Sea of Troubles: A Designer Preview
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
January 2012

For waters that remained relatively peaceful throughout the Industrial Age, we've certainly designed an awful lot of Great War at Sea scenarios covering naval warfare in the Caribbean Basin — on three different maps, each of a different size.

U.S. Navy Plan Gold has a much larger operational map than any of the others, including the Panama Canal. From the start we'd planned to add many more scenarios on this fine, large map. When U.S. Navy Plan Red went out of print, the opportunity presented itself. Looking over Plan Red and considering its return, I realized that a straight re-print would not be in our best interest. We had plenty of counter sheets, but it would need its box and map re-printed. The map is smaller than that of Plan Gold, and I'd prefer that it match up with the northern edge of the Caribbean map (there's a gap between them now).

Sea of Troubles is a Great War at Sea book supplement that uses the counters from Plan Red in scenarios drawing counters from other games, mostly Jutland. The Americans and the British brawl across the Caribbean on the map from Plan Gold, with actions ranging from huge fleet operations on down to cruisers seeking out enemy commerce. It's a full-sized book supplement like Dreadnoughts or Zeppelins, including 70 "long" ship counters and 140 small ones for fleets, small ships and airplanes.

The pieces are loaded with the unusual "toys" that Great War at Sea fans love. And the book is stuffed with scenarios, and allowed us the opportunity to use those huge battleships in many new situations.

Great War at Sea scenarios don't actually represent "what happened" so much as "what could have happened." Players are placed in the positions of each side's naval commanders, and given missions that must be performed. These may or may not result in contact with the enemy. Overall, scenarios for the naval games are much harder to design and to develop than those for Panzer Grenadier and Infantry Attacks, but the nature of the system makes it ideal for "war plans" type situations like this.

American war planning in both Plan Red (for war against Britain) and Plan Black (for war against Germany) put the major action in the Western Hemisphere. Neither plan makes a good case as to why America's enemies would choose to cross the Atlantic and fight in an American lake like the Caribbean. But in the British case at least there is some justification. Britain had several colonies in the region, though by the 20th century these had lost the economic importance they had enjoyed previously thanks to the sugar industry. What obsessed American planners was the vulnerability of their own economy to threats to the Panama Canal.

And so the British are usually trying to threaten either the traffic coming to and from Colón, the Atlantic terminus of the canal, or the canal itself. The Americans are trying to protect their lifeline and eliminate British bases that threaten it: Jamaica and Trinidad. Though Jamaica lies astride the sea lanes from North America to Panama, the Americans did not think the island could properly service a large fleet for long and believed the Royal Navy would place its main fleet base at Port of Spain in Trinidad because of its larger anchorage and geography (the position of Trinidad against the Venezuelan mainland gives a fleet at Port of Spain two possible exits to the open ocean, making it difficult to blockade).

The bulk of the scenarios are set in the Caribbean, and pit the United States against Great Britain. But since we were already using Plan Gold and Jutland, I wanted to make use of some of the other nationalities included in there. In Jutland the Dutch received a lot of ships they planned but did not build, and I wanted to make more use of them than we did in that game, so they have several scenarios here.

Likewise, Jutland has a nice selection of Russian battleships and cruisers that were designed but never built. They don't get much play in that game — they're in there because there was extra space on the counter sheet — and I wanted to get them into action, also. Thanks to Nicaraguan President Jose Zelaya, who offered a canal concession and naval base to Japan, the Japanese even make a lone appearance.

While most scenarios are set on the Caribbean map, we also placed a number of them on the North Sea map that came with Jutland. While it's the same map, the strategic focus is very different when the British player faces an enemy fleet at Brest rather than Wilhelmshaven. American commerce raiders appear in the best tradition of John Paul Jones, the Russians try to join the French, and the French are of course up to their nefarious schemes, sometimes with American or Russian help.

Click here to order Sea of Troubles today!