AKA Cruel Seas the unboxing. I've had a look through the contents of the Cruel Seas starter box which I have inherited. It's all there (*), indeed there are a couple of extras: a metal casting of a U-boat conning tower breaking the waves and a couple of US PT boat sprues. I suspect the latter were free giveaways with a copy of Wargame Illustrated back when the game was launched. I shall not be using the PT boats however, I shall stick to the Royal Navy and Kriegsmarine options, from which I shall be selecting the mid-to-late war options, for no better reason than they have bigger guns.
The rules don't seem especially innovative, but the gimmick which catches the eye (as it probably did when I saw the game demonstrated at Vapnartak 2019, although I can remember nothing whatever about it) is that torpedoes are not mediated solely through the rolling of dice, but instead actually set off across the table represented by their own little model and either hit their target or don't. I use the term 'gimmick' advisedly, because on the one hand it's the aspect which makes me really want to play the game, while on the other hand my instinct is that I shall tire of it fairly quickly.
If one is to fire torpedoes then one has to fire them at something. The starter box lives up to its name in that it contains everything one needs to play Scenario 1 in the rulebook, but sadly torpedoes don't make an appearance until Scenario 2, and that requires some sort of small coastal freighter or tanker to act as a target; said vessel is not in the box. Those from the official range - now interestingly available from Skytrex rather than Warlord Games - clock in at around £30 or so, but perfectly acceptable 3D printed alternatives are available on eBay for a fiver, and so I bought one. Notwithstanding the Christmas post, it arrived within a couple of days and there it is above. |A halfway decent bloggist would have put one of the MTBs in for scale, but that's not how we roll around here.
(*) I have of course had to download a very unimpressive ten pages of Errata to the rule book.
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