"Cruel Seas - Rescue at Sea scenario" Topic

Sea Adventurers,

We tried a different sort of Cruel Seas scenario yesterday, one that Fitz came up with, that proved a blast to play. The situation was predicated on a heavy day of air-fighting during the height of the Battle Of Britain, and the alarm had just gone out to all available boats (including just-returned night prowlers) to search the Channel and rescue downed air crews. Boat orders and condition status sheets were handed out to each game Captain – some boats in degraded states considering their lack of repair time.

Here's a scene from the opening "straits" – friend or foe not yet determined among the rescuers, or the nationality of the downed crewmen (the small orange dice wallowing in the cold sea waters awaiting their plucking….or a more severe fate) -

Because the retrieval of the downed crews in the drink required movement alongside, and then remaining stationary in the subsequent turn, the gun exchanges between ships was most effective. There were a number of tense moments as separate groupings of boats attempted to signal each other as 'friend or foe' – before the hostile action began – all this ramping up the fun as the scenario unfolded. The players tended to engage the other enemy combat ships first, while leaving the more benign-looking boats to themselves (for awhile).

This tendency allowed the little Kriegsfischkutter to load itself with downed crewmen, as it began to resemble an engorged guppy – and then too tempting of a target. In it's attempted haste to run for safety it collided with a friendly S-Boot coming from the opposite direction, and it's shivering occupants to be dumped back into the cruel seas once again!

In the end, it was a lowly British trawler, the HMS Monger which lived to rule the day, taking back as many crews as could be rescued, and with gratitude from a grateful nation, each trawler crewman receiving elevation to Warmonger 1st Class! ;)

Thanks for posting these excellent pics of the game. GMing was a blast most certainly. We used 5mm orange D6s to represent possible rescuees with some just being wreckage (those showing a 5 or 6) and the others being the number of crew found floating in the water. Activation was done by card sequence with those being dealt out each turn and going from high to low. A joker would allow a Captain to go anywhere along the sequence he chose and Joker along with Aces meant more airmen parachuting to the drink so the table was always changing.

Most excellent! What an interesting scenario as well.
Bravo!

Joe

Very cool scenario!

Most definitely concur with Joe and Lion – nice to see a different sort of scenario and the game looks stunning

Thank you guys!

At the moment we're conspiring on our next scheduled scenario….

We're headed to the Adriatic for a special ops mission planned. Gotta make up some *landing* terrain for this, and we can probably get some of our "fog-of-war" (polyester) fog banks onto to the table for this too.

Btw, let me see if I can slip this product notice in here w/o the editors deleted it for unpaid "advertising" – someone has just done a nice resin mole set -

link

Fly,
That mole looks great. Wish they sold just one instead of 2 though.

Joe

For sure Joe, and that could've/should've been a cheaper option offered too!