Game of the Week - Aug 26 - Sept 1

This week's addition to the Game of the Week series is our recently updated Naval Campaigns: Jutland! This title is on sale for 25% off now through Sunday, September 1st.

(All images can be clicked for full size viewing.)

The fighting in the First World War had been going on for two years. Despite the fact that extensive ground combat had occurred during that time, the powerful naval forces of the world had not clashed in full force. But in May of 1916, that was about to change. The huge dreadnoughts of the English and German fleets departed from their ports to seek each other in the North Sea, west of the area of Danish Jutland. In those misty waters, filled with uncertainty, the outcome of the First World War hung in the balance. Would the German fleet crush the English and obtain a German victory at sea or would the stronger English fleet prevail?

Jutland was to be the largest naval engagement of World War I and it remains the last naval engagement fought primarily by full battle fleets.

In a not too common occurrence, Wikipedia has an extensive article on the battle with historical background, charts, notes on tactics, etc. which can be read here.

For a glimpse into the design process, sources used and enhancements made you can see the Jutland Design Notes.

If you would like to peruse the details of how the Naval Campaigns engine handles the specifics, you can do so in the series User Manual. 

If you would like to see what new changes have happened with the latest 4.04 release you can see our recent blog post covering that.

Like most of our titles, this game includes more content than just the single battle of Jutland. 27 core scenarios are included:

• 11 scenarios dealing with the historical Jutland battle (31 May 1916) covering multiple situations from first contact to the final shots, a single scenario covering the entire battle with all ships, and a second campaign scenario with all ships but using hypothetical initial positions.
• 4 scenarios covering the battles of Heligoland (28 Aug 1914) and Dogger Bank (24 Jan 1915).
• 1 scenario of the encounter with the Goeben (08 Aug 1914).
• 2 scenarios covering an encounter in the English Channel between a British patrol and German surface and submarine forces (18 Aug 1914).
• 1 scenario of an attack by the German submarine E-9 (20 Sep 1914).
• 3 scenarios covering the Battle of Coronel (01 Nov 1914).
• 3 scenarios covering the Battle of the Falklands (08 Dec 1914).
• 2 scenarios covering the Cuxhaven Raid (25 Dec 1914). 

Additionally, when this title was mastered under the first WDS release, version 4.00, the "Nations of the World" expansion package was added in. This package adds in almost every ship from every nation that was involved in WWI. It's really an incredible package!

• 7 bonus scenarios using this package are also bundled together in the game.
• Many more scenarios can be created using the included editors that ship with the games as well.

And speaking of additions, the latest 4.04 update for this title released just a few weeks ago added in a new Random Campaign which utilizes the previously un-used Campaign Front End for the game.

The concept here is that you will make a selection and your opponent, be it a human or the AI, will make their selection - and a random scenario will be selected from a pool of scenarios. Because of all the different fleets in the expansion, the designer actually created 40 different scenarios to pull from. You may get a fairly standard Britain vs Germany. Or you may get Austria-Hungary vs Italy. Or Turkey vs Russia. You get the idea. This leads to great replayability as you just never know what scenario will be selected to play, or the forces you are up against.

 For video content we have "The Battle of Jutland" from The Great War channel:

For specific game play related videos we have one from SmartWargames.

And now on to books. Gary has supplied a list of books, some outside of the bibliography included in the Design Notes.