Cruel Seas

By Tom Gall

Warlord Games released their much-anticipated ruleset covering small ship skirmish actions, which they’ve entitled

The core box offers the rules, and a starter set of British Vospers as well as German S-Boats. Perfect to get a game going with a friend. In addition, there are already nine expansion boxes offering more ships from four different nations.

The rules themselves are divided into basic and advanced sections with a set of eight scenarios to get you going. Interspersed are some histories, many a pretty picture, ship/plane stats, instructions to make your own stats and last some rules for campaign settings.

The basic section is eight pages with enough to get you to the table top for a fun first game covering what you would expect activation, movement, and combat. The advanced section contains a lot of detail that covers topics like crew experience,  critical hits, repairs, planes, many different pieces of equipment historically used,  submarines, and so on that taken all together give the game it’s flavor.

Let’s dive in and examine a few areas in detail.

Turn Structure

A turn is one activation of all ships. An activation is moving and optionally firing a ship. Ships can also perform other actions like lay smoke or repair for example.

Each ship in the game has one fleet die that is dropped in a bag unless it’s a Tiny boat in which case only one die is added for every three Tiny ships. Tiny in this context means something like the very small such as the Japanese explosive-laden craft that were much smaller than a US PT boat. Drawing a dice from a bag will establish the activation order. If the dice is a German dice the German player gets to decide out of their force what ship will activate.

Activation of a ship generally means moving and firing. Each ship has three forward speeds and 1 knot of speed equals 1 cm on the table top. Turns can be performed every 1/3rd of your full speed movement. This means if you’re moving at slow speed (approx 1/3rd your full speed)  you can only adjust course once. Some ships can turn up to 30 degrees, others up to 45 degrees.  Wake markers are placed under the rear of your ship to note your ship speed.

At the same point in your movement that you might adjust course,  you may also fire a weapon system should you chose. A weapon system may only fire once per activation. Firing a weapon is based on a d10, with modifiers for range, size of the target, the speed of the shooter, the speed of the target.

For this system, you’re looking at a range of weapons from machine guns on up. Guns such as 20mm/37mm are typical. Historically they were challenging to fire and hit a target on these types of boats due to the nature of smaller vessels rolling about a bit more on the waves compared to larger craft. Typical to hit values tend to be between a one to three on a D10. Get into point-blank range or shoot at a larger target and you might be looking for sevens or eights. Ranges in the game are all in centimeters. The maximum range for a 20mm gun is 50cm.

Damage is determined by rolling some number of D6s which is a function of the caliber of the weapon. A single 20mm that hits will do 3D6 of damage. If you roll a six, that’ll score you a critical hit which with another d10 roll to determine the nature of the critical hit. This is where a saving roll is introduced which is a function of the quality of the crew. Make the roll and you can ignore the critical hit. Normal damage does not utilize a save mechanism, it’s always subtracted from your hull.

Torpedoes are of course an important element in the game but only affect larger vessels. The smaller torpedo boats just didn’t have enough draft in the water for a torpedo to even hit.

Ships if they slow down have the ability to repair damage or repair critical effects you might have suffered. Unfortunately, if your ship isn’t moving that also makes it easier to hit.

Game Aids

Splash markers, wake markers, torpedo counters, the core box, and fleet boxes all contain what you need to run your fleet. The ship data cards are well constructed such that you’ll never need a pencil. Damage markers and markers for upgrades placed on the card likewise contribute to the pencil free bookkeeping that is generally not the case in other naval games. You’ll probably be tempted to laminate your ship data cards and convert to paperclips for marking the current hull points for your ship.

Airplanes while they can be involved in the game, there are no data cards for them. The one game we played with an airplane was the one time I had to actually reach for the book in search for weapon stats.

On the back of one of the movement tools, you’ll find the modifiers for shooting. Likewise at the back of the book can be found a good quick reference chart for shooting, critical hits and so on.

Compared to a General Quarters or a Seekrieg V environment, Cruel Seas is bit more clutter free with support aids that keep you from needing a clipboard, pencil or consulting various charts.

Game Flavor

There are a number of elements that give the game an interesting flavor. First, everything in the game is point costed. This does open up the opportunity for you to agree to a point value with a friend, plop your flotilla down and play a game without having to get too creative as to the scenario. This does potentially lay the groundwork for organized play. While nothing is hinted I appreciated that the ships have three different point costs based on crew quality, and then have the ability to take on additional or upgraded equipment for additional points.

There are rules for planes, they generally take a single pass, making their run before disappearing entirely. Planes wouldn’t usually try and attack ships this small, but the larger cutters and transports certainly would have been a target for a bomb or torpedo run!

Night fights with searchlights, star shells, and all the complications with spotting have rules. Be sure to look at Scenario 4 in particular which has spotting rules as part of the “special rules.” It’s unclear if these were to be the generic spotting rules or something that was a scenario one off. I’ve not had a chance to try them out yet.

Smoke, heavy seas and fog are also built into the game should you choose to include them. For any of these conditions, these type of ships especially like to take advantage of the conditions in order to do their work so they are in my view an essential part of the rules.

Overall, the one thing I look for most is does the flavor offered by the rules, give your game that feel of where the action just feels right and you can see the circumstances happening?

The cover image in this game depicts the British attempting to rescue some comrades adrift off the coast of France. One Vosper has laid a smokescreen to mask off the enemy as it plucks people from sea,  an S100 and a Fairmile through plenty of bad luck manage to bungle into each other as in close quarters all these ship captains are swirling about.

Miniatures

The scale chosen is 1/300 which for naval gameplay is a new scale for Warlord. The explanation offered for the choice is Warlord wanted models that could better represent the smaller ships. They wanted you to be able to see the 20mm, 37mm guns on the model and crews on deck to be represented. This means that you’re not going to be seeing Battleships on the table. As the game evolves we’ll see what Warlord releases, though, from the stats in the back of the book there are already Fubuki-class destroyers (Japan), Tashkent-class destroyers (Soviet), Fletcher-class destroyers (US), Hunt-class destroyers (British), and Zerstörer (German) ships.

True to their goal Warlord the models released thus far in the core box and the many fleet boxes you have to choose from are quite nice. One of the elements I look for in a game and its selection of scale is how well do the rules complement the scale or vise-versa. In cruel seas what I’ve found is the torpedo rules especially enjoy this choice. In other naval game,s torpedoes tend to get abstracted away and some amount of math tends to be used to arrive at either a hit or miss.

Given the scale what you see is what you get when it comes to torpedo fire and resolution.  I think they nailed it. Even if the torpedo model physically contacts a model, you still have to roll for a hit, then a dud check and then on to damage. As true to the historical nature of torpedo fire with these class of ships, there is a certain amount of good seamanship and luck involved to properly time, and aim the weapon to have a chance.

Further, there is the element of danger as the larger vessels which torpedos are effective against tend to have more guns which at short range while more accurate for landing your torpedo are quite a bit more deadly should your torpedo boat become the object of affection when the target activates and starts shooting at you!

All in all, the models paint up well and personally I’ve found them to be generally reasonable to put together (tho better guides for what goes where would be certainly appreciated), and they likewise are painting up nicely.

In comparison, here’s a 1/600 scale battle that our local group recently played using the Flaklighter rule system. Same S-boats and PTs.

Another exciting aspect that Warlord has done is bring several fleet boxes to the market at release day. Pictured are American’s vs Japanese. Those Sampans are cute! Between Kriegsmarine, British Royal Navy, US Navy, and Imperial Japanese Navy there’s plenty to choose from initially. In January 2019 both Italian and Russian fleets will be released. I can’t wait!

For the new Wargamer

I believe Cruel Seas offers good value for someone getting into the hobby as well as a nice set of rules without being swamped with something overly complicated. A core box and fleet box together is under $200 and will give you a very good sized navy that will fit into quite a number of scenarios.

For the experienced Wargamer

You’ve sailed the unfriendly seas and are a long time connoisseur of naval rules, you’re probably going to latch onto several elements of realism you might not like. Still, as an experience gamer, you know full well that this is where a house rule or two have improved many a ruleset. Besides, it’s in our nature to fiddle.

Here’s a few thoughts:

1. Plume markers – In the rules as printed only apply to 37mm guns and larger and grant a +1 which is an improvement to shooting. Shouldn’t that be a negative for over concentration as fire from several boats at the same target gets confusing?
2. The more people playing in the same game, the more that activation system of drawing a die starts to break down with everything but the activating player watching.
3. Turning does not improve or degrade with speed. Turn arcs or degrees allowed for the turn that vary based on speed would fit well with the spirit of the rules.
4. There are a few stats on some of the historical ships which bear a closer look. Mistakes happen and they are easy to fix with a little Googling or turning to the copy of Conways, Osprey or akin on your bookshelf.
5. Don’t listen to the siren sound that might be calling you to field things above destroyers. These rules are really for the small end of naval combat.

Finally

Just before going to press Warlord has impressively released their first errata for the game which addresses a number of questions that were being posed across the internet as players are getting in their first games.  The errata is a free download and can be found .

Some boxes for Cruel Seas were shipped without wake markers. These are needed to mark the speed of your ships. Warlord has posted a PDF so you are able to print your own. They can be found .

There is an active facebook group where players are sharing paint jobs, posing questions (and answers)  which can be found . If you’re not into facebook, by all means drop by the No Dice No Glory Forums.

All that said, I recommend the system and I think you’ll find the game offers an enjoyable experience for what it’s designed. I’m excited where this new system is going and the models that will be coming.