Matrix Games

The Historical Scenarios

Myself, I love campaign style games, where I can build up and nurture a force over a long stretch of battles and encounters. Not everyone has the time and inclination to do that however, and some players prefer historical battles instead of sanbox games. That is why we have developed the historical scenarios feature of Expanded Battles.

The expansion will ship with a number of scenarios spread in time and scope to give variation and show the whole breadth of what the RTW system is capable of. Scenarios will include Yellow Sea, Dogger Bank, River Plate, Rheinübung (the Chase for the Bismarck), Second Guadalcanal, Eastern Solomons and a fictional cold war scenario in the Mediterranean. This is an impressive collection of scenarios spread over 70 years. No other game can even come close to simulating such a long timespan of naval warfare.

Personally, I like Yellow Sea and Dogger Bank the best. They are manageable in size and time, have a high suspense level, and they have concrete goals to attain. Eastern Solomons and Rheinübung are larger and take longer time. They are also more varaible in outcome, with a risk that no substantial battle will happen at all, which is in fact how most potential naval battles ended in real history. This is something the designer has to balance all the time, realism, player agency, and maneuvering vs a scenario where the forces will inevitably come into contact.

As players, we want action and combat, which at times goes against outcomes sought by admirals. Just take the Rheinübung scenario for example. If the Bismarck and consort manages to sneak out into the Atlantic and reach the objective without combat, this would certainly be a champagne popping occasion at the admiral’s bridge on Bismarck, but as a player it will probably feel as an anticlimax. ”At least let me blow up the Hood on the way...”.

To give the player the option both for battle action and for the more long term sneaking through the British patrols, we have made two scenarios, one long breakout scenario and a smaller one that concentrates on the battle of Denmark Strait. The problem of course with Denmark Strait is that the historical outcome was probably very unlikely, but players will still somehow expect the Hood to blow up. And Bismarck can blow her up in the game at the correct distance, but not every time, and not usually after the first few salvoes. Playtesting so far has shown that the most common outcome is damaged ships on both sides and Bismarck heading back home with some wounds and a substantial part of her ammo used up, which seems reasonable enough.

We will also include a hypothetical nightmare scenario for the Royal Navy, with the carrier Graf Zeppelin accompanying Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, and Scharnhorst and Gneisenau making a sortie from Brest at the same time. We decided to have that as a separate scenario, as there are more potential hypothetical ships that have various levels of probability. In this case we’re taking some historical liberties for the benefit of player agency and what we think is an interesting scenario that adds additional challenge to both the Royal Navy and Kriegsmarine sides.

All in all, it will be a nice collection of scenarios that will have something from every period of naval warfare in the twentieth century for the naval enthusiast. And if that isn’t enough, there will be a scenario editor, where players can create any scenario they might dream about. But more on that in the next dev diary

By Fredrik Wallin

Lead Designer

Naval Warfare Simulations

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