Sunday Game - "Cruel Seas"

On Sunday eight of us had three games of Cruel Seas using Rick recently acquired and painted collection of WW2 ships.

The games were of relatively short duration - we had 4 x 2 player games with a German S Boot (E Boat to we Brits) against two British MTB's - apparently to even things up although the MTB's in my first game had no trouble dealing to my S Boot in pretty quick order!

After lunch we had two 2 v 2 player games involving an Allied "convoy" (one merchant ship and two escorts) taking on assaulting Kriegsmarine forces - again, I played the Axis in both games, and again, it felt like the RN dealt with our attack pretty easily, although in the last game, the addition of an extra S Boot to the attackers did mean we managed to sink one of the British escorts.

My feelings on the game and rules? A bit like every other naval game I have played - and also air to air wargames  - they look better than the substance of the game. Really, they are very much just the same game over and over - that's probably not quite right, but I prefer my battles to involve "men" rather than  machines. Too many stats, too many different weapons with different ranges causing different amounts and types of damage, they really just turn into an artillery duel and lot of the result relies on luck of the dice rolling. For these rules specifically, I think its far too easy to score a Critical Hit. For some weapon types, you can be rolling 8 or even more D6 - and any 6 you roll is a Critical Hit. There are 10 of these, decided by rolling a D10 (who would have thought!) and they all have pretty bad outcomes for the one on the receiving end. My opponents seemed to roll two or three sixes virtually every time they fired at me - hence the reason  my S Boot was blown up by an MTB in the first game!

Anyway - a fun game for a one off every now and then - like the WW1 planes we did a couple of weeks ago on a Friday evening - but I would not want to play either of them all the time. The models however are VERY nice so here are a whole lot of pictures of the first two games - I think I had lost interest by the third game and forgot to take any pictures!

Game 1 - my S Boot and its attributes card

Game 1 - the two RN MTB 's and relevant cards

The two MTB's head to battle

My S Boot - I think they are pretty nice models considering this one is probably 50-60mm long

The two MTB's separate to come at me from  different directions

MTB's closing in 

One of Julian's MTB's got into a position to rake my S Boot from the rear

In return fire I got a Critical Hit that caused the MTB to continue on its current course with either rudder damage or wounded helmsman!

The ten possible Critical Hits, which I think are too easy to get

The second MTB blasts the S Boot from close range

And even closer range next time! They got a Critical Hit Number 10 on me and my bloody torpedo exploded and that was that - took about twenty minutes!

Game 2 - my German Corvette/minesweeper with two x 88mm naval guns and also a 37mm semi auto cannon as well as 20mm guns

The Allies - an American "Liberty" ship and RN corvette (I think)

I think this RN ship is a Thorneycroft....

Rick's beautiful U Boot - not an "official" Cruel Seas one and not a waterline model until he made it so!

The U Boot surfaces to the rear of the "convoy" and looses off four torpedoes - but why didn't he come from the front flank....?

The allies steam on imperturbably 

Until they spot the torpedoes and the Liberty ship starts to make evasive manouvres!

Meanwhile, ahead of them, my surface vessel blasts away at the Liberty ship too

The last picture is from the other guys game - I only took it because they had a Stuka involved!

The outcome of Game 2 was my ship was sunk, the Liberty ship evaded the torpedoes and easily outran the U Boot to get off the other edge of the table.

The Liberty ship, like the U Boat, are not part of the range offered by Warlord - Rick found 1/350 

(close enough to the 1/300 of the official models) kits from Trumpeter I think. He is now keen to look at getting a 1/350 model of the Tirpitz - which would be interesting, as its listed as 710mm and presumably could hit anything on our 12' by 6' from anywhere on the table!