My one concession so far has been the purchase of the December issue of Wargame Illustrated, which came with a plastic sprue of either two 1/300 scale Vosper MTBs or a couple of Kreigsmarine S-Boats and a 6-page article on the forthcoming Cruel Seas game. I don't normally buy Wargames Illustrated, but I rationalised this purchase as being purely for research purposes (who am I kidding!).
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Wargames Illustrated, Issue 374.
I only buy it for the articles (yeah, right).
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Whoever is in charge of marketing at Warlord and Wargames Illustrated certainly knows their business as judging from comments online, the magazines have been flying off the shelves and quite a few punters have missed out on getting copies. I was lucky and got in early. Soon after, single sprues from the magazine started appearing on eBay and attracting bids at silly prices.
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Warlord Games Cruel Seas S-Boat sprue.
A Type S-38 and a Type S-100, weapons and torpedoes.
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The issue I picked up has the pair of S-Boats - and very nice models they are too. If I had one minor gripe it would be that the waterline hulls sit 'flat' in the water as though stationary, or at very slow speed. These are fast craft and I want my S-Boats and MTBs to look like they are surging forward, bows raised, not sitting becalmed. On smaller scale models this would not have been so noticeable, but at 1/300 scale I think it looks a bit odd, especially the Vospers which had a more bow-up stance at speed than their S-Boat opponents.
Models aside, I've avidly read and re-read the Wargames Illustrated article on the game, supplementing this with all the official promotion, on-line videos, chat and froth that a new and shiny game generates. I really want to like this game. I have a collection of half-a-dozen rule sets for WWII coastal actions, all with their individual merits, but none of which I have ever been entirely happy with. This got me thinking about exactly what I expect from a set of WWII coastal action rules and how well my existing rules collection measures up to that.
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| Schnellboot vor! |
Models aside, I've avidly read and re-read the Wargames Illustrated article on the game, supplementing this with all the official promotion, on-line videos, chat and froth that a new and shiny game generates. I really want to like this game. I have a collection of half-a-dozen rule sets for WWII coastal actions, all with their individual merits, but none of which I have ever been entirely happy with. This got me thinking about exactly what I expect from a set of WWII coastal action rules and how well my existing rules collection measures up to that.
After much thought, I've narrowed this down to four key points:
1. Fast play
Actions were short, sharp affairs; strike hard, strike fast and get the hell out quick, so I'm looking for a set of rules with that feeling of pace. That means no written orders, no long lists of modifiers or numerous tables to refer to during play. Most game functions therefore need to be easily remembered and intuitive. A good example of a game that achieves this (though for aerial dogfights, not WWII coastal actions) is Warlord Games Blood Red Skies. This manages to distil all the complexities of 3D aerial combat into a simple yet tactically subtle game while still retaining the feel of a WWII dogfight. Achieving something similar for coastal warfare MTB 'dogfights' would be the golden ideal.
2. Night fighting and illumination
Most WWII MTB coastal actions occurred at night, with all the attendant problems of sighting, identification and targeting. Vessels illuminated by searchlight, starshell or fires, (or silhouetted against sources of light) tended to attract gunfire. Crews could be blinded by both illumination of their own vessel, or the muzzle flash from continuous firing of their own weapons. These effects are not easy to represent on the game table, but any set of rules for WWII coastal actions needs to cover this important aspect.
3. Confusion
This is linked to point 2. Fast moving battles at night can quickly breed confusion. If someone fired tracer in your direction, a jumpy or trigger-happy crew tended to fire back. In the darkness it is not easy to distinguish whether your 'opponent' is actually friend or foe. There are plenty of contemporary accounts of friendly fire and occasions when groups of friendly vessels continued to exchange fire in ignorance, or pour tracer at 'phantom' targets long after the real enemy had left the battle area. Keeping station and maintaining situational awareness in the heat of battle was not easy. Losses due to damage caused by accidental high speed collisions with friendly vessels (and the enemy) were also not uncommon.
4. Doctrine and Morale
It might seem odd to lump these two concepts together, but what I'm really getting at here is crew behaviour. Are your forces aggressive or defensive? How much damage and loss is acceptable? At what point do you drop smoke and attempt to disengage? Coastal forces crews generally fought hard, but they were not suicidal. Aggression was always tempered by the need to preserve precious boats and crews. That means no games where players slog it out to the last boat. Rescue of friendly crews from stricken vessels should also be a requirement - and it wasn't unusual to rescue enemy crew too. How often do you see that in a WWII coastal forces game?
In Parts II and III, I'll take a look at my collection of WWII coastal actions rules and see how each of them measures up to these four key points.
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