Cruel Seas: Harbour Ambush

A brisk north-easterly tugged at the watchman's lapels as he watched the huge ship clear its berth and amble out into the harbour's waters, gliding gracefully into the inky blackness.
It'd been a quiet month so far, a few sightings of aircraft, a few false-alarms with "submarine" sightings but nothing concrete. He looked up to the sky and saw the full moon, his gut knotting at the thought that today might be the day that the calm ended and the storm broke. He shoved his hands deeper in his pockets and took up his position.

As a change from BRS, my friend and I bought into cruel seas and have been batting our way through the core missions, stepping them up the other week to include some of the bigger craft to get the more complex mechanics down. Tonight's game was a riff on the rulebook mission 6.
I played Kriegsmarine, he played Royal Navy.

Apparently this is Zerstorer Z-25 but the kit as built doesn't match the specified armaments!

 The forces:
Me: Destroyer (twin 4", x2 4", x4 twin 37mm +lots of 20mm +star shells) and an armed merchantman (x3 20mm)
Him: x2 veteran type II vospers, x2 regular type 1 vospers. We eyeballed the points and it looked kinda about right

 The inky blackness was pierced by the silhouette of the merchantman against the glare of the moonlight on the waves as it left the harbour first, banking to starboard. The watchmen were nervous, the route to harbour was well covered with lighthouses to guide them through the rocky islands but it made perfect ambush territory and confused the hell out of the radar.....

The view from the harbour mouth, escape edge is to my right

Turn 1
Given I have to bring a ship on this turn, I elect to get the merchantman out earlier to give it a head start seeing how slow it is and send it bumbling out into open sea. The vospers stay at slow speed to avoid auto-detection and the watchmen on the merchantman fail to spot their wakes at this long range.
Turn 2

Christ these things are big

The destroyer leaves harbour and enters play, having to thread the needle between the merchantman and avoiding an encounter with the islands next turn. The vospers keep their cool and stay at slow speed, waiting for the right time to pounce. Both ships fail their spotting tests and bumble on towards their exit route
Turn 3
As I'm heavily outdiced (4-2) I'm expecting the worst here and of course, the royal neavy get the first dice out and asign it to the veteran craft on the our left (pictured above). Sensing his moment, he dumps two eels into the water and breaks his cover. Claxons go off and everyone readies to action stations! The Kriegsmarine get the next dice and activate the destroyer, launching a star shell near the revealed craft and the crew thankfully spot the other one nearby.

 Brace for impact!! torpedoes in the water! Small craft sighted to port! He bellowed into the communications tube and frantically searched about for other craft, the knot in his stomach tightening before the hit of adrenaline kicked in....

The destroyers main armaments range in and evaporate the veteran crew that launched the torp but the smaller armaments fall short and wide of the 2nd craft thanks to heavy negative modifiers.
The merchantman picks up the desperately signalled message and goes to "all ahead full" shielding itself with the hull of the destroyer to its port side
A soaking wet veteran crew ride through the spray kicked up by a hail of 37mm and 20mm fire and dump 2 eels into the water as the last activation, wrapping neatly into the first activation of turn 4...
Turn 4
Orphaned torpedoes open the turn and the two launched are hovering dangerously close to the bow of the destroyer

closely followed by the two eels launched at the end of turn 3! I realise as the size of both of my ships is somewhat huge, that there's no way i'm going to avoid this hit and I'm too big+fast to be able to swing round the islands without a collision. The remaining vet vosper activates, pops smoke, moves up and dumps its remaining eels into the water.
The destroyer is activated next and moves up to full speed, spotting one of the mk1's but rolling badly for its lighter armament (everything misses) and the twin 15cm leaves it with 6HP remaining!! That's really bad news for me now as thats going to be another two torps in the water...
Royal Navy get the next draw and the badly damaged mk1 predictably dumps its two eels into the water at combat speed and banks to get inside my minimum range of the big guns. The merchantman goes next, not being able to contribute much to anything aside from gunning it and hoping the torpedoes are duds. There's no path it can take where it doesn't take at least two hits!
The remaining vosper hidden by the large island (who'd stealthily been chugging along for a few turns, pictured below right)

decided it was time to contribute some worth, rounding the island, dumping eels and popping smoke.
Turn 5
There's no way this is going to end well for my craft barring horrendous rolls for duds on these torps..
The orphaned torpedoes start the turn badly, slamming into the merchantman, hitting for huge damage and sinking it outright.

This is gonna hurt!!!

The dice draw for this turn is gonna be utterly vital, If i get first draw, I can avoid most of the damage but of course, the Brits get the first dice out the bag and the torps hit home brutally. x1 dud, x1 miss but two hit home for a resounding 119 damage!!!! Now my dice comes out of the bag, but its too late and the damage to the ship must have put the gunners off as they manage to flub nearly their entire broadside, managing only a single hit into one of the two targets, putting the badly damaged mk1 into a watery grave with a twin37mm hit.
The last vosper then gets his last dice and the torpedoes slam home for a further 100+ damage, ending the destroyer and ending the game!!!

Thoughts:
As much as we thought destroyers were really going to unbalance the game against MTBs, They're so big and so vulnerable to torpedoes it actually makes a decent game. Sure, if they hit, they'll most likely evaporate their target but they're so big they'll catch many a torpedo.
Some bad dice probably skewed the result, an earlier spot going off would have prevented a few torps being in the water but thats the perils of dice!