Southern Front: Cruel Seas and Black Seas Demos

 

    One of the other reasons that Kalissa and I were going to Southern Front was to run some Warlord Games Demos, since my wife is a Warlord Games Raider. In this case, we bought our Cruel Seas and Black Seas miniatures to teach. We had a few people try out some of the Cruel Seas game, but we found with all of the good games running at Southern Front, it was hard for different people to commit. It did not stop questions or on lookers. We had a few people buy one game or the other while playing demos. I played in one Cruel Seas game and a Black Seas one. The Black Seas game turn into a serious long game. I mean a hour and a half one that was the best naval game I have ever played. There was some seriously amazing sailing going on in this game until the end when things starting to fall apart. I will just say that my Spanish sailors started drinking at the end. I lost that game, but it was awesome anyway. Here are the photos. 

Naval Combat Games and the Board I Made For Demos.

 

   It just happened that before the year of 2020, my wife, Kalissa has been getting more into being an unofficial/official Warlord Games Raider. I am not sure what her title was or is, but this means we would be demonstrating other games. In this case, we have looked into the naval games of Warlord. Now, it is not a secret that I am not that much of a fan of most naval games. I think I have more or less been burned by bad rule sets or ones that just seem like work. There was one naval WW2 game I saw at Historicon that I decided to watch a turn play out. Kalissa left before the turn was other to see more interesting stuff. While I am sure the players ate up what they were playing and were having a blast I can see why she left. One round of shooting took 30 minutes to resolve. The one battleship fired a volley to the other side of the table at 20 feet long with ships the size of my finger. At the point of hitting, the receiving player open a 3" three ring binder with pages of information that he rolled on. Each page was sections of the ship form the kitchen to the bathroom to the engine room where he rolled for damage and fires. After all that rolling, the player said I am good. I still have no idea what happened in that round of shooting. 

   Now, grant it, I know there are way less complex naval games. I had played two games of Warlord's Cruel Seas game when it came out. I, thought, it was an interesting game, but I did not buy into with the exception of the German Faction, because I thought of maybe doing an aerial game for Dunkirk. It did not help that Kalissa was not into naval games, so I did not have much invested. Having a game we can play together makes things easier.  

   Because we have a little more commitment to Warlord Games as volunteers, I figure we should demo games on our terms. I needed make an ocean board. That is what this post was about anyway. Blood and Plunder may have given me some ideas, because that is a dangerous topic for myself I will not talk about. So I made this board with my so-far knowledge of terrain making. 

   This project did turn out rather when despite many mistakes. They are not much for anyone to care about other that I was going for a little more North Atlantic than Sub-tropical. It is not like I am not going to make another one! Anyway, enjoy!

 

Testing out Warlord's Cruel Seas

      Recently, our friend, Joe had got his pre-order deal for Warlord Games Cruel Seas. This is a small skirmish naval game dealing with WWII Raiding boats, such as, Torpedo Boats and such. He asked people in our group about playing it. Honestly, as many know, I am not big into naval games, but there are some that I am willing to try like simple naval games like Sails of Glory. I still have never played that game.  The one person I knew who had anything for that game decided to sell his Sails of Glory stuff. This seems to be common practice for quite a few fellow wargamers we know. They have a mind like squirrels and react to gaming interests. It changes constantly. As Kalissa said on the way over, " there are squirrels that make decisions, and then, there are pancake road squirrels." Commiting to a decision in the gaming world can be hard, I know.
     Anyway, back to Cruel Seas. This was a fairly similar game to Bolt Action, but with boats. Joe and I tried out two missions where he was the pesky British and I was the Germans. The ranges in this game are measured in centimeters. So if you get this game and what to use your own tape measure, make sure it has centimeters. The game's core set came with three measuring sticks that also had angles drawn in for turning your boat. The boats can go four speeds and apparently, you can possible ram each other. I did not get to do this with these rules yet. I will have to try it the next time we play. It is also possible to have your movement interrupted with other boat's wake. Mines are mentioned as well.
    As the games went, I found that my Germans were not as good at shooting, though I managed to sink one British boat in the first game. The second game, I got a chance to fire torpedoes at a freight ship, but was only able to leave it alive by one point. I imagine that if the Germans have painted boats, they will hit their targets much better. At least, that is the lie I am telling myself. I am pretty sure that Joe will bring this game out, again. We both had fun playing it for it's first time out. I might invest it this game in the future. Who knows. However, I have some other projects to tend to at hand.