Cruel Seas Casts Off...

2019 hasn't had the best of starts in the world of Bleases (except for a cracking gig by Saul's band Blacklist last Friday), I've been struggling with a dose of man flu since New Year's day that manifested into manthrax over the weekend, but I am determined to get off my death bed (well armchair) and kick off 2019's gaming tomorrow evening.

With George having been roped into a Saga foursome at BIG this week I decided to test the water with Cruel Seas and Dave and Matt have expressed an interest too (Matt then painting up half a dozen E-Boats in a couple of days just to show me up!).

Today I dug the Vosper sprues out the box and decided to glue them together. I'm sure more nautical expert gamers than me are a bit baffled by what Warlord have provided on the sprue and their decision to give the boats different titles than they had historically but after some research comprising mainly of looking at a copy of Squadron Signal Vosper MTBs in Action book but also having a quick look at Captain Robert J. Bulkley Jr's At Close Quarters; PT Boats In The United States Navy and Len Reynold's Gunboat 658 I quite like the look of the Med as an area of operations as it will allow me to use mixed RN/USN flotillas as well as the Germans using Italian vessels and the Italians fighting on both sides. 



So I glued my first three Vospers together as the 72 ft 1941version with fore mounted 20mm and after twin 303 turret (the two torp model what Warlord have decided to call Vosper I's). The other three are the four tube 1944 (historic) Vosper I (what Warlord call the Vosper II despite that being a later variant with a 6pdr fore, an option they don't offer). Unfortunately the Vopser I's don't appear to have served in the Med, but as Matt has six E-boats I thought they better get them off the sprue for tomorrow...

As the masts on the Warlord models look like Minifig tree tunk spears (showing my age there!) I haven't glued them on and will make some from wire in due course when I source some suitable crew figures (probably H&R artillery crews) and slap some paint on...

Matt has a couple of Vosper sprues from Wargames Illustrated that he doesn't want so I plan to use the early models to make up some 1942 US made boats with fore and aft 20mm's, not quite sure what I'll do with the later war ones at the moment.

One thing that has been mentioned on various forums is the inclusion of two Vosper MTB variants in the starter set when Warlord could have instead included an early Vosper MTB and maybe a Fairmile MGB (the latter being a proper enemy of the E-Boats that could go up against them) to provide a better balance. Cynically one might wonder if Warlord have an eye on a potential "gaming arms race" here as per the old Warhammer approach when you needed to buy the new super weapon/unit to take out the one your opponent's army had got. "Having trouble with the pesky S-1000 E-Boat sir? Have you tried the Fairmile D? Here are two nice resin and metal models for just thirty quid..."

Alternatively, as I will be doing, you can pick a decent 1/300th Fairmile  D's for just four quid from Heroics and Ros. Maybe not quite as nice as the forthcoming Warlord models but a helluva lot cheaper...

Unfortunately I won't have one for tomorrow's game...