First Time Cruel Seas

I had first first outing with Cruel Seas at the club on Friday with Colin and we had a lot of fun. A friend of his has also got the rules and seems to be playing it a lot in his gaming circle, so Colin had previously gone over to see him and get some learning games in. That meant that one of us had an idea of what the rules should play like!

We started off with the second scenario in the rules, so I had two Vospers, trying to torpedo a merchantman which Colin was escorting with an S-boot.

 My Vospers move forward at full speed.

 The S-boot moves up to screen the merchantman. Colin had picked up a couple of mdf merchant ships on ebay. They are not the prettiest models in the world, but a lot better than using a card template. And at about a fiver each instead of  twenty-odd quid for the official Warlord models, they are a bargain, leaving you with more money to spend on warships! I've ordered some of the merchant ships and armed trawlers already.

 The torpedo boats exchange gunfire at long range, neither of us hit anything!

 The Vospers throttle back in readiness for making a torpedo run.

 Torpedoes Away! I launch my first tube.

 At the same time the S-boat moves in to close the range.

 We now had a devastating round of firing, I hit the S-boat with the forward 20mm and scored a critical hit, setting off one of his torpedoes! Explosions rocked the German boat, which looked very low in the water afterwards (only 4 strength points left!).

That looked like the end of the game, we both thought the British would have a walkover now. But then the S-boat fired back...Colin rolled horribly successful dice, taking the Vosper down to 2 point and rolling 4, yes 4!, critical hits in one round of shooting. He hit the fuel, ammunition, a torpedo and the bridge. The little British boat disappeared in a ball of flame and rapidly slid beneath the surface.

At the same time the merchant skipper managed to avoid my two torpedoes. I now had a choice, finish off the S-boat to remove the threat, but then I'd need to chase after the merchantman before he escaped off table. Or ignore the S-boat and race ahead of the merchantman to come around for another torpedo run and hope I could do so before the S-boat got back into range.

I went for the second option, but by devious maneuvring the merchant skipper manged to dodge my last two torpedoes as well.

We then played a second game, using the Rescue scenario. This was a bloodbath for the Brits. 4 Vospers were dreadfully outgunned by 3 S-boats (not helped by my uncanny ability to roll 10s that evening). We called a halt when I had just 1 boat left. Colin had lost 1 S-boat, but that was only because I'd shot his rudder off and he crashed into an island!

A lot of fun, but I think we will be experimenting with balancing the forces out, or giving the Brits some more firepower, the poor little Vospers didn't seem to have much chance unless they outnumbered the S-boats 2:1.

I have also just ordered myself a nice new sea gaming cloth. The club board we were using had been painted blue on the underside for naval gaming, but that had been painted over 20 years ago and the wear is showing.

Other games on offer at the club.

 A 15mm Fire and Fury ACW game.

 A 6mm Napoleonics game using Black Powder.

 A 40K game.

And another 40K game.

There was also a 28mm Chain of Command game, but whenever i looked over to take a picture they didn't seem to have any figures on the table!