FoGR TYW Swedish

A while ago I picked up a Warlord Games 'Battalia' starter set cheaply on eBay with the vague idea of using it as the basis of a Swedish or Parliamentarian army to face my Royalists/Imperialists. 

As the project was making no progress I thought I'd try speed painting an infantry unit to see how they looked, being relatively simple uniforms they seemed suitable for speed paints. 

The 'Blue' unit:

The 'Greens':

The 'Yellows':

The 'Reds':

All four units with a General I got as my prize from the ADLG-R competition:

I must admit I think they came out well considering how little effort it was to paint them (I'm sure it took longer to make them, undercoat them and base them than it did to paint them!). The Flags of War flags really help as well and as with my other 28mm FoGR units can be changed to represent different nations (the flag just slides over a wire the standard bearer holds).

I have two units of Horse I could paint the same way though I'm not sure they will be so suited to speed paints and a couple of bases of Dragoons. Of course that isn't enough for an army so to have two armies I'll need to add some more, otherwise they can just be used as extra units for my existing army.

Cruel Sea's United States Navy

Having bought a very cheap Warlord Cruel Sea's US Navy Fleet to supplement or replace the ones I'd already done I painted them up in the 'new' for me Cruel Sea's painting style I used on the Japanese fleet.

One ship I didn't already have was the LCI-(L) landing craft:

A Coastal Cutter sub chaser:

The new one compared to the old one:

Three Higgins boats. Shockingly these are painted green rather than grey!:

Again the new one compared to the old:

Three ELCO boats:

Next to one of the old ones:

Three landing craft:

The new and the old:

I think the new ones have come out nicely though I'm not sure I prefer the green colour for the Higgins and ELCO's to the grey versions and the difference in the paint jobs is less apparent on the smaller ships. Certainly they were well worth the £26 investment (the Warlord site has the set at £73!).

I only have one unpainted ship left now, a Flower Class corvette for the British to be painted as HMS Compass Rose from 'The Cruel Sea' movie. Apart from that I'll probably gradually repaint the larger ships done in the old paint style but leave the smaller ones as they look fine as they are.

Cruel Seas Imperial Japanese Navy

Having completed the Imperial Japanese Army and partly inspired by Mike's efforts with the rather poor Italian ships I thought I'd invest in a discounted Warlord Imperial Japanese Navy fleet starter set for Cruel Seas from Warlord via Wayland Games. The set comes with quite a few ships and seems much better value than buying everything individually.

On opening it the first ship, a Hei-type Escort Minesweeper, was a HUGE model compared to all the others I have. As with the IJA I put a bit more effort into painting these models:

A view from above showing the extensive armament the ship has, if it hits anything it will ceratinly do some damage! However being a 'large' vessel it will also be very vulnerable to torpedoes:

Next in the box were some large Sampans, ancient technology which became far more important for the Japanese as their conventional merchant marine was sunk leaving them to rely largely on these old boats and specially adapted Destroyers and Submarines to move supplies. There are two slightly different versions:

The second version:

The Japanese apparently didn't have much enthusiasm for MTB and the T-14 class MTB perhaps demonstrates this having a mere 15 hull points (one moderate hit could sink one!) and being armed only with a single 20mm gun plus a couple of machine guns and two torpedoes:

Viewed from above:

As with the other branches of the Japanese military in desperation some suicide weapons were developed by the IJN. Three Maru-ni Kamikaze boats make up a group in Cruel Seas. These are armed with a depth charge which very optimistically the pilot was meant to drop in front of an opposing ship:

The second type, Shin'yo Kamikaze boats, are armed with rockets:

Finally the box contained a single aircraft, the Aichi D3A 'Val':

The box provides a decent force to start off playing the IJN in Cruel Seas without the need for any additions really though it would be possible to add some landing craft and a Sub-Chaser for some more variety and extra aircraft. The initial resin model of the Minesweeper was badly buckled so Warlord sent me a replacement leaving me with the hull of the first one unused, after some hot water treatment I managed to straighten it out a bit and there are some spare guns from the Sampans I could fit it with perhaps. I certainly don't think I'd ever need two Minesweepers though so perhaps if I gather sufficient enthusiasm I'll try to make it into a stripped-down cargo carrying version (my almost total lack of naval knowledge means I have no idea if they did this but they certainly did with destroyers so it is possible I guess!).

Unlike when I put a bit more effort into painting the 20mm IJA and they looked a bit better than the 20mm Vietnam forces I'd just painted to play with I think these ships look substantially better than the other Cruel Seas stuff I've done and making me wonder if it is worth repainting some of the earlier models or just accepting that these ones just look nicer!

One thing that is lacking is flags, the ones Warlord supply are printed in a 'wavy' format and are extremely hard to cut out and glue being so tiny. I tried printing some out on paper and painting over them but again, being so small and with the rising sun design being very difficult to print or colour they didn't really work either so I'm still thinking about that!

Cruel Sea's Convoy

Having recently painted up four landing craft for Cruel Sea's it became apparent that eight landing craft would be at least twice as good as four! Having duly placed the order the extra four quickly arrived:

I'd also decided that I could do with some more merchant ships so ordered two of the Freighters and attempted to paint them to look different. The first one:

The second in pretty much reversed colours, they do look a bit different:

I now have six ships for a convoy, three resin warlord ones and three MDF ones. The MDF ones are not as nice but they will do for now:

The convoy from above:

I think there is more potential for a variety of games with Cruel Sea's than Black Sea's so hopefully these ships will see more action!

Cruel Seas: Royal Navy v Kriegsmarine

My first face to face game for a considerable while saw my Royal Navy force take on Mike's Kreigsmarine at "Cruel Seas". 

As Mike had not played before and I hadn't played for ages we decided to play through a few of the introductory scenarios in the rule book.

First up was "Ships in the night" in which two Vospers face one E-boat with the objective being to exit off the opposite board edge ideally while sinking the opposition.

Vospers ready for action:

An E-boat appears in the distance!

One Vosper is quickly sunk by the E-boats firepower and the E-boat exits the board successfully to win the encounter:

Scenario 2 was "Torpedo run" where an E-boat attempts to shepherd a tanker across the board while two Vospers attempt to sink it.

The tanker plows on through the waves while the E-boat attempts to get between it and the Vospers. One Vosper has launched torpedoes!

Close up of the torpedo launch:

One torpedo is heading for the tanker, will it hit? Yes! Will it explode? Yes! The tanker is heavily damaged but still afloat. Can the E-boat save it?:

The Vospers close in for the kill but the E-boat is perfectly placed to defend the tanker:

Disaster for the Germans as the E-boat takes damage to it's bridge and fails to change course leaving the tanker undefended:

The tanker is finished off by the Vosper's and the crew abandon ship giving victory to the RN:

Scenario 3 was "To the rescue!". An RAF Fairmile rescue launch has been badly damaged and drifts helplessly in danger of imminently sinking. Four Vospers, one specially equipped to rescue the crew, attempt to save them before three E-boats can capture or sink the crippled vessel.

The stricken launch in the distance:

The rescue Vosper is almost at the launch, unfortunately accurate fire from two E-boats sinks it before it can collect the crew:

A second Vosper attempts to close with the launch, it can still rescue the crew though it will take longer without the special rescue kit. Meanwhile the remaining two Vosper's attempt to distract the E-boats:

One Vosper closes right in on the Germans, inflicting some damage on the nearest E-boat:

Disaster strikes as the Launch sinks! The crew take to the life rafts and the nearest Vosper desperately attempts to pick them up while an E-boat closes in for the kill:

The E-boat blows the Vosper out of the water helped by a second E-boat:

Only two Vospers remain now out of four and another is quickly sunk. The remaining Vosper retires as the situation is now hopeless:

The final scenario was "Spy boat" where a Fairmile MGB attempts to drop an agent off on enemy held coast while being stalked by E-boats.

Enemy coast in sight! In the distance an E-boat can be seen but it has not spotted the Fairmile yet:

The Fairmile approaches slowly hoping that the watching E-boat won't spot it and unwilling to travel at speed over the minefield between the island and the shore:

The Fairmile crosses the minefield successfully:

The E-boat finally spots the enemy and calls up reinforcements:

The Fairmile reaches the shore successfully but the enemy is closing in:

A short exchange of fire results in the Fairmile being put out of action. Any surviving crew will be stranded on the enemy shore!:

Great fun and excellent to be playing "in real life" again! As ever a tough task for the RN in the scenarios, the E-boats are far more powerful than the Vospers which are very fragile and every time I've played these scenarios it goes badly for the RN.

In total I lost 4 Vospers plus a Fairmile and only managed to sink the tanker largely due to the torpedo strike and the hit on the E-boat bridge at a vital time. I don't think I got close to sinking an E-boat at any point.

Hopefully I'll get to play more Cruel Seas as it has potential to be an interesting game if you can get the balance between the forces right. Convoy attacks might work better and between us Mike and I have quite a few merchantmen so we could do a decent sized convoy together.