Uncharted Seas - First Game

We had our first game of Uncharted Seas tonight, and it was fun, but I think I have an issue with the basic scenario.

It was my Dragon Lords vs. Jonathan's Shadow Mages in a "turn up and fight" scenario which is an equal point value matchup where the last man standing wins.

I scored first blood by getting a lucky critical early on against one of his cruisers, but it was downhill from there for my poor elven overlords.

We did have some cool incidents with the highlight being a great little fight where he crashed two of his frigates into one of my cruisers. One frigate sunk, but the other survived, and in the ensuing boarding action managed to achieve mutual annihilation, leaving both ships as derelicts for the remainder of the game.

Another cool incident came a bit after that when my last remaining frigate swooped into range of his battleship and set off a spell that left two fires raging on it. Unfortunately, the fires ended up doing little damage, but it was still cool.

It was at this point that I was pretty much out of the game. After the last frigate was duly dispatched for its impertinence in challenging the enemy battleship, I was left with two ships, both damaged, one of which only survived another turn before joining its companions at the bottom of the sea.

This was where things got boring for me. Knowing I was going to lose was not an issue, what was the problem was that I had nothing left to do. My opponent still had three squadrons left, and a total of five models. I had one squadron of one model, and it had already taken enough damage that I couldn't afford to split my fire. My turn took about two minutes to my opponent's ten at that point, and the game went on for several more turns before my last ship finally went under.

As it turned out, I was able to do some damage, and by the end of the game my opponent only had three ships left, one of each class, but that makes it sound closer than it was because his battleship was still nearly undamaged.

This lack of things for me to do for the latter third of the game is a problem with the scenario. The last man standing victory condition looks like it's going to result in this ending most of the time. Fortunately, there are other options. In addition to a couple of ideas in the rulebook, Craig Gallant over at the D6 Generation has come up with a few ideas on his site. I'll probably steal one of them for our next game.

There will be a next game. I like the system, I think it just needs better scenarios. It possibly also needs better terrain. I'd like to get some bigger islands made up for this, along with some other types of terrain.

It's also possible that a simple turn limit might do the trick, although I'm afraid that a fast fleet might be able to get in an early kill and then just play keep-away for the rest of the game. We might have to try it though, and see how it works.

Dragon Lords

As you can reasonably infer from my lack of posts about it lately, I haven't been doing much painting. Fortunately, I have a game of Uncharted Seas scheduled for Monday, and my opponent has already fully painted the fleet that he just received less than a week ago. That's spurred by lazy procrastinating ass to get busy on at least one of the three fleets I have had for over a year. Since my opponent has a Shroud Mages fleet, I decided to save my Iron Dwarf fleet for later, mainly so that any observers don't think that the game is only about ironclads. That left either my Dragon Lords or my Orc Raiders. Since the Orcs aren't assembled yet, it was an easy choice to go with the Dragon Lords.

I've always known that I wanted to do the Dragon Lords in bright colors, preferably reds given that I rarely work in that part of the color wheel. I also wanted to keep things simple since I only had a couple of days to finish the project if I wanted them ready for the game. Beyond that I really didn't have a plan going into the project. The end result is a bit of a fortuitous accident, but I'm quite pleased with it.

I started with the primer, a standard ruddy brown that I acquired specifically for this project some time ago. I originally thought that I might just primer the model, add a few details, and then give it a wash, but I decided to put a bit more work into it, and am glad I did. I ended up doing a natural wood color for the hulls almost by accident, using a brown that I thought might be a bit more reddish than it turned out to be. I then used a standard red for the sails, and washed it all with a dark brown wash after adding a few details.

The entire project only took three days. Primer was applied Friday morning. Friday evening I did up one frigate to see how it looked, and did a little work on a couple more. The bulk of the painting was done Saturday afternoon and evening, with everything done but the sealing by the time I went to bed. The only thing done on Sunday was to apply the sealer.

The paints I used are as follows:

Primer: Krylon Ruddy Brown
Hull: Vallejo Game Color 42 Parasite Brown
Sails: Vallejo Model Color 947 Red
Ballistae: Citadel Foundation Iyanden Darksun
Cannons: Vallejo Game Color 1 Chaos Black (I think that's what it's called, the bottle I'm using actually has a blank label)
Cabin Windows: Vallejo Model Color 915 Deep Yellow over Citadel Foundation Iyanden Darksun
Wash: Citadel Wash Gryphonne Sepia

Flames of War Fail

I'm thinking about trying to get in some Flames of War soon, if only in the form of a demo game for my local store. So, I've started re-reading the rules. A few pages in I decided I better check on the latest errata. Yes, I'd managed to forget Battlefront's strange attitude towards errata.

If at all possible they want to avoid ever admitting that they make mistakes. They waited until the second printing of the core rulebook to do it for the actual rules, and even then they never issued a pdf, instead having it only as an html post on their website. As far as I know, they still have never issued official errata for the mid-war compilations, or at least I couldn't find any. They have issued pdf errata for their two late war compilations, but you'd never know it by browsing their website. I ended up having to use google to find them!

It's really depressing to see that Battlefront still has this weird attitude towards errata. I had hoped that they had maybe grown into a healthier attitude over the year and a half that I've been away from the game. I suppose the fact that they at least issued errata pdfs for Festung Europa and Fortress Europe can be seen as baby steps towards a more adult attitude to owning up to mistakes, but I'd really hoped they'd come along farther than they have.

A nice contrast is Spartan Games and the way they've been handling Uncharted Seas. Unafraid to issue errata months after releasing the rules, and easily accessible in their official forums. Maybe I'll see if I can interest the store owner in a demo of Uncharted Seas instead of Flames of War...

Uncharted Seas Errata

One of the things that concerned me about Uncharted Seas, but that I didn't want to comment on because I hadn't actually played with them yet, was the Orc fleet. It seemed to me that they had a lot of advantages without that many disadvantages compared to the other fleets. Well, Spartan Games recently redid their point cost system to more easily fit in future releases, and as part of the review they decided that the Orcs had indeed been under-priced under the old system. They've taken the rather unusual approach of giving the players two options to fix this.

The first option is to use new stats that have been redesigned so that the costs and abilities are more in line with the other navies. The result is that they still have fairly powerful forward firepower, although not as much as before, and significantly weaker firepower to the sides. This should lead to a navy that plays quite differently from all the others. The other fleets all generally want to maneuver for a broadside shot at their opponents, but the Orcs are going to want to charge in with their enemies straight ahead. This lets them get in more powerful shots and get in close to ram and board the enemy.

The second option is for players to use the old stats which have had the new point costs applied to them, meaning that they'll end up being outnumbered by their opponents when running a game with equal point costs.

It's good to see that Spartan Games is concerned about balance issues, and continues to address them. It's also good to see that they want to give their customers options as to how to play their game. I actually find the new Orc stats more interesting than the old ones that used a unique firing arc rule, but it's nice to see that they haven't abandoned those players that liked the old system better. I look forward to trying them out once my Orc starter navy arrives.

You can check out the repointed stat cards, including both old and new orcs, here. One side effect of the changes is that the starter navies are no longer exactly even on points, but they are still close enough to be considered a reasonable matchup.

Uncharted Seas

A picture of my Uncharted Seas Dragon Lords and Iron Dwarves straight out of the box. I haven't even put the sails on the Dragon Lords yet. For scale purposes, the islands are Gale Force Nine islands for WizKids Pirates game and the dice are 1/2" dice. You can see representatives of all three classes of ships for both races in this picture as well as the frigate turning and arc of fire template.

In one of my posts about podcasts I warned about listening to This Week In Wargaming if you valued your wallet. Naturally, I didn't take my own advice and the result is that I decided to pick up the rules and a couple of starter navies for Uncharted Seas from the Warstore.

The guys at TWIW have been pretty enthusiastic about this game, and after getting a chance to read through the rules and push the models around the table a bit I have to agree. Uncharted Seas is a set of fantasy naval rules. Amongst truly old school Games Workshop gamers this will immediately invite comparison to Man O' War, GW's fantasy naval rules from back in the day. My opinion is that if you still miss Man O' War, then this game could very well scratch that itch.

First, the background. So far it's fairly minimal, but gets the job done. The initial four navies are the Imperial Navy (humans), Iron Dwarves, Orc Raiders, and the Dragon Lords (Melnibonean style elves). The story is that all but the Dragon Lords originate from the Old World and have fairly recently discovered and begun to colonize the New World. In doing so they have encountered the Dragon Lords who already claim dominion over the New World. The background allows for conflict between all four races as well as internal conflicts between different factions within the same race.

Unlike the Old World, which is one big continent, the New World is made up mostly of island chains with a few larger land masses. This explains why naval warfare has come to be the dominant means of power projection in the region.

The rulebook mentions plans for further expansion, both for the existing races and the introduction of new races, including more traditional Elves.

The rules are simple, but capture most of the feel of age of sail style fighting. Turns begin by rolling initiative and then players take turns activating squadrons of ships in initiative order.

The wind is handled simply by it not having an effect unless you are sailing directly into it (actually within about a 45 degree arc of directly into it), at which point your movement costs are doubled as long as you do so. There's also a chance once per turn of the wind shifting.

Turning is handled using three templates, one for each class of ship: frigate, cruiser, and battleship. This makes movement a simple affair.

The same templates also show arcs of fire for the three classes, which brings us to line of sight. In the basic rules frigates do not block line of sight from battleships, otherwise everything blocks line of sight, both ships and islands. Ships firing broadsides basically have two 45 degree arcs to trace line of sight from, one at either end of the ship. If both have line of sight, then the ship gets full firepower against the target. If only one has line of sight then firepower is halved. This makes it a little more tricky to maneuver the larger ships to bring their full firepower to bear since the two arcs are spread further apart.

Damage is handled by rolling a number of d6 equal to the firepower of the attack. Generally 4s and 5s are single hits, and 6s are double hits that get rerolled for the possibility of even more hits. This can be modified by various factors so that 3s can be hits, or 4s can be misses. This system makes it possible, if unlikely, for a lucky shot from a frigate to sink a battleship if the shooter keeps rolling 6s on the rerolls.

The total number of hits are compared to the damage value and critical value of the target, if they equal or exceed the damage value then the target takes one damage point. If the total hits equal or exceed the target's critical value then the target rolls on the critical hit table instead of taking a damage point. If the shot was so good that the number of hits was twice or more the critical value, then the target has to roll once for each multiple of the critical value done.

Damage is handled in the same way when handling ramming, collisions and boarding actions. The only differences being how to determine the number of dice to roll. The result is an easy to understand and use system that should be fast playing. Most record keeping can be handled on the table with tokens, although some paperwork may be necessary, especially in larger games, to keep track of critical hits taken.

There's one further factor that adds more depth to the whole system: the card decks. Each player gets a 26 card deck. Thirteen of the cards are common to all decks, and the other 13 are specific to the race being played. Each player gets to draw a number of cards equal to the number of squadrons in their fleet, up to a maximum of five. The cards are played during the game to give advantage to certain rolls, or to cast special magical effects, and are refreshed at the end of each turn. Depending on the nature of the card they are either played at the beginning of the turn, when activating a squadron, when attacking, or in reaction to another player's action.

Between the ship stats and the race specific cards there seems to be enough differentiation between forces to give each navy a distinct feel without requiring a lot of special rules.

The basic game includes stats for three ships for each navy: one frigate, one cruiser, and one battleship. Spartan Games has already released stats for new ships for each navy, including a dragon carrier for the Dragon Lords that introduces air power to the game, heavy cruisers for the Dragon Lords and Iron Dwarfs, a new battleship class ship for the Orcs, and a troop transport for the Imperial Navy that gives them marines. Other units that have been mentioned for the future include submersibles and further air power.

There's also a set of sea monsters to use as random encounters in some scenarios. The rules for all the new units have been offered as free pdfs at www.spartangames.co.uk.

The game has an affordable entry cost. The book itself is about $28 at the Warstore. Starter fleets range from around $40 to $45 for all but the dwarfs who are only around $25 because they don't need the white metal sails that the other forces use. Starter fleets give you six frigates, three cruisers and a battleship, plus the card deck for that race. Enough to play the scenarios from the rulebook and get a good feel for the game.

If you pick the dwarfs as one of your navies you can get into this game with two complete forces for less than $100! I can't think of another miniatures game that comes in at that price point.

The miniatures themselves are single piece resin hulls with white metal sails for those ships that use sails. Quality is good with some minimal work needed to clean up the bottom edge of some of the resin pieces. Detail is good without going overboard. Painting up a navy should be a quick process. I plan on just spraypainting a basecoat, picking out a few details and then hitting it with a wash before sealing it with a clear coat and calling it finished.