First Game with Torpedoes and Tides

 When Cruel Seas first came out we played it a lot and Colin and myself invested heavily in additional boats. But after a while the rules became more complicated and less fun, so we stopped playing. My little ships have sat on the self for a few years and every now and then I've thought about getting them out, but never bothered.

So, I got very exited about Torpedoes and Tides, the new WW2 costal forces wargame by Thomas Brandstetter (published by Ganesha Games). The rules use the same mechanisms as Galleys and Galleons, which in turn is built on A Song of Blades and Heroes (both also published by Ganesha Games). This makes the game somewhat more abstract than other rules systems, but also provides for a truly fast-play rule set. Reading through we both liked the very clever way that spotting and the strength and position of the moon played important roles, after all, the majority of small boat encounters took place at night.

Colin came over the other day, so that we could try the game out with my old Cruel Seas boats.

We started off with a historical scenario from the book, Making a Beginning, which the author suggests as a good place for players to familiarise themselves with the basic rules.

It's a simple scenario, 2 S Boats are returning to port and ambushed by 3 RN gunboats.

Nothing much happened for the first move, the Germans ran for home and the British closed in. In turn two one of the British boats revealed itself and fired a star shell, which made spotting the S boats easier. Boats cannot fire, or be targeted, whilst they are moving on a blind.

Here is the situation at the end of turn 2, one S boat has been spotted, the blue splash marker represents the star shell (getting to reuse some of the Cruel Seas gubbins!).

                                               

In turn 3 all of the gunboats pounded the closest S Boat, which took heavy damage and had a gun knocked out. With 3 hits it was now battered and now activated with 3 red dice (or in our case black dice). I rolled two 6s and a 1. Rolling a 1 on a red die means taking an All At Sea test (a sort of panic test). My result was to fire blindly at the closest target. 

Fortunately I had already moved my other S Boat out of the way, so I blasted the closest British gunboat, not causing any damage but suppressing it.

In turn 4 my damaged S Boat took more hits and exploded! The other S Boat managed to slink off table, unharmed. An easy win for the RN, but fun to play and it gave us an understanding of the rules.

Our second game was a convey mission. The Germans had two freighters escorted by a Vorpstenboot and 2 Kriegfischkutters pounced on by 2 RN MTBs and 2 RN MGBs.

Turn 1 didn't start well for the British, the first blind rolled one activation and 2 fails, so moved forward alone and passed the turn over to the Germans. For activations, players roll 1 to 3 d6s per boat/blind, if they roll 2 or more fails its a turnover and the initiative passes to the other player.

I had the British so, once I got going, I threw the MGBs forward to engage the escorts and try and spot the freighters, whilst the MTBs hung back, waiting for targets!

This tactic worked brilliantly as the German escorts broke formation to engage the MGBs and Colin moved one of his little Kriegfischkutters (I need to find an abbreviation for that!) into the path of his Vorpostenboot! Both boats took damage from the collision, combined with the gunfire from the MGBs the Kriegfischkutter was now battered (3 hits) and the Vorpostenboot not much better (2 hits).

I saw a gap and one of my MTBs sped forward and launched 2 torpedoes....which both missed! The rules say that torpedoes that miss the target are taken off, but we decided to let them run after missing the target. We marked the launch point and the full extent of the torpedo's run, if anything crossed the line until the next British turn, we would roll for another torpedo attack on that target. This is something the author originally thought of including, laying a stick on the table to mark the torpedo's run, but decided to reject in the end.

Colin now failed his first activation in two consecutive turns (he started with a freighter both times which are difficult to activate). This did mean that the first freighter crawled forward (an activated ship must move, if a player doesn't use any actions to move it, it makes a compulsory short move straight ahead). This allowed my boats to swing around the convoy like Comanche around a wagon train! As the MTB pulled itself around to make a second pass it blasted the other Kreigfischkutter, scoring a lucky hit and setting it on fire!

The second MTB launched two more torpedoes, also missing the freighter! The MGBs were now the other side of the freighters, blasting them with all they had. the light weaponry on the small boats meant that I needed lucky dice to effect the bigger ships, but it was worth a chance and I did some damage! The MGBs were safe from the torpedoes, as their shallow draft meant that the fish just passed underneath them. The battered Kreigfischkutter now rolled a 1 for one of it's activations and the skipper panicked and fled. The boat must now use at least two of it's activations to leave the table.

The first MTB had now moved around to make a second run, launching it's last 2 torpedoes, missing again!

Fortunately for me, the second freighter ten moved into the path of the torpedoes and I rolled a hit, at last!

I rolled well on the effects chart and the freighter was wrecked!

At this point the remaining German vessels moved off the table edge, so it was game over. I has battered all three escorts, sunk one freighter and badly damaged the other with gunfire, for just some scratched paintwork on the MGBs. However my Victory Conditions were 3VPs for a sunk freighter and VP for a battered one. Colin got 3 VPs for each escaped freighter, so it was a draw!

We loved the rules, each game was under an hour and really was fast play. the simplicity of the basic mechanisms allowed tactics to be more important, rather than the minutia of  different weapons charts and whether a particular boat travels at 30 knots or 35.

First impressions are a well thought-out set of rules that get a superb and fun game. I'm looking forward to trying the rules out with larger forces and more players.