The Battle of Cannymaka Sound - Uncharted Seas Battle Report

NOTE TO SELF:-

Next time I play any type of game against bro, before the game starts, take his bloody dice off him!!!

So after a bit of a late night/ early morning shift I managed to get my bro's Shroud Mage Cruisers completed on Saturday, so his fleet was now complete and perhaps not surprisingly, he was keen to see how his new charges would perform in the heat and terror of combat on the Uncharted Seas.

Angus Wargames Club, had a meeting on Saturday night and so it was that we duly turned up at the club, with Ruarok once again bringing his Orcs and Cammie successfully deploying the sniffer dogs to locate his Dwarven fleet from the bowels of his bedroom. With my Dwarf fleet in attendance the scene was set for the Dwarven Alliance to cleanse the sea lanes of the strategically unimportant Cannymaka Sound from the pestiliance of a Combined Orc/ Shroud Mage task force.

Cannymaka Sound, looking North. 

The might of the Dwarf Alliance stand ready to engage the Enemy More Closely.

Looking South East, wind blowing North Westerly (which was just as well for the Shroud Mages as it meant they didn't have the whiff of Orc Flatulence in their faces).

 The Shroud Mages -

 deployed in my bro's classic "I don't what I'm doing so I will set them up like an inverted "L" " formation.

I thought Cammie and I had a plan on how to counter the oncoming menace. Cammie thought he and I had a plan on how to counter the oncoming menace. Problem was we both had different plans. Cammie claimed we had agreed that he would sail his fleet in to the Southern part of the Sound and take up a gun line covering both entrances while I would sail straight ahead and engage the Shroud Mage Fleet head on. I claimed that he would guard the Western part of the Sound, while I would swing round to guard the Eastern part. Clearly, my plan was tactically much more astute and out of the Nelsonian hand book of Naval tactics.

You see the problem with Cammie's idea of me sailing forward and engaging the Shroud Mages head on tactic had a couple of flaws in it. Firstly, the Dwarf Cruisers have no forward firing weapons. Secondly the Shroud Mage Cruisers and Battleship have pointy bits at the front of their ships so they are quite good at ramming.

So I set forth with what I thought was the agreed plan, and Cammie set his plan in motion too. The Shroud Mage Battleship, "Big Bertha" (most original name of bro's - not)  opened up at long distance and scored the first hit of the game on my Dwarven Cruiser, DS "Invincible Hammer Blow of the Dwarf Hegemony" (my names are much more inventive).

A mere scratch on the paintwork.

Soon the Shroud Mages would feel the fury of the Dwarven firepower and a rain of shells rained down on a poor Shroud Mage Frigate and scored - 1 hit.

The Frigate's end was only slightly delayed and another merciless salvo from the Dwarves resulted in the predicted (by me) demise of the hapless craft - cue the cotton wool.

It was at this point that my bro emptied out his dice bag and started picking up his cubes in anticipation of firing his Cruiser gunline at my gallant Frigate DS "Thou Shalt Know No Fear In The Face Of The Enemy".

Nasty bullying Shroud Mage Cruisers, about to gang up on my valiant Frigate.

Okay, if I'm honest, I did expect my Frigate to die. It only has 2 hull points (meaning it takes a total of 6 hits before sinking) and the firing Cruisers could bring down 9 attack dice on it, needing 5's or better to hit. Yes, okay I know that according to the law of averages that rolling that number of dice needing 5's should only have resulted in 3 hits for 1 damage point in total, but have you seen my bro roll dice????

As it was, the Frigate, didn't just suffer 3 hits, or 6 hits but instead took a massive 15 hits (if you roll a 6, it counts as 2 hits and you get to roll the dice again and so my bro did, and again and again)

A suitably large wad of cotton wool to emphasise the complete overkill of the Frigate

Okay, a set back, but that only levelled the losses at 1 Frigate each but I should have seen it as the foretaste of what was to come. In the meantime on the opposite side of the sound Cammie's Battleship and Cruisers were gliding serenely into their gun line while his Frigates sailed fullsteam ahead to where I was intending to go.

The Orcs were about somewhere....

The Orcish Fleet, timidly tacking past one of The Uncharted Seas mystical fog banks.

Big Bertha had paddled her way into a position which gave her what I thought would be a Range 2 attack on the Cruiser at the end of my gunline, the DS "Bringer of Woe Upon Her Enemies". Okay, range 2, not good, but not the end of the world. Then the scumbag, sorry I mean my bro, plays a card from his hand (each fleet can have a hand of cards which can bestow a variety of boons on the fleet) which allowed him to reduce the range to Band 1, which meant he was firing with a full battery on the unsuspecting Cruiser. 22 hits later, this happened -

However, the misery didn't end there. 22 hits meant that in fact the Cruiser had also suffered 3 Critical Hits. As you would expect, Critical Hits are not good. But the ship was sunk anyway, so really it was going to be another example of overkill on my bro's part and so it was with the first 2 rolls, which killed some crew and then took out a battery of guns. Then he rolled for the third time

I quote the appropriate entry from The Uncharted Seas Critical Hit Table -



"2: Magazine Explosion: Ship turns into a ball of flame before sinking - ships within an 8" radius of the centre of the exploding ship are attacked with a number of D6 equal to DOUBLE the Hull Points of the exploding ship i.e the bigger the ship, the bigger the bang! Affects ALL ships - friend or foe"

As you will have seen Dear Reader from the pic of the exploding Cruiser there were several ships within close proximity of the fireball and unfortunately most were mine and Cammie's.

At that point, I thought I would make myself useful and take some pics of the other games going on in the Club that night.

Afrika Korps deploying for some Blitzkreig Commander II. The Brits were hiding at the start of the battle but were then pummelled by some disasterous Command Blunder rolls and Axis air strikes.

The Shermans never got a chance to take out the half tracks, these were just put on the table to pose for the photograph!!

Some Early First World War combat, with the German Uhlans charging across the green fields of France using "Home for Christmas" rules and 10mm figs.

The British RHA running away! No spirit of Nery here boys!

British Regulars about to teach some Mohican savages how to dress appropriately for dinner

I gather the savages were having none of it however!

Some very old Seven Year War figures, showing that despite their advancing years they can still line up with the best of them.

The Austrian Cavalry with a +2 strength bonus on the charge due to being a good 5mm bigger than their opponents!

Well I eventually went back to our game. We had agreed that prior to the start that whenever a fleet was reduced to 50%  of it's starting strength that the game would finish at the end of that turn. The fireball conlflaguration ensured that the Dwarves were only 2 ships away from that breaking point. The Shroud Mage Cruisers moved in looking for any vessels that had survived the fireball

While Big Bertha and my Dwarven Battleship, DS "Immense Pride At Being Such A Big Vessel" traded shots and scored some ineffectual damage on each other.

The Shroud Mages, however, took the easy option and took out my last remaining crippled Cruiser, DS "We Shall Not be Sunk By An Inferior Enemy" and my Frigate, DS "Always Look On The Bright Side of Life" (okay yes, that isn't very original but by that time in the game, I was out of inspiration).

The scene at the end of the game. Ruarok's Orcish fleet can be seen at long last getting into the fight.

So a triumphant first outing for the Shroud Mage fleet, with Ruarok's Orcs clinging on to the Shroud Mage coat tails to claim some of the glory for the Victory.

If Cammie had stuck to my plan, then we wouldn't have had so many of our ships in such a small area of Ocean when my Cruiser blew up. Court Martial hearings have been duly set by the Dwarf Admiralty for the respective Commanders of the Dwarf contigents to hear the explanations for the debacle (and in the meantime, I'm going to "lose" my bro's dice bag"!)

Shroud Mage Frigates

As any good Admiral will tell you, whilst the Capital ships of a fleet gain all the headlines and the glory, it is the little ships that do all the hard work in the fleet.

And so it is in The Uncharted Seas by Spartan Games, the Frigates of each race are there to harry the enemy, provide a distraction, and when using Linked Fire provide just enough firepower at Close Range, to make the Captain of a Capital Ship ignore them at their peril.

As such each of the starter sets for the game, produced by Spartan Games will usually contain 6 of these little fellas, normally they will be organised in 2 squadrons of 3, but in some cases (the Orcs in particular) will have the option to deploy them in Squadrons of 6.

I have to say though, I'm not overly enamoured with the models for the Shroud Mage Frigates. The turrets deployed on top of the superstructure look to be just "too big" and as such the model appears very front heavy, and not much detail at the back to set against that. They are a totally different shape to the Battleship and the Cruisers who both have that sharp, angular bow, whereas the Frigates are definitely quite "squat" for want of a better word.

But again, very easy to paint, especially with the basic colour scheme that I have selected for my Bro's fleet. 

Now there is only the 3 cruisers to do from the starter fleet and then they'll be ready to be delivered back to my Bro.

Shroud Mage Battleship

Well after a successful introduction to the world of The Uncharted Seas in The Battle of Foggy Bank Straits my bro decided he would take the plunge and get himself a fleet. With Orcs, Dwarves and Human fleets already well catered for (and an Elvish one if GordonY ever gets his act together and gets the Elves finished), bro decided he would go for those mysterious Shroud Mages and bought himself a starter fleet for that race.

Only problem, bro doesn't paint figures. So on the promise of him buying the new GW Tomb Kings army book for me (which has now arrived) I offered to paint them up for him.

The Shroud Mages are a race who do rely on steam power for their ship's propulsion but unlike their distant dwarven cousins are adept at the magical arts (which is reflected in the powers and abilities available to them in their deck of fleet cards). So no sails to paint, so that was a good starting point.

From the design of the ships, clearly metal is a major component but bro didn't want the ships looking too bright, so I would need to tone down the shine off the metallic paints that I would be using.

The starter fleet for the Shroud Mages, comprises 1 battleship, 3 cruisers and 6 Frigates (and that is a standard selection for all of the other starter fleets currently available). Each fleet comes in a nice colour box which provides a useful painting guide for those of us lacking inspiration for a colour scheme

So if the colour scheme was good enough for Spartan Games, it was good enough for me, so I decided to try and produce a colour scheme similar to the models shown on the box.

I decided that I would start on the Battleship being the biggest model in the fleet, although it is not a partcularly big model

After a wash with some warm water and detergent and being left to dry thoroughly, I pinned the 2 funnels as I figured the model would be handled a lot during a game, so the funnels would need all the support they could get. So using the tried and tested "put a dot of paint on the part to be pinned" method

I positioned the funnels in place, a quick drill with a pin drill on the funnel and the ship using the dot as my guide and then fixed a pin in place and stuck down the funnel. An undercoat of black spray paint and once dry I was ready to go.

The decking was painted with Vallejo Chocolate Brown and then given a wash with the trusty GW Devlan Mud.

The Armour was painted with Vallejo Gunmetal Grey and then washed with GW Armour Wash (yes folks I still have a bottle of that!). The large steam tank in the middle of the ship was painted with Vallejo Brass and then given several washes with Ogryn Flesh to dull it down. GW Tin Bitz was used for the various pipes and the paddles of the propulsion system. The cannons are painted with Humbrol Acrylic No.113 Rust. The Funnels were painted with Foundry Chainmail 35A

I'm not going to gunk this model with my watered down satin varnish solution as I think with all the pipework that it would pool too much, even when applying it with a brush, as I do normally, so I'll finish the model off with a spray of Dullcote.

I got this finished in a couple of hours (and that's quick for me) so hopefully I can get the rest of the Fleet finished before too long and he can get them into action (only to sink at the hands of my Dwarven Flagship, which is on the painting stocks awaiting it's launch!)