book of Battles looks likely to be my most played this year. I have created the terrain needed for the Book of Battles (as discussed here ) so my next goal is to paint some baggage and livestock that is required for some of the scenarios

I should finish my Spanish Warriors

But I seem to have a bit of a block with them so I might skip ahead and paint the foot troops for the Franks which I think will give me enough of a force to actually play with them (though not enough to use Roland which is my long term Frankish goal).

Next up will be the Black Hoods mercenary unit and beyond that it gits a bit hazy but I want to get some more units painted for my Islamic forces

The Age of Magic will be coming out this year and I will hopefully finally paint the Revenants and I am tempted to paint some Mantic Games Naiad to use alongside some Vikings

The Walking Dead: All out War
Now that the Motel is finished, my terrain goals for this are to finish the Diner and the office building (I also have a swimming pool and playground to go with the Motel that should get done this year)

In terms of painting, I want to get through the figure from the Made to Suffer expansion and once I get those done (at least the survivors, I feel that I have more zombies than I would need now) I will get the Fear the Hunters expansion -- I have some interest in the Campaign rules, but realistically I know that I won't play enough to actually use them.

I have two side projects that I would like to at least do something with this year -The first is to do Cops vs Narcos using the Walking Dead rules

And the second is to use the town terrain to run Gaslands with 28mmish cars -- The Sunday Drivers expansion for the old Steve Jackson Games Car Wars was always a favourite.

Cruel Seas
I have high hopes for this game but I am holding off buying more until we have played at least one game. If it does play well I am seriously considering running a larger game at CanGames with either an attack on the Monitor HMS Abercrombie at D-DAY or and attack on some Liberty Ships in the English Channel

Team Yankee

I should get the airbrush out and finish of my Soviets but I am not sure if that will happen. I do hope to play some more games of this -- it has always been a fun game in spite of itself.

I am tempted by the Czech Dana Self-propelled artillery but there is too much unpainted to add more to the pile.

Flames of War

The OMG club is running a Stalingrad campaign this year and I will play in that but I have no desire to paint anything (I do have some Soviet SMG troops that are primed that I feel I should paint but I don't think they will actually get done)

Hail Caesar

At the moment I have no strong desire to run this at Cangames and my painting passion is more geared towards SAGA so I think there will not be much movement on this front this year

Boardgames

I am looking forward to another year of Boardgames with the Thursday night group 

SAGA Battle Report Moors (Umayyads) versus Normans

At the recent OMG club day I played a game of SAGA with my Moors in the form of the Umayyad list from the Old Friends, New Enemies list in the Age of Vikings book. I was playing against John Cowen's Normans.

I should probably start with an apology as when I looked up the spelling of Umayyad in the rulebook, I realized that I was not allowed to take the Crossbow unit as all levy needs to be equipped with bow (I had my doubts when I put my list together since they are Spanish mercenaries and don't really make sense for the time of the Umayyads but I wanted to do an all foot force so pushed ahead anyway)

As I was packing up to go to the club Canada Post dropped of a package with my new Mats by Mars 3X4 mat that I had bought especially for SAGA. Naturally, I brought that along with me. I am quite pleased with it, the price was good and it seems durable and it rolls up again neatly and it is lightweight. My only real complaint is that it is a bit glossy -- though not as much in person as it seems in the photos.

John got to pick the terrain and put down the 4 forests that I had out on the table -- A bit of disappointment since I had made all the different terrain pieces (and it turns out, not actually allowed under the rules since they permit 3 woods one of which can be large -- I can't imagine this really having any affect on the game)

We got the pincer setup where we each setup half our force in one of our corners and can set up right at the halfway line on the table. It was also a night game which meant if any unit started a turn more than S from a friendly unit it would gain a fatigue

I got the first turn and even though I was restricted to 3 dice I made good use of the Perserverance ability to shoot both my bow and crossbow at the Norman Knights killing a few figures and to charge my foot Hearthguard into the Norman crossbow killing all but one of them.

On the Norman turn the knights charged my crossbow unit but only managed to kill 7 of the Levy (enough that they lose their SAGA dice but leaving enough to still be a bit of a threat) and managed to kill another knight. A Norman foot warrior charged my Hearthguard and were driven back but we both took some losses.

The following turn I used the Discord ability to add some fatigue to the Knights and the Norman Warlord. The Bow then shot them using the Wholehearted ability (which gives me 2 extra attack dice for each fatigue) and got lucky and wiped them out (adding another fatigue to the warlord). The remaining crossbow fired at the Warlord and due to all his fatigue he was killed as well.

 Another attack on my Hearthguard by Norman warriors was set back running but I was down to just one figure in the unit now. Continued use of Discord had most of the remaining Normans exhausted or close to it and the Hearthguard wiped out a warrior unit (dieing himself in the process).

There were a few more fights but by this point it was obviously going to be a Moorish victory.

I had some good luck and John wasn't as familiar with the Norman board as I was with the Moorish one. I do think that with the Perserverance ability it makes sense to make the Moors mostly foot or mostly mounted rather than the more even split I have used in the past. I will have to try a mostly mounted force next time.

Finished Motel, Walking Dead and Saga

The intermittent part of the title of my blog seems to have loomed large again. Red Dead Redemption is probably mostly to blame.

I have finished the Motel to a point where I am happy with it. I would like to do some weathering on it but I think I am afraid that I will make it look awful. We did play a Walking Dead game with it earlier in the month and I think it looks good enough.

The Walking Dead game was quite a lot of fun, we did a game with 3 players and me as the GM. I gave each of the other players a special objective and there were a few special enemies as well as the regular zombies. I used the special objective supplies card to provide clues towards the location of the objectives but I would like to use scenario specific event cards to move the scenario forward (and that would require me to actually do some work to print out the cards so it is less likely to actually happen)

Mike has posted a battle report of the Zombie game on his blog here


The Book of Battles for Saga arrived this month. I was already quite keen on Saga but now I am even more so. My hobby goal for Christmas is to make some "officially" sized terrain for the game since it does feature in the randomly generated skirmish scenario.

Mike and I have split the started set for Cruel Seas so that will also be fighting for play time in the New Year. Luckily Ed was quite keen on the models and painted them up when he was visiting