Plan Z:
Opening the Toy Box
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
March 2025

We’ve never made anything quite like Second World War at Sea: Plan Z.

Plan Z is an alternative-history expansion set for Second World War at Sea: Bismarck, and also draws on two other games, North Cape and to a lesser extent, Sea of Iron. It’s a very large expansion set, with 530 new pieces and 30 new scenarios, all based on the German Plan Z.

Plan Z, as a plan, actually existed. We didn’t make up this part. The German Navy gained a very brief window of political influence in the ever-churning battle of the Nazi regime’s feudal barons. And so they crafted Plan Z for naval expansion, essentially taking the wish list of every faction (carriers and planes for the flyboys, hundreds of submarines for the bubbleheads, wide-ranging armored cruisers for commerce warfare, gigantic battleships for the gun club, plus minelayers for the stay-at-home types) and melding them all together. It had no real theme beyond building lots of very big ships, no strategic goal or operational parameters. The Supreme Leader was willing to spend, and the Navy aimed to get its toys before the wallet closed.

Plan Z represents yet another insanity of the Nazi regime, and as such contributed to the Allied victory over fascist evil. The six battleships of the H class alone cost as much as 15,000 PzKpfw IV medium tanks. That’s one-third of total German tank production during the war years. On top of their cost, most of the ships of Plan Z, the plan, were really badly designed (a probably inevitable aspect of the compressed timeline to get construction started before the money went away).

Plan Z, the expansion set, includes all of those ships from gunboats to battleships, plus the airplanes that would have flown from those new aircraft carriers. And more land-based planes, including jet bombers and jet fighters, and helicopters, too. It’s a reasonable assumption that Britain would not have stood by and watched the German buildup, and so we’ve got extra Brits as well: carriers and battleships and airplanes, too. They’re all the die-cut and silky-smooth pieces we’ve been using for over a decade now, with only a minimal impression on the reverse side. Even better than the smoothness is the outstanding reproduction; these pieces show off the new ship artwork (and there is a lot of new ship artwork) in its full glory.

We use those new pieces in a set of 30 new scenarios. Most of them are set on the maps from Bismarck, but a few scenarios take place on those from North Cape (we needed an excuse to use those helicopter-equipped German convoy escorts to fight off British submarines). The scenarios are set in our new Long War alternative history, which was crafted specifically for Plan Z. In this warped reality, Poland allies with Germany in the summer of 1939, Finland holds out long enough to extend the Winter War into the spring of 1940, and Germany intervenes with maximum force as soon as the weather clears. The Soviet Union is defeated while Britain and France stand by, watching the vile dictatorships destroy one another. Finally Germany turns against the West in the summer of 1942, with France falling to the panzers during the following autumn. By early 1943 Britain stands alone, and Germany has completed most of her Plan Z fleet. The stage is set for a climactic naval campaign.

As in the books from our Second Great War at Sea setting, the scenarios are organized in narrative fashion, moving forward the story of this naval war that never happened. The Germans tentatively probe for British weakness before readying their new bases in France and Norway and opening a major campaign against Britain’s supply lines.

Since we get to write the history, we also get to write it to maximize the use of all those new ships and airplanes. The scenarios have plenty of surface battles, ranging from clashes of cruiser-destroyer groups up to battling battleships with a half-dozen or more of the armored behemoths on each side. And there are carrier battles as well, with Stukas and Barracudas and Messerschmitts and Seafires fighting it out over the North Atlantic.

Where Second Great War at Sea takes a diesel-punk approach, with airships playing a major role and airplanes having a fairly limited impact, The Long War is our whiz-bang science setting. Both sides wield advanced aircraft, including jets (Meteors, Me262s and Sea Vampires all appear). Early missile technology will make its appearance in later volumes, along with advanced submarines and more detailed rules for their use.

Not only does Plan Z provide the toys for its own scenario set, but we’ll draw on its pieces for further expansion books over the coming years as The Long War setting develops.

And the Long War will see a lot more action: we’ll extend the story line to the Mediterranean (with expansions for our upcoming La Regia Marina game) and into the Pacific, where the Japanese will get to use aircraft like the A7M Reppu fighter and D4Y Suisei attack plane and the new carriers that in the real war simply served as targets for American submarines and aircraft.

This is going to be enormous fun. And it all starts with a book full of toys.

Click here to order Plan Z right now.
Please allow an extra three weeks for delivery.

The Z-Pak
      Plan Z
      Plan Z: Stolen Fleet
      Ships of Plan Z
Retail Price: $139.97
Package Price: $110
Gold Club Price: $88

Crack Open the Z-Pak Here.
Please allow an extra three weeks for delivery.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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