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.