Don’t you ever wish you could stuff all your best mates in a boat and go boldly viking along the coast? Make it your Boast & Roast: Make the Most of the Coast Reunion Tour.
The still upcoming War Sails expansion for the medieval low fantasy sandbox Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord will be what you need to do it! The DLC was announced a few months ago in March, with a pretty epic trailer promising a lot of cool features like ship to ship combat and naval blockades, but it was fairly scarce on actual gameplay and something tangible to latch onto.
Now this is shifting thanks to a pretty robust and informative blog note on the game’s Steam blog, talking about what we can expect from the expansion, currently planned for a fairly flexible window of Early Fall 2025. But enough about the context, what’s in the blog?
New map, who dis?
The first thing mentioned is the map expansion: it will go further north than before, including the thematically appropriate frosty climate and dangerous mountains. New regions will include Nordvyg, a rather unwelcoming frosty peninsula, the island of Beinland to the west of it, and to the east a region defined by the Jumme river. That last place will be littered with ancient burial pits, while the river itself will stretch far south, giving Nords an easy highway for their viking.
Down, down, down by the river
The turbulent waters of Calradia proper are also becoming more important. Rivers will get an update making them wide enough to be navigable by boats, while some cities are getting relocated closer to shores. It will put them on the map for maritime trade, and will expand siege mechanics by a new shiny thing: coastal sieges AKA naval blockades.
They won’t form for free, the besieging party needs to have boats available, but if it does, the blockade is established automatically. This also means sieges can be broken by a sufficiently powerful navy coming to help the unlucky city.
The coolest ships in the kingdom
Of course you can’t have all these naval subsystems and not get customizable ships, so it is, indeed, what we’re getting. Ports will allow you to build, repair and improve ships, and as the screenshot from the blog suggests, there are quite a few elements to adjust. A bit of a ship of Theseus situation, actually.
Smooth sailing
True to form, M&B2 will also simulate winds and currents, and the type of your ships will influence their mobility on different waters, such as Nords’ shallow draft boats being great for rivers and not so good on open waters.
There will also be sea storms testing your boat’s resilience, showing up as dynamic, but fairly localized, weather events. If you lose the vessel to the inclement weather, you might find your trusty sailors drift on shoddy rafts until the sea claims them or they reach safe shores.
That about cover the extend of the blog post, but there’s also a Q&A planned for sometime this week, so if it reveals something of particular interest, we’ll let you know.
For now, the War Sails DLC is still being worked on, but you can already get the base game if you’re into open-ended sandboxes, Middle Ages-inspired settings, and the fantasy of building your own faction from scratch.