Cruel Seas : Japanese vs Americans

Cody and I got together Monday evening both of us itching to try out some of our new boats. In my case my fleet of newly assembled but very shameful silver surfer Japanese and Cody with his primer black Americans.

This was Cody’s 1st Cruel Seas game and my 3rd. We opted to put together 500 pts each and go for a meeting engagement of sorts.

My force was made up of 2 Sampans with upgrades to twin 20mms, both Regular crews. I also had two T-14 MTB, one Regular, one Veteran. Then I added in a “Val” airplane armed with a bomb cause dang it, I wanted to try out the air rules.

Cody had 3 boats, a Higgins, an Elco and a Coastal Cutter.

We dropped an island into the picture and a few things around the island to break up the board. I elected to have my plane come in on turn 3.

The fun part about the Sampans of course is they look out of place with their sails. Next they’re all of 9knots max speed. This is where a little table talk brought up that there is nothing in the rules about wind direction which would matter for these boats.

I forged ahead with my first Sampan going max speed, I figured Cody wouldn’t be in range yet so I’d try and make up distance least with the Sampans.

Cody’s 40mm guns on the other hand could reach out and touch me. Given the Sampans aren’t small so no negative, aren’t moving very fast so again no negative, turns out a base 3 to hit, add in some good die rolls, I was immediately taking damage to one of my Sampans. They have 40 hull, which isn’t much.

The cutter was Cody’s slow boat. From the first turn looks like he was going to split his force around the island so I hoped to maybe concentrate fire, if I could only get into range.

Cody jammed one of his PT boats up to full speed. It was the one with ‘less’ guns. I was to learn the hardware, there are two types of American PT boards, one decently armed and the other REALLY well armed.

I decided to concentrate my fire on the boat that was closing fastest. I activated my vet T-14 and was able to score a hit, but that single 20mm in the bow isn’t a lot of fire power.

Thankfully my vet boat was able to attract attention and importantly be missed a bit from fire which if it hit would generally get really close to sinking me. Through turn 2, I managed to plink away and put a rudder crit on Cody’s nearer PT boat.

With turn 3 my Val came on, drawing AA fire that turn. While we didn’t see it in the rules, we figured that if a gun was being used for AA, it couldn’t fire at other targets. I aimed my plane after the cutter, not knowing what a bomb might do. Thankfully the Val didn’t take any AA hits and managed to drop it’s bomb and hit the cutter with it’s Regular crew. The Bomb did 5D6 with an average roll but given the cutter hull points and no crits rolls, easy enough for it to shrug it off.

That was the one run my plane could do, not bad for 14 points. Worth the investment and given the sequence of AA fire and bomb dropping I’d give the air rules a thumbs up.

While my plane coming in was a welcome development the Japanese situation was decidedly bleak. The one PT boat I was able to damage through concentrated fire and get the rudder hit (it’s the smoking one in the picture), the rest of Cody’s boats were fine. My Sampans were both wounded. One down to 7 hull points. Both of the T-14s have but 15 hull points each (that’s what they start with) so this particular force build might be able to score one ship but otherwise it needed to run.

Without speed the Sampans wouldn’t be able to get away and likewise the T-14s can’t outrun any of the American PT boats even on a good day!

I resolved to fight on, activating both of the T-14s first to continue to fire at the wounded American PT boat. Hits would land but damage rolls were terrible.

Thankfully Cody’s dice to hit weren’t all that great so I was able to continue to have a viable force.

Around turn 5/6 tho the luck turned and my first T-14 went down and a Sampan went down. I especially lucked out that the remaining Sampan took a fuel hit but it didn’t catch fire. Another hit or two and that one would be gone. Least it was a short swim to the island.

My vet crew on the last T-14 decided to take a run for it.

But due to the activation, Cody would go first and finish off the T-14 and that would be the game, my entire force sunk.

Lessons learned. I didn’t use smoke and should have. That would have masked fire from one set of Americans allowing me to concentrate on the one boat.

Aircraft rules are straight forward, and mesh well. You get basically 1 run per plane (well 2 if you are a vet crew) and then that’s that. AA rules are likewise pretty straight forward and follow the general gist of firing.

At this scale, ships are pretty hard to hit and Veteran crewed ships have extra tricks up their sleeves to avoid a bomb.

For this game, none of the ships would have been able to be hit by torpedoes. We ruled ahead of the game that none drew a deep enough draft. maybe there might have been a case for the Cutter in which case long lances should have been fired.

While the Japanese were fairly fragile for the points, I didn’t spring for their larger Hei escort which I definitely should have done. More guns, bigger boat, more hull, and more expensive. I didn’t try out the little kamikaze boats.

Veteran crews are definitely worth it if you can afford the points. I’ve been avoiding inexperienced crews. The -2 to hit is pretty harsh, still true to historical realities, learning to fire a deck gun from the bobbing deck of a PT boat was no small feat.

I did find the spotting rules that I had complained the game didn’t have in my prior post.  They are part of the 4th scenario in the book. This begs the question if they are scenario specific or something to be used in general for the game. They aren’t in the index. Something to ask about in the facebook group.

Another fun game and once again looking forward to the next one.