Cruel Sea's Imperial Japanese Navy v British

The first outing for the newly finished IJN fleet saw them take on Mike's British. We used the same scenario cards as in the last game with my objective being to sink 400 points of Mike's fleet and his (unknown to me) to be to collect an agent from one of the islands. 

My fleet, largely based on wanting to use the new toys, consisted of the huge Hei Minesweeper (veteran) and a No. 13 Sub Chaser (experienced) plus three T-14 MTBS (inexperienced) and a Large Sampan (inexperienced). Mikes had a couple of Fairmile's, an RAF rescue launch, three Vosper's and a couple of Landing Craft.

The initial set-up:

Both sides advance towards each other:

A Vosper launches a torpedo at the Sub Chaser:

One Japanese T-14 is sunk quickly while the Sub Chaser catches fire!:

The mighty Hei Minesweeper presses on:

The fleets manoeuvre for an advantage. The Hei Minesweeper sinks the RAF rescue launch:

The crew of the Sub Chaser are unable to put out the fire and she takes further damage from the Vosper's:

The Vosper's close in for the kill:

The Hei Minesweeper intervenes and sinks one of the Vosper's attacking the Sub Chaser:

Torpedoes head towards the Hei though and she won't be able to avoid both of them:

The Hei blasts one of the Fairmile's out of the water next but has more torpedoes to deal with:

One of the torpedoes hits the Hei! It survives the impact though is now badly damaged:

The Sub Chaser is still on fire and almost down. The Vosper darts in to finish it off while the Sampan tries to help out but is too slow to get anywhere:

The Sub Chaser is sunk leaving the poor Sampan to face the victorious Vosper:

In the meantime the remaining Fairmile has done enough damage to sink the Hei Minesweeper and another T-14 MTB:

At this stage we called the game as the Japanese had very little left and we had probably played the eight turns of the scenario. The Japanese had succeeded in sinking 400 points worth of British but lost considerably more than 400 points themselves while the British had not managed to collect the agent (distracted I think by attempting to sink the Japanese!) so we felt the overall outcome was an honourable draw! 

I'm continuing to enjoy my Cruel Seas games and using the Japanese was certainly different. 

The Hei Minesweeper with veteran crew is certainly deadly, towards the end of the game but for some abysmal shooting it would easily have dealt with the remaining Fairmile and Vosper but it is vulnerable to being torpedoed. The sub Chaser would also have done better if it had not caught fire, being unable to put the fire out gave it a lot more damage (but then it isn't that likely that an experienced crew will put a fire out). 

As for the T-14's with nothing to shoot their torpedoes at and only 15 hull points they are almost useless from a fighting point of view though, of course, if the mission had been different, they would have had a role to play.

Having played a few games now in our post game chat we felt that the 'veteran' upgrade for large ships like the Hei was very powerful at a mere 20 points over experienced, the amount of firepower it throws combined with the +2 to hit for veteran and (for the large guns) +1 for fire direction gives it an excellent chance of hitting and if it does, it does a lot of damage.

The other thing we considered was if it should be possible to torpedo a medium sized vessel. This is unclear in the rules (it says you can't then has factors for hitting them on the torpedo table!) and we both felt it might add a bit more to the game to allow this, the torpedoes are good fun and it would make them much more use as, often, neither side will have any large vessels at all. Apparently the rules FAQ (I'd found an errata sheet but not an FAQ) leaves this up to the players so we will probably allow this next time.