AT WORLD'S END

As I mentioned in the first entry of this blog today is the last day for this game to in the Spartan Games Forums and is scheduled to be removed from the online store making this game available only through e-bay or similar and maybe some stores until they ran out of existences.

I like this game a lot, my grandfather always wanted to be a sailor or a ship´s capitan but his dream was never accomplished. It seems I have inherited some of that love for the sea and fall in love with this game (and the old MOW), specially when the company placed the hardback rules on a free PDF. That was the day I started to collect the models. I remember I was in Liverpool that day and there were some players that already had a fleet so I couln´t help keep waiting anymore and purchased my first fleet: The Shroud Mages. I liked the ships for the rules and because their submarine. I played very few games while in Liverpool and also got the Imperial Humans (because they are the typical sailships, PLUS I wathced in TV the film "on stranger tides" (Pirates of the Caribbean foruth part) . Later I got my dwarves) easy to paint ships, changelling  and... lots of submarines). I really wanted to get Bone Griffons fleet too, but ressisted the temptation (I already had  3 fleets) later I joined the beta test crew for Uncharted Seas and purhcased a Sky Pirate because I felt It was because my efforts in playtesting the SP that made the rest of the models of the SPs get released. Finally I got the Thaniras Elves fleet because I liked it (I made my first post in the UCS forums asking about their playistile)  and one of my friends will surely love it. Last fleet could have get was the orc fleet, but 5 fleets are really enough and disliked the idea of orcs with gunpodwer technology (cannons and mortars) I think their ship should only have catapults, ballistas or trebuchets (huge catapults). The only gunpodwer "tech" maybe barrels or other contaiers filled with gundpodwer as seen in the Lord of the Rings during the assault of Helm's Deep (and it was possible because the help of a mage). The idea of getting orcs was mainly because Uncharted Seas is a fantasy game and I think any fantasy game worht its salt should have dwarves, elves and orcs.(and the ever-present humans). The other factions: dark elves, undead, evil dwarves, lizards, evil humans, demons, beastmen, etc... are secondary (IMO). Finally I made this blog with the name of the gates at the center east of the Old Conitnent in the Uncharted Seas (UCS) game world

Speaking of playtesting I have sent an e-mail to Neil to see if I can make public the content that was under playtesting (new magic system etc..) so we can work on Mods for the UCS. I´m still awaiting an answer rom him.

I also "rescued" some posts from the old forums about tactics for the factions that would be interesting to revisit when the forum for UCS goes offline.

Finally when I have time I will make the cards for the Sky pirates, post more battle reports and my progress on painting my fleets. Some models like the Imperial Human ships are too good to be left unpainted and forever forgotten in a dark corner of a basement (I think its like a sin lol)

And yes  the title of this entry is not a coincidence ;-)

Best wishes and see you around!  :)

Dan

SKY PIRATES VS IRON DWARVES BATTLE REPORT (PART 3)

AFTERMATH

SKY PIRATES

The Sky pirates' only surviving in this battle were just two Jacknife torpedo destroyers who returned to report the kar'tarneteg for their failure (and probably their souls won't be happy after this), but How was the Sky Pirate performance overall?:
 I think the main nistake was not incluiding other medium ships as the battle objectives punish you if you only incluide one model of each size. And for this battle, losing the katara cruiser squaron meant lose the game. Fortuantely cards helped in moving them away and stay untouched over a couple of turns but they went right into the Bellow's path, and the Kopesh could not deal with it on time. But lets see element by element performance:

CARD DECK: I think the deck worked well, most of the cards were the common ones, Others like Shoul push, Splinter rounds and Carrried by the winds, did what is expected for an official deck I also had unexpected Reef on hand at the end of the game that would have helped in blocking the chasing of the last katara if it had survived the bomb... but its turn card. Overall, a STAR card deck is quite random, sometimes you have the perfect combination and the perfect fleet postioning to play it making them to seem OP but most of the time you get card that would just help a bit a nothing more.

I divided the cards in attack, defensive and tactical. The first one increase the damage you deal, the secon one do the oposite, minimize the damage dealt. Both cards can be replicated by lucky or unlucky AD rolls with sixes or ones respectively so they are easily balanced (unles the effec is to kill a ship or crew outright of course) I Think as long as no attack card is as powerful as Full Broadside, or a defensive card can't rempari more than 3 HP they'll be fine. The tactical cards grant you extra speed, better turning template, change wind direction, reposition a ship, etc... these are the trickiset to use, can become OP if a special tactic is developed, but is complicated because unlike TAC cards, the STAR cards are random (more or its like playing a  trading card game like Magic, if you know what I mean) so overall as long as the deck has no insta-kill cards it iwll be OK. I'll revise it to polsih it more, but if there is an OP card, it still has a chance of not showing up through the game. I am pretty sure you have ran into a situation where all you repair cards were at the bottom of the deck and never showed up.

KOPESH BATTESHIP: This was the key for winning the game. Had the objective of destroying the airship, then board the flagship, ufortunately the sudden change of events (and the unexpected dwarf heroic decence) ruined her glory.

KATARA CRUISERS: They ran towards the cover of their destroyers and frigates by turning sharply once they got declared as "dwarf objective" (I should have included the Sabre Airships), this worked well at first, but unfortunately this placed them directly in the path of the airship. I think they should have better moving away from the airship, even if this meant taking damage and losing ore ship or two

KIRPAN: The destroyers are very good, Same firepower of a cruiser (but at shorter range) and iron ram. They destroyed most of the Mortis frigates and helped screening the cruisers, but after this they found themselves inte centre of the melee and got sunk in the crossfire. (as usual for most screens)
They did their job.

TALWAR: these frigates had to change plans mid-fight when the dwarf objective was revealed, so they rushed to protect the cruisers, dodged the submarines and I htink they put a point of damage on the flagship, but the key role was to stall the ddwarves for damaging the cruisers.

JACKNIFES: they sank frigates and damaged the troop transports (at the cost of one of them(, they are great, and did their job in destroying small ships and damaging mediums, but those mediums were the dwarf transports that proviided an excelent anti-ar defensive fire. As a side note I see those ships a bit odd, looking so fragile and small but having 3 HP and 3 Crew.... hmm  I will revisit those guy's stats one day. I like the ship looks to match their stat

Overall the fleet did well and could have won if the katara went the other way. As a fleet, the only problem it had was being out-activated by the dwarf fleet.


IRON DWARVES

Thanks to their actions in battle the waters around Karneia were safe again (at least for a time) and the supply lines can continue bringin ammunition, ships, meals and spares for the dwarf and human fleets coming from the old continent, advancing another step int the conquering of the Uncharted
Seas.

So, lets see what the ship did:


CHAINMAIL FLAGSHIP: I love this ship, this battle performed poorly, by missing long range fire. I was tempted to turn it around and use her broadsides, but a ship like this one needs to close the objectives. I think it sank a frigate, and tried to sink another two more by splitting fire (and failed). I consider it is all badluck but at least it became the place of teh epic fight at the end of the game. Sven died as an hero.

BELLOWS AIRSHIP: Saved the day by dropping the bomb on the las cruiser and double crit it ,sinking it and the priates did nothing with DF in return. What else can be said of this maginificent ship.

HAMMER CRUISERS: they started the battle with a slow crawl, thanks to their lead cruiser becoming dead in water. but later on they sank some small ships and put a point of damage on teh kelpor battlship I think

FRIGATES: they attempted the flank, then stop the cruisers by gettin on their way, but got al sank and only achieved putting a point of damage. Maybe their best move wast to stall those kataras a bit more.

SUBMARINES: They did a good job (at least by surviving the game) At first I was a bit dissapointed as the kraken failed to damage a frigate, and bellows did little damage in placing fires that were quickly put down. but later on, the kaken dealt massivee damage to destroyers and frigates, and some performed diving maneuvers, earning them a medal (NOTE: this battle  is the fisrt one I have where I have all my subs surviving., The Belcher could have been destroyed, but the pirates just destroyed the bluff token. lol. Anyways I am sure the submarine crew would grossly exagerate their actions in their next trip to a dwarf brewery :-)

ARMOURY TRANSPORTS: theese guys are beast at boarding, specially if well drilled, they priced ship after ship, easing dwarf victory. Pity the bomb caught them, but they earned the medals (postumal ) anyway. They also did a very good job in keeping those jacknifes awyay. THis is a dwarf must have.

Finaally I played some pirate music from youtube, that you may find useful for your games (specially if you play against yourself lol). here is one of those i tried:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5DZriO6PDg
 

SKY PIRATES VS IRON DWARVES BATTLE REPORT (PART 2)

TURN 1

Terrain layout: the piece of terrain with a lighthouse is a mountain, the other landmasses are  small and medium islands and there are a sandbank near  the SP deployment area.

This turn saw little action, as both fleets were short ranged (specially in the case of Sky pirates) and only the batteships attempted to shoot at the nearest ship without result. So basically this turn had "a maneuvering into position")

The submarines moved to intercept the small ships and the Katara cruisers rushed forward, while the frigates of both sides started a flanking maneuver.

TURN 2

This turn I realized I haven't rolled for the fleets' Field Orders. So I got for the Iron Dwarves the "Sink 50%  of enemy fleet and destroy all medium ships" The only medium ships on the SP side were the cruisers so I played the "Soul Push" card for them an choosed to have a smaller turning template so they made a sharp turn to hide near the mountain, then the destroyer came  round them to screen them.

The Sky Pirates got the "destroy all Large models"  so they basically need to shot down the Bellows airship and sink or capture the dwarf flaghsip (a mission a little harder)

The flagship played the "Extra Charge" card to try damagng the cruiser at a distance with rockets, but they were too far away and no damage was inflicted (I also got almost all ones, damn drunk dwarves! lol)

The first blood of the day was achieved by the "Lone wolf" Belcher submarine in the last activation of the turn, who surfaced and damaged a Katara a little with the magma guns and put a raging fire marker on it. However the crew was so excited because this and made the submarine to fail the panic dive maneuver.

TURN 3

Initiative went to the Dwarves who played the "Upeper Hand" card and the Belcher managed to safely submerge into the safety of the depths. However the Katara crew managed to put down the fire and the ship took no further harm. The Pirates attemnted to "Summon Mist" but the card was quickly cancelled by the dwaf anti-magic (however they had to discard the "Iron shod pointy end" card that coul have helped the kraken submarines)

This turn saw more action as both fleets were closing to "knife edge" range. The flagship placed a point of damaged and killed some crew on the decks of a Kirpan destroyer (lukily for the ship she was not entirely in the fore channel of the flagship) The destroyers themselves did their thing on two Mortis frigates who rapidly sank, but not before one of the destroyers was damage in the exchange of fire.

A Kraken submarine surfaced to ram one of the damaged Kirpans but failed, the other Kraken tried to do the same thing to the frigates, was too slow and the Talwars moved away, swichinig their flanking maneuver for a rejected flank tactic in order to help the cruisers.

Finally the Kopesh moved to damage the Belows and failed, but played the "Elite gunners" card (added to the effect of her gunnery officer) and blew up the boiler of the leading Hammer cruiser who became "dead in water"


TURN 4

This turn was the most fun and bloody of all. As I said both fleets were very short range (the ID emplyed very heavy shells for their guns, and the SP used screaming leahtery balefire shells packed with high explosive chemicals propelled by the magic infused on  the sigils on their guns. This meant both fleet sailing into Range Band 1 for their guns to be fully effective resulting into a mess of ships in the centre of the board..... and the Bellows kept closing into that mess!!

The maneuvering went into SP attempting desperately to screen their cruisers, first with frigates, then with destroyers to prevent the Well Drilled Armoury troop transports to board their cruisers (Should't the ID be fleeing from the SP board range instead the other way around?? ._. )

The ID attempted to remove anything that were in the way of their transport for them to board the cruisers. First they blasted some frigates, but the "hole" was filled with destroyers. One of them got their aft seriously rap... raked by a Kraken submarine (I am not sure if a ram attack can apply rake bouns, but the sub rolled a lot of sixes and it didn't matter anyways)

The ID also attempted to block the cruiser maneuvering with the surviving frigates, but one got torpedoed sunk by  a Jacknife, and the other was rammed, boarded and prized by a Katara. Meanwhile the other two Jacknifes torpedoed the lead dwarf troop transport, but one of them was "hard punded" by the Transport's defensive fire. Both torps hit home, one causing a critical and the other a minor impact on the ship's armor.

The Kopesh continued with the strategy of stripping the ID flaghsip of crew. In a latter turn it played the "Splinter rounds" Card but it achieved nothig. This turn it played the "Ball and grape" card (wich does the same as Spliner rounds) and killed some crew, achieving also a hard pouding result. She also damaged the Bellows with another critical. The dwarves played a lot of cards to repair most of the damage. Even the dwarf admiral had to intervene to help the cruisers to fully repair the damaged boiler  (repairng both, the "dead in water effect" and the HP with a card, it basically was to put the pieces back together lol)

In the last activation of the turn, the Armoury troop cruiser capitains relized the enemy destroyers were sinking, but not sinking fast enough for them to board their main objective, so they decided to board the destroyers instead, to speed up things a bit lol. Then the destoyers finally "sunk" xD


TURNS 5 "THE TURN OF THE BOMB"

This turn was a cleanup of the messing mess in the later turn lol. As you Could know, the Bellows airship carries a huge bomb in her belly, and was close enough to drop that think on the cruiser, so the cruisers themselves were setting their crew for Defensive Fire while the airship was projecting her menacing shadow over them, but first they needed to be weakened up before the bomb drops. (too much DF from them), So the transports rammed and boarded two of the Kataras, pricing them, the submarines surfaced to harass them, and I think even the flagship tried to hit them too (cant remember)

Somewhere in these last turns one of the Jacknifes were shot down (by the transports I think), the frigates of both sides where resting in the botom of the sea and the last of the Kirpan destroyers were sunk too thanks to the Hammer cruisers and a Kraken sub.

But the major blow coming from SP in Turn 5 was a critical hit  on the dwarf flagship (thanks to the card "Full Broadside" and having a Veteran Gunnery Officer) which hit the gun deck and destroyed most of the cannons in one side. The pirate battleship also positioned herself in a way the dwaf flagship can't avoid colliding with her, triggering a boarding action (the BB is a skimmer) and blew up one of the Armoury transports. The Kopesh couln't fire at the Bellows as the airship was flying too high and too close.

 Finnally the Chainmal and rammed the pirate battleship, ripping the gas bag of that side and liberating many of the souls inside (the ship got a movement crit)) and the boarding action took place
The crew of the pirate ship was untouched and the one in the dwarf ship was halved, but the fight was absolutely bloody. The pirates thought it was an easy fight, but soon they realized the dwaves stubbornly refused to die and they morale went down. In the end both crews killed each other (dwarves rolled a ton of sixes) turning both ships into derelicts (I use the 0 crew marker as a derelict marker)... Epic Fight!!

.. And finally the bomb dropped from the airship destroying the last surviving Katara cruiser (and also the Armoury transports, these dwarves died with honor), as this action made the Dwarves achiecing a Crushing Victory!

The weather was getting as Sven spotted a small lighting bolt streaked among the clouds he could see in the distance through the huge hole blasted across most of the starboard gun deck that destroyed many of the cannons and from which the pirates were pouring into the battered Silveraxe his flaghsip. 

The fight was getting bloody,  and  suddenly, Sven thougt the noise of the crew fighting around seemed to lesen a bit as one voice resounded changelling him. It was Kinvak Sin'Goviatar. The vile pirate admiral was grinning at him.
" You may have destroyed my cruisers and foiled my plans in the area but today I'm gunna have your soul for that!" Said Kinvak as he menacingly gazed at him with his single eye.

"I don't think so" answered Sven, and then both Admirals engaged in a vicious fight. That was the only one versus one fight, as the other fights were a signle dwarf versus two or three pirates. The dwarves refused to die and many killed several pirates before getting killed (many times by a backstab). 

Sven parried some more blows as he was getting cornered, then he let the fight take him upstairs from the main gundeck towards the half empty rocket battery. The pirate admiral was tiring specially after 
fighting upstairs, he seemed fatiged, then exausted, and Sven thought it was the time to finish the fight and break the morale of the pirates with the death of their leader. But just when he lowered his defenses to drop the finishing blow, he realized it was just a pirate dirty trick, Kinvak was bluffing and was he who delivered the killing blow on the veteran dwarf. Sven dropped his great hammer and fall down backwards. He spotted another dead dwarf within the rocket battery. It was Olaf that had been slain and was covered in blood.. Then Sven felt the pointy end of his enemy's sabre on his throath

"You have fought well, but the revenge IS MINE!!!  and I'll put your soul in a special container to torture it for this HAHAHA! " he laughed.

Sven grinned too 
"No, and you are coming with me to make a lil'trip into the hell" he said, and with one last effort draw his hand cannon to fire at the rocket ammo storage. The rockets blew up, inflicting minor damage to the ship, but, being loaded with specially engineerded fragmentative iron shards, they slaguthered all still living crew fighting across the decks, leaving no one alive.

SKY PIRATES VS IRON DWARVES BATTLE REPORT (PART 1)

A Battle near Karneia

Admiral Sven Ironhead was spotting the horizon with his spotting scope while standing on top of the Silveraxe's top deck a Chainmail class flaghsip, leading the rest of the dwarf fleet. The weather has been unwelcoming since they left Bolg: windy days and even a small storm. Even now the fleet was sailing against  the wind (unaffected). Sven thought they would have been in trouble if sailing by conventional sailships employed by the "lesser races".

Finally he spotted a small abandoned spotting tower on top of  a mountain and saw some movement. The Sky Pirates, also known as "Kelpor" under the command of Kinvak Sin'Guviatar, have been raiding dwarf and human supply lines and Sven thought he found the place from which they were stagging the raids: a small island near Gelfar settlement.

Sven folded his spotting scope and went inside the Silveraxe but not before giving one final sight to the magnificient Bellows class airship looming over the dwarf ironships.

"We found them! If we have spotted them, they have spotted us. All hands to the battlestations!! Sitgnal the submarines to submerge and advance!" Said Sven to Olaf Grindstone, the second-in-command of the fleet.

"Aye Sir!" Said Olaf and began to shout order through a complex pipe system across the ship.

Soon the Sky Pirates showed up in the horizon and both fleets clashed.


SKY PIRATES FLEET

1 Kopesh class battleship (with Veteran Gunnery Officer crew upgrade)
4 Katara class cruisers(with Master Signalman crew upgrade)
4 Talwar frigates
3 Kirpan destroyers
3 Jacknife torpedo bombers

NOTE: I am testing the Sky Pirates cads and used the Thaniras elves card decks with half of the cards having a small piece of paper with the SP card rules slipped inside their sleeves.


IRON DWARVES FLEET

1 Chainmail class flagship
1 Bellows class airship (with Veteran Gunnery Officer crew upgrade)
3 Hammer class cruisers
2 Armoury class troop ships (with Well Drilled crew upgrade)
4 Mortis frigates
2 Kraken class submarines
1 Belcher class submarine


... and this will continue in the next episode ;-) Who will win?  Don't miss it out!

BATTLESHIPS SHADED!!

Both Imperial Humans (IH) battleships have been shaded with the Army Painter DIP and now its time for them to wait until dried. Next are the cruisers. I repainted their sails to match the design of the rest of the fleet (I started painting those cruisers 3 years ago).

I  am also preparing a battle report I did yesteraday between the Sky Pirates and Iron Dwarves (Testing the new Sky Pirate deck I  made), so you may see it posted today or tomorrow (I hope)

Dan

WORKING ON THE SKY PIRATES DECK

Another one if the projects I have in mind is the making of a Sky Pirates Faction Card Deck. Already have the card texts and rules made, and will be playtesting them this week. After the playtest is made I will leave the deck available for download.

I am still wondering why Spartan Games didn´t do that by themselves, because I am sure making a faction lack of its own deck must have seriusly hampered the sales of the last release of the game: The (almost) full series of models of the Sky Pirate fleet. This will have made them to get good profits because the fleet itself has little material in metall (the fleet is practically resin)

More to come!! ;-)

A QUICK UPDATE

One of the furoms members (Overread)  has e-mailed Spartan Neil about the future of the game and what follows is the answer we (the UCS community) got

"
UPDATED INFO

An email from Niel regarding the Uncharted Seas line and the future plans for it :

"1) The older generation 1/600^th scale models are now being removed from our sales channel. So you are correct that shortly the models will no longer be available for sale from Spartan Games, and their moulds retired from use.

2) In the first part of 2016 we aim to release a ‘free to download’ version of a new set of fantasy naval rules that are targeted at gamers who have an existing collection of UCS models.

3) We have developed a new variant of UCS, but I can’t talk about unreleased product in any more detail other  to say we have worked on a new development project and we now need to plan a release schedule that is complimentary to the needs of our sales partners.

Sorry I can’t tell you any more than that, and I hope the above is helpful."

He also expressed his apologies in a further email for the oversight in not having this information mentioned here in the forums earlier and was under the impression that it had already been done by someone.


According to the current blog post, Products for Uncharted Seas will not longer be on sale after November 30th
"
------
So it seems we will have another naval combat game for the next year. What do you think?

NOTE: You proabaly know about this, but I am saving some important stuff from the Spartan Games forums to keep track of the events before the forum for UCS gets deleted

IMPERIAL HUMANS BACK TO THE DRY DOCK

The Imperial Humans have one of the best looking fleets within the factions of Uncharted Seas, not to mention is the most "historical-like" of them, very closely resembling the ships of "the Age of Sail", and rules-wise is one of the most balanced, because it has no real weaknesses besides being dependent on the wind direcion, as you can imagine. I have embarked myself on a little projet of painting the basic ships of the fleet before Christmas. The rules  stipulate you need at least one large ship of the line (the battleship) a squadron of cruisers (medium ships) and another squadron of small ships (frigates)  to be a valid an "operational" fleet. Do you think I could do it in time?

Here there is my Work-in-Progress fleet so far:

The Heavy Cruisers on the left do not count as they need the regular cruisers on the right to be included in the fleet. Already have paintted two squadrons of frigates, and need to finish the sails of the curissers and, I hope to finish both battleships (the centermost ships) before this month ends. They are almost ready for an Army Painter's quickshader (dark tone) wich works the best with those ships with that colour scheme. At some point I will post here a tutorial about how I based and painted the models, because the tutorial in Spartan Games' forum is very likely to be deleted. I think you will love it ;)

The monster and the destroyers trailing the rest of the fleet (plus the Sloop on the right hand side) are the extra challenge for me to paint them before the end of this year because I plan to play an scenario with a friend of mine that works in Canada with his boyfriend but comes back to Spain for Christmas and New Year holidays. I will lend him my Sky Pirate fleet (another fleet that you will see here soon) and I will be playing with (I hope) newly painted Imperial Human fleet, so he can try out the game. I hope he likes it because he loves elves and I have an elf fleet (still unassembled and unpainted) that I am looking forward to lend it to him (painted, hopefully) the next Summer holidays. Let's see what happens...

EIGHT DAYS BEFORE THE WORLD ENDS

Welcome to The Gate of Suns, a blog dedicated to the fantasy naval combat game 'UNCHARTED SEAS' the first miniature game created by the company Spartan Games. It has been a long journey since the game started in 2008 with the old sculpts of the ships, then, later on, a re-make of the sculpts employing 3D printers to make finely detailed ships models in 1:600 scale

The game saw a hardback edition for the rules in 2012, and later on a canpaing called 'The Cauldron of Silence' in Spartan Games' blog. I peronally got involved in the playtesting phase of a new magic and campaign system, and even the game saw the full release of  allmost all ships for the last faction of the game: The Sky Pirates who only had two models at the time of the already mentioned campaing 'The Cauldron of Silence'... And That was All. At some point Spartan Games decided to no longer support the game, and the models could only be bought from their online store until they ran out of stock, and feedback and announcements from the company about this game in the forums practically ended. There were also momments of  confusion amongst the Firestorm Armada players (other of the sucessful games of the company)  fearing the possibility of that game sharing the same fate (something that not happened, the game is still in good "health" and has recently seen a related game called 'Firestorm Planetfall')

Finally, the 21at of October 2015  the company finally announced the official date for the game to definitive ending, to much of the Uncharteds Seas community´s dwindling nubmers dismay.

This blog is all about keeping the game and hobby alive, by showcasing painted models, posting battle reports, commenting tactics and brewing some extra rules for the soon-to-be-defunct game..