Cruel Seas – Close Quarters Supplement
I have covered Cruel Seas starter set, Strike Fast, Strike Hard, in late september. Earlier this year Warlord Games a supplement for it, Close Quarters.
Cruel Seas – Royal Airforce and Luftwaffe
While I'm currently reading the Close Quarters supplement for Cruel Seas, I return to the aircrafts that I have around for air support on the channel.
Quite a while back I bought a few of the larger Trumpeter packs, as I thought an air combat game in topgun style would be fun, maybe to defend an aircraft carrier. From that idea I still have the F4F-4 Wildcat here, the other kits (Douglas TBD and SBD) I traded with the Sweetwater travelling box, as only the Grumman were used by the British under the designation Martlet / Wildcat Mk. IV. As it would be unfair to just give the Royal Navy some support from above, I got something for the Kriegsmarine as well.
Cruel Seas Kriegsmarine R-23 R-Boat
I've added the Fairmile D to my Royal Navy, so I needed a medium sized counter part for my Kriegsmarine. Something the R-Boat could take care of.
Similar how E-Boat was an allied term for Enemy Boats, R-Boat is a term for Räumboote (meaning minesweeper). These R-Boats were build already before the second world war, and saw service post-war for clearing naval mines.
Cruel Seas Royal Navy Fairmile D MTB 624
I had the Royal Navy flotilla from the starter set already increased with the Flower Class Corvette, but I was looking for a mid-sized ship, that could be used in smaller to medium battles and went for the Fairmile D MTB.
The Fairmile D Motor Torpedo Boat is a british MTB, that was built by Fairmile Marine. A Fairmile is bigger than the earlier MTB/MGB (Motor Gun Boats), for example the Vosper or PT Boat, but slower in speed. They were named Dog Boats, and were designed to combat the more advantaged E-boats by the German Kriegsmarine.
Lord of the Rings, Cruel Seas and Light Upgrade
The Rohan reviews for next week are ready, I had the time to tinker on these kit and prepare some scale pictures. Very interesting kits, beyond the fantasy setting. But more on that later.
Cruel Seas US PT boat
In the January 2019 issue of Wargames Illustrated (WI 375) they gave out a free sprue of the US PT Boats (or Torpedoes) for Cruel Seas, and cover an Elco and a Higgins PT boat each. The sprues are the same from the US Navy PT boat flotilla (included there 3 times). I have covered the other two plastic sprues for the game, the German S-Boats and British Vospers already here.
In the mid of World War 2, the US Navy only had 3 squadrons of MTB (motor torpedo boats) or PT boats (patrol torpedo) as they were named in the US. The US Navy had access to the Vospers due to a licensing arrangement with Great Britain, and roughly 146 units were build for Lend Lease and were exported to Allied Powers like Canada, Britain and the Soviet Union. Yet only 50 were used by the Roval Navy and none were used by the US Navy.
2nd Advent Weekender
St. Nicolas was busy this week, and no I am not talking about the holy Nick Cage, and put a couple of things into the stockings.
I managed to acquire some Hobgoblins from the Chaos Dwarf Blood Bowl team at the Games n' Dice demo day. And my first intention was to use that as a base to start from, but I saw a complete team, incl. those special positionals (even the blunderbuss) and went for it. It is a higher invest, but I saved a lot of time and postage on smaller batches and individual orders.
Long story short, I have 15 hobgoblins that I'd like to sell. So drop me a message if you're interested.
Cruel Seas Battle Reports
Last week I had beginning with sunday the chance to play a couple of matches of Cruel Seas.
Cruel Seas M-Class Minesweeper
After the decision fell towards the Flower Class Corvette as the large ship of the Royal Navy fleet, I was looking for a fitting counterpart for the German Kriegsmarine. My choice went towards the German M-Class Minesweeper.
The Minesweeper was in competition with the Marinefährprahm (basically a landing ship) and the Vorpostenboot. The landing ship would be something to keep in mind, if I wanted to extend the Operation Sealion / Gigant towards Cruel Seas. The Vorpostenboot is an armed civil ship, similar to the armed trawler of the British and looked a bit to improvised to counter the proud British Corvette. So the decision was clear, it must be the Minesweeper, Minensuchboot M1940.
Cruel Seas British Flower Class Corvette
In extension to the fleets of the Strike Fast! Strike Hard! starter kit I chose a large vessel for both sides. For the British that was the British Flower Class Corvette.
Among the large British ships would have been a Landing Craft Gun or the armed trawler. The landing craft looked more like something for the pacific and the armed trawler was a bit too close to the merchant tanker, and this is a Corvette, a Corvette! So the choice was pretty clear.