Cruel Seas Germans v Americans

I've seen a few games of 'Cruel Seas' at the club and thought I wouldn't mind trying it out so arranged to play Mike, who has been running the games, to get an idea of what it was like.

We started off with a simple scenario of two German E-Boats facing two American PT boats with both sides trying to exit the opposite board edge.

The Germans race through the sea:

The Patrol splits up as they approach the enemy:

Enemy in sight! The E-Boat opens up with it's guns and does a fair bit of damage to the nearest PT Boat with some excellent shooting:

The Americans retaliate, closing in and using their superior firepower effectively:

The second E-Boat is a little out of the fight and the Americans concentrate on the nearest one:

In a 'Nelsonic' move one PT Boat rakes the stern of the E-Boat sinking it!

Revenge is at hand however as the remaining E-Boat pours fire into one of the Americans:

Closing in the E-Boat finishes off the PT Boat leaving one ship on either side to race for home.

The second game saw a single E-Boat trying to sink an American Tanker escorted by a PT Boat. The target was an impressively large ship:

The E-Boat launches it's attack:

Torpedo's away! The Tanker desperately tries to evade:

Despite the Tanker's efforts to escape both torpedo's hit home! The German captain curses though as one fails to explode due to shoddy build quality! The single torpedo combined with gunfire is enough to sink the Tanker. The escorting PT Boat had little effect, shooting it's numerous guns with a remarkable lack of accuracy!

The Tanker's crew take to the life rafts while the E-Boat heads for home:

I'd seen Cruel Seas demonstrated at Salute when it first came out, the demonstration put me off it a bit as it had numerous ships on the rather small board you get with the starter set and looked like they were fighting in a swimming pool! The larger cloth we used for this game with fewer ships certainly looked better and Mike had done a great job painting the ships and making them look suitably worn.

As for the rules they were quick to pick up and play. The system of drawing dice to determine movement order meant, with so few ships (and the ability to choose which ship to activate rather than having individual dice per ship) meant that the order in which the ships activated was pretty decisive though there was the choice of getting your fire in first but allowing the enemy to close or standing off and waiting for them to come to you.

It reminded me in many ways of 'Wings of War', the old WW1/2 airplane game with the way the ships moved and fired (and also the tiny unreadable damage markers!) but without the need to plot your moves before each turn which gave Wings of War it's flavour with having to guess which way your opponent would go.

So having played it, I don't think I will be investing in the starter set or any more ships. I do have four unpainted E-Boats that came free with magazines though and may well paint them up in case I play again.