So after a bit of a busy week (as evidenced by the fewer posts than normal), Lucius and I got together to try out Warlord’s new Cruel Seas game. Being somewhat familiar with naval operations, I was very intrigued with how Warlord would approach the coastal battles.

In order to learn the rules we played 3 quick games. The first 2 were using the basic rules, while the 3rd added the advanced rules. The rules-as-written are a little clumsy, with some organizational problems (and many pages of errata already released). Despite the clear rush to release, I think that Warlord has a good, fun game here. The rules are simple, the concepts are clear, and it seems to do a good job of the running fights at sea.

For the first fight, being sensible chaps, we used the first scenario in the rules. It’s pretty much a knife fight. Limited room to move, a goal of sinking the enemy and making it off the opposite corner. The highest victory points, the win.

Lucius drew his movement first for both boats, so he brought them up and split them, attempting to make it harder for me to shoot. The problem with that is that S-100 boats have their main armament aft. By moving to my sides, he made it much easier for me to get my armament to bear without putting on a turn of speed (which really reduces your accuracy).

I quickly pounded one Vosper into kindling and then kept on to open my arcs on the other, and rolled a similar set of dice. My S-100 was barely scratched! Clearly luck has a big role to play in this game. I think that having 2 or 3 boats a side is a good idea so you’re not disappointed by a lucky shot.

For our second outing, the second scenario! Escorting a merchant. I was to be the escort, so had an S-100 and a cardboard merchant. I must say, the starter set has a lot of fun goodies, and this merchant did the trick nicely.

This game saw us try out the rules for torpedoes. The Vospers did a good job at hammering my S-100 with their guns, but that wasn’t their target. I concentrated fire on one and was forced into a turn due to the table edge and ended up in a Form 1 ahead of the merchant. The first torpedoes fired missed! Somehow…

Sadly, despite sinking 1 of the Vospers, the other MTB got 2 good hits with torpedoes and that was the end of the escort. A fun little scenario, but it really left us feeling like the scale was a bit off. The sea-room allowed in the scenarios was far too limiting. Lucius’ MTB was going to cut in front of the tanker, but wasn’t able to due to the edge of the playing surface. As such, we increased the next scenario from 120cm x 90cm to 120cm x 180cm and it seemed about right.

The last game we played was a rescue op. An MTB was left behind after a rough night action. The RN is rushing back and needs to get alongside to remove the survivors. The Germans are trying to capture the boat. It turned out to be a really bad call to try to rush directly to the stricken craft!

After charging in at a high rate of knots, Lucius found his designated rescue craft was coming in too hot to make the turn to slow speed by the stricken boat. He had to circle around. Meanwhile, my boats (2 S-100s and a more lightly armed S-38) were attempting to get up close and personal. Using the advanced rules really made this an edgier game. The MTB to the left of the picture above was hammered by a semi-auto 37mm in the bridge and drove off the table edge (and therefore out of the action), unable to act. Another MTB was hurt, but my S-38 boat (on the right) was cut to ribbons and set afire as it sank. The final tally was 3 MTBs sunk, (not including the original stricken vessel), 1 S-38 sunk, and 2 S-100s damaged, 1 of which was barely afloat. So to attempt to save 1 crew, the RN lost 4. Not a good exchange and maybe better left until the RAF could bring some air support in.

The lessons from that engagement were that the advanced rules are a good addition, that the table size needs to be upped in the standard scenarios, and that charging around a high speed may look dramatic but makes it almost impossible to hit anyone or to do accurate shiphandling in the game! No stopping the inboard shaft and changing your advance and transfer. But really, for a tabletop game, this is a good one and has the chance to be excellent if some of the rules are cleaned up and clarified. Shiphandling is only properly done by professional simulation software, and for the purposes of a wargame, the rules here are okay for driving boats around (though the rate of turn at rest is interesting, especially with a single screw ship). There simple game mechanics do mean that there are things that are clearly wrong, but nothing that raises my ire. I am sure that we will be house-ruling some things as we play it more.

Overall, Cruel Seas is not complex or simulationist, but it is fun and gets people putting coastal craft on the table, which is great. I would say that the closest game I have played to it is What a Tanker! by TFL. Very much like What a Tanker! I think that this ruleset will be a nice quick game to break up the more involved wargames we play. I recommend that you take a look at it if you’ve been thinking of it. We will certainly be playing more of it, and we’ll probably be adding some land and air elements for some more fun games in the future (Operation Chariot for instance). Next will be some prep for Chain of Command!

BT