A Free Expansion for Sword & Siege: Crusades, Book II

We are pleased to announce the first free expansion pack for Sword & Siege: Crusades, Book II. This new pack adds a fresh campaign and 10 additional standalone scenarios, expanding the scope of the Third Crusade beyond the historical path taken by Richard the Lionheart and into the realm of plausible medieval what-if warfare. 

Much had changed since the First Crusade ended with the creation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099. For the people of the Levant, war became the inheritance of that success. There were periods of quieter conflict, truces, and even limited cooperation, but peace was rarely more than a temporary pause. Edessa, the first of the Crusader states to be established, was also the first to fall. Its loss helped call the Second Crusade into being, but that expedition failed to restore the county and failed again before Damascus.

The surviving Crusader states, led above all by the kings of Jerusalem, continued to look for security through expansion. Egypt became one of the great prizes. Weakened by internal corruption and mismanagement, Fatimid Egypt drew the attention of both the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Zengid rulers of Syria. Control of Egypt might have secured the Crusader position in the Levant. Instead, the contest helped prepare the way for Saladin and the rise of the Ayyubid dynasty.

Over the following years, Saladin consolidated his power, uniting Egypt and Syria into a force capable of threatening the Kingdom of Jerusalem from more than one direction. That danger became catastrophic after the death of Baldwin IV, the Leper King, and the accession of Guy of Lusignan. In July 1187, Guy led the army of Jerusalem to disaster at the Horns of Hattin, where Saladin destroyed the bulk of the Crusader field army.

Jerusalem followed soon after. Under Balian of Ibelin, the city mounted a determined defense, strong enough to avoid the massacre many feared and to force a negotiated surrender. Yet with Jerusalem lost and the Crusader army shattered, it seemed that Saladin might soon complete the conquest of the Latin East. He did not. Several key strongholds remained, and his inability to finish the war left time for a new call from the West. Pope Gregory VIII declared the fall of Jerusalem a punishment for Christian sin and called the faithful to take the cross once more. The result was the Third Crusade.

The centerpiece of this free expansion is the new campaign, The Third Crusade: King Richard's Vision. It follows the campaign as Richard might have imagined it: from Acre, down into Egypt, and finally back toward Jerusalem. Historically, Richard never entered the Holy City. The Egyptian phase, however, was not invented from nothing. Richard did consider shifting the crusade toward Egypt, with a fleet ready at Acre and an offer to fund a substantial body of knights and men-at-arms; the plan was ultimately abandoned because the crusade lacked the manpower and resources to carry it through.^[1] Here, players have the chance to explore that unrealized possibility.

The campaign combines familiar episodes with a broader operational arc. Acre, Arsuf, and Jaffa remain central to the story, but the expansion then pushes into new ground with scenarios around Damietta, Bilbeis, Giza, and Jerusalem. The campaign is intended primarily for play as the Crusader side against the AI, but it also supports head-to-head play by PBEM.

For players who prefer individual engagements, the pack also includes 10 new standalone scenarios:

• Siege of Acre 1191 - Richard arrives before the walls of Acre as the long siege enters its decisive phase.
• Siege of Damietta 1192 - Two scenarios explore an imagined Crusader descent into Egypt through the Nile Delta.
• Siege of Bilbeis 1192 - These actions move the campaign inland, testing the Crusader army against a fortified position on the road toward Egypt's heartland.
• Battle of Giza 1192 - Two field battles shift the focus from siegecraft to maneuver near one of the great symbolic landscapes of the medieval world.
• Siege of Jerusalem 1192 - Three scenarios present alternate approaches to the campaign's ultimate objective: the city whose loss had called the Third Crusade into being.

These scenarios offer a mix of siege fighting, field battle, and alternate-history operations. Some are tighter actions built around a specific tactical problem; others are larger engagements with more room for maneuver, escalation, and decision-making. As with the base game, the expansion remains focused on the hard choices of medieval command: momentum, fatigue, cohesion, terrain, timing, missile fire, cavalry, morale, and the ever-present danger of overextension.

Sword & Siege: Crusades, Book II already covers one of the most dramatic conflicts of the crusading era. With this free expansion, players now have more ways to explore it, whether through a linked campaign or through individual scenarios selected for a single evening's play.

The expansion pack is free for owners of Sword & Siege: Crusades, Book II, and is available now as a separate download. It will also be included as part of the next major update for Crusades, Book II.

The expansion pack can also be downloaded from the Sword & Siege update page.

Footnotes