Battle Report - Cruel Seas

Hello All,

This past Sunday at the club day I got a chance to try out Cruel Seas, the new WW2 Naval game from Warlord games. The hook for this one is that it is all about small boat actions, MTBs and the like.

Game 1: Ambush

First we played a very small scenario with a pair of MTBs trying to sink a merchant tanker defenses by an E-Boat.

The British torpedo boats power up and head in to attack. But are immediately cut off by the German boat coming in to block.

The boats ignore the Germans and slip past to torpedo the tanker, launching q from the lead ship.

Next turn the torpedo hits its target and is a live hit doing significant damage. The Herman boat is easily able to sink 1 of the MTBs. However the other is able to hold on and fired its guns into the stern of the tanker finishing it off. So a win for the British.

Game 2: Boats Attack

For the second game we decided to just use everything we had painted, and John and Steve joined the game so we had 4. We just wanted to try stuff so the scenario was just sink or swim, and we left the tanker by the island as terrain.

Turn one and all boats move to attack. The Germans broke around the island but we massed more on the south side. Hoping to over power John's ships and swing around.

Turn 2 8 broke 2 boats north to delay Duncan, while we kept up the pressure on John. But things immediately went bad. Two ships sunk so that is a bad start. The Herman's boats can be lethal it seems

Next turn the exchange continues.  I lost the other ship I sent to Duncan so that split was clearly a bad idea. We also had a collision. The Germans rammed one of our boats accidently.

Then we have to swing around the island of an attack. But the Germans had some lethal luck and both of our ships were sunk.

So game over, no Germans sunk but a couple of them have good ammounts of damage.

By way of review this is a very simple game. Uses the same activation mechanics as bolt action (draw dice from bag), and rolling a d10 to hit and some d6 for damage.

It is quite fun thou, maybe I am just into the boats them but it's a fast and easy game and fast and easy to paint a force. The models are a bit different from the usual fare so I am into it for sure.

Thanks;
Mike