"Cool Seas..." Topic

I certainly think Warlord Game's Cruel Seas has a lot of cool thing going for it, namely the great models and the potential to showcase the drama of these small boat actions.

However I am also drawn to small scale destroyer actions as well as convoy encounters with submarines…. and I think this is where I started tinkering with my own ideas for an even simpler set of rules. Some of the aspects I am thinking of:

Scale: As I have said I love the 1/300 scale for the MTBs as it really allows some cool modelling opportunities. However at this scale even 1/350 destroyers would seem to be too large for a typical tabletop encounter. I haven't seen anyone game with these so if you have then I am would be interested in hearing about it. Personally I feel that the 1/600 scale is optimal for these actions, the MTBs can be distinguished and larger vessels are better represented.

Movement: The Cruel Seas movement is nice and simple and works more or less as you would expect, dividing speed into slow, combat and full is clever and the wake markers serve as reminders of your speed, excellent idea, I will use this. I love the activation system and it keeps players in suspense as to which ship is going to activate next….so my rules "borrow" this cool concept. Instead of arbitrary pivots however I have gone for a more "X-Wing" style approach with colour coded maneuver templates. The speed of your ship shows you what your tightest turn template can be:

theminiaturespage.com

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Some prototype datacards:

theminiaturespage.com

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theminiaturespage.com

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Combat: Cruel Seas certainly has an eye for realism with regards gunfire between the little boats which is cool from a historic perspective to see the evolution of weaponry used. However I think it could be simplified to speed up gameplay. With Cruel Seas any gunnery weapon can potentially damage and sink any vessel.

I have divided gunnery weapons into 3 categories:
Guns (MG up to 20mm), Cannons (37mm, 2pdr up to 57mm or 6pdr) and Turrets (3" or greater). Guns and Cannons do "Damage" points while Turrets do "Hull" points.

I have divided all vessels into 2 categories: small craft and large craft. Small craft are your MTBs and these can be damaged by all gunfire attacks as they have a Damage rating. Large craft (Destroyers) have Hull points so cannot be affected by Gun and Cannon hits, only Turret attacks which do Hull damage. So this prevents MTBs strafing large ships to death… that's why they are carrying torpedoes after all.

theminiaturespage.com

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This picture shows the use of different range rulers for Gun (red) and Cannon (Green) attacks at short and long range. The Fairmile D boat is at long range for their Gun value and can roll 4 attack dice (see datacard). They will hit the S-100 on a 5 or 6 (d6). The S-100 can make a 3+ save throw against any Gun hits they sustain. If they fail this then they would tick off 1 damage "triangle". Once they have taken 3 damage they might suffer a critical.
The Fairmile also has 2 Cannon dice that would need a 6 to hit at long range but would not give a save throw. They have a special rule for their 6 pdr armament (Heavy Cannon) that means they inflict 2 damage per hit (no save).

I would certainly be interested in hearing people's thoughts on my ideas (that was the main reason for posting after all!) What I most enjoy about Cruel Seas is that I am renewing my interest in collecting models, researching battles and reading about encounters that took place from all sides of the conflict.

I have other simple rules for torpedo attacks and ramming but I will not share these yet (maybe if you ask nicely). Tentatively I am thinking of calling my rules "E-Boat Alley" and they are really just a homebrew idea, obviously not for retail!

Nice work… great work.

DB, I remember playing with turn arcs using TSR's Air Power rules – (X-Wing is just an upstart by comparison). ;)

Your conversion work looks very promising!

Funny thing is sometimes, we can even approach a re-engineering or near-rewrite of some rules, create a much more elegant system even, but if it's not actually published, it'll just remain somebody's excellent effort (and really that's ok if satisfying enough).

I've seen this in our local gaming scene for years (over multiple decades in fact) – that gamers can readily coalesce around playing a published ruleset, but if someone tries to put their spin on it (even if improved), it can actually result in less gaming than more.

Back to your elegant effort here though – and it looks to be of much higher quality than just a 'homebrew idea' – it almost calls out for retail (if fully implemented) – to get it's due.

brilliant !

i hope once you have everything worked out and have done some playtesting (i'll volunteer now!) that you'll publish these rules , either for sale or as a free download somewhere
obviously all reference to Cruel seas and it's components would have to be removed !

Thanks for the replies. I do enjoy putting my own spin on games, the turning templates have come from another homebrew air combat game using 1/300 scale aircraft. This will probably lead to me using this scale of aircraft with the 1/600 scale ships but as they will largely be markers that doesn't matter so much.
I would like to think that my version of the naval game is just a "zoomed out" view of the encounter so that combat can be a bit faster to resolve as there are fewer weapon stats to worry about.
Adding more large craft (Destroyers, possibly up to Light Cruisers) is also in the works. There are plenty of 1/700 scale ship models that are highly suitable as they are usually waterline models.
I respect the intellectual property of Cruel Seas and do not plan on selling my rules. I am willing to share these with interested persons. Anyone that would like to help playtest would be welcome. Ideally it shouldn't matter what scale of models you use, the rule system is what is being tested.

I have done a little bit of playtesting at my local.

url=https://imgur.com/5sbc7rg]

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