Cruel Seas - Japanese vs British

Colin and I  had a couple of games of Cruel Seas at the Tring Club last night, it was an opportunity for Colin to try out his new little AB-Tei gunboats from Scotia Grendel. Unfortunately I forgot to pack my nice sea cloth for this evening!

The scenario was 3 gunboats were escorting a supply convoy of sampans and barges along the Malayan coast, when they were jumped by British motor launches, 4 Fairmile Bs and a Harbour Defence Motor Launch. Colin had made all his gunboat crews Experienced, which had an unexpectedly devastating impact on the game.

The British flotilla.

The Japanese convoy.

Japanese air support, who failed to turn up in either game.

With experienced crews and 57mm guns in the AB-Tei's turrets, the Japanese were hitting the British on a 5 or less at a range of 80cm. The British lost 3 Fairmiles before they could even get most of their weapons into range. We called it when I just had the HDML left and had only scratched the paint on a couple of gunboats. For just 25 points per boat, Experienced crews are really under-pointed for the difference in shooting and other benefits they give.

We reset and tried again, this time dropping the HDML and making all the Fairmile crews Experienced as well.

Again the Japanese put the transports in the middle of their formation with the gunboats split on either side. The British decided to veer across and concentrate all their boats on the side of the convoy with just one gunboat. However the other two Japanese gunboats managed to get into range and scored two hits on the nearest Fairmile, sinking it, but at least it had knocked out one of the turrets on the closest gunboat first.

The solitary gunboat found itself taking fire from all three surviving Fairmiles and was badly shot up. As the Fairmiles closed in, they started targeting the nearest barges with their smaller guns, keeping they main weapons pounding the unfortunate AB-Tei, which was sent to the bottom.

The convoy had turned into a bit of a turkey shoot and tried to veer away from the British as two barges were swiftly sunk. The AB-Teis tried to turn across the front of the convoy to target the attackers.

It their rush to escape the British motor launches, two of the barges narrowly missed colliding!

As the British boats moved behind the escaping convoy they blasted one of the sampans into matchwood, but a salvo from each of the AB-Teis caught the closest Fairmile, which had been damaged in the earlier firefight with the solitary AB-Tei, and it slipped below the surface.

Too late for the rest of the convoy however, as the other two Fairmiles were now in range with all their guns and sank the rest of the transports with a single broadside.

It was a fun game to play and much more of a balanced fight than our first game had been.
But we have decided that Experienced crews are just too effective. In the first game they had vastly outclassed the Regular crews and it the second game, once I had got closer to the transports I scarcely missed with a single shot. The points system does not reflect their overwhelming superiority at all.
In future we will only use Experienced crews for scenarios and them probably limit them to one crew per side.