Cruel Seas Mini Campaign

I had Henry and Colin over to play Cruel Seas today. As we had plenty of time I wanted to try out a mini campaign with two linked scenarios for a S-boat raid on a British coastal convoy. The first scenario would be the actual attack on the convoy by 4 x S-boats, the second would see the S-boats fighting their way past ambushing Fairmiles on their way home.

Scenario 1

The Germans are waiting with their engines switched off, just out of sight (off table) and enter along the E edge (long edge) at any point after turn 3.

The allies enter from the NW corner (within 30cm) and exit from the SW corner.

3 x Armed Trawlers

2 x Merchant ships

1 x Tanker

Each turn a Merchant ship plus escort enters the table.

The merchants move at combat speed (the escorts move to keep pace) until the S-boats are spotted (ie enter the table)

Between scenarios the S boats make spend 1 turn repairing damaged systems or restoring damage points.

Scenario 2

The Germans enter along the W edge (short edge) and need to exit from the E edge.

The allies enter from E edge.

2 x Fairmile D 

Victory Points

Merchant/Tanker sunk = +100 pts

Fairmile destroyed = +25 points

S boat destroyed = -50 points

Score 101 (or more) German Victory

1-100 Draw

0 (or less) British Victory

Some pictures from our game.

 The full convoy steams ahead.

 Their nemesis lie in wait.

 The S-boats start to close in.

 The escorts move up.

 Launching the first torpedoes.

 The situation at the end of turn 1.

 That's a lot of torpedoes!

 A gap appears in the defending screen as a trawler explodes and sinks below the surface.

 Another view of the incoming torpedoes.

 The second game, a Fairmile moves forward.

 The other dogboat comes in from the other side.

The surviving S-boats put on speed to try and outrun the Fairmiles.

We had great fun. In the first game the S-boats sunk a trawler and two merchantmen, but lost two boats themselves. With one of them badly damaged, they decided to cut their losses, rather than pursue the last merchant. Especially as the two surviving trawlers were dropping 3 pounder shells all around them!

In the second game the S-boats ganged up on one of the Fairmiles, charging forward a full speed hoping to rush past the dogboat before the second boat could bring all it's guns into range. They badly damaged the Fairmile, almost sinking it (the British gunnery was pretty appealing in this game, not a patch on the expert shooting displayed by the trawlers). One of the S-boats escaped safely, but the other had it's rudder damaged and careered of the table from the southern edge. As the S-boat had not escaped from the eastern edge, but had not been destroyed, we decided to call it a 25 point loss for the Germans.

The end result was +75 VPs to the Germans, so a draw overall.

 .