Arctic Convoy:
A Designer/Publisher Perspective
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
October 2011

Back at John Carroll High School, forced to read Moby Dick for Miss Peggy Sykes' English class, I understood right away that Ahab could not live without the great white whale. And so it is sometimes with game designs.

Yet Arctic Convoy was not a Holy Grail game, our generic term for a game designed in order to feed a designer's overweening ego. We do have a few of those in the catalog, but Arctic Convoy was designed for the purest of reasons: It was time for a new boxed game in our best-selling series, Second World War at Sea.

And as these things go, the production work went pretty smoothly. Beth Donahue crafted a very fine cover, based on a period watercolor by Dwight Shepler. Beth also did the lovely, and very cold-looking, two-piece map, and drew the new ship and aircraft images we'd need for the counters. Unhappy with her earliest work for us, she also replaced many of the German ship drawings used in Bismarck.

The game design went very smoothly as well. I'm not sure how many Second World War at Sea scenarios I've designed over the years, but the total's probably over 100. After a while you just learn how to translate operational details into game setups and victory conditions. Sometimes those details are hard to come by, but I had excellent source materials in English and German, including convoy records.

But no one writes web pieces like this about how everything was just peachy from start to finish. At least I don't; yet it's a proven fact that Daily Content readers love to read True Tales of Publishing Misery. Arctic Convoy generated no misery. But there was misery all around it.

Life in Interesting Times

Just like the creative end, the printing of Arctic Convoy went very smoothly. The counters looked very nice, as did the map and the box. It was pretty much everything not directly related to the game that went wrong: Counters for Island of Death came back having been run through the die-cutter twice. Queen of the Celts counters had a pure white background: both Romans and Celts. Elsenborn Ridge counters had badly washed out colors. Cone of Fire had maps printed at 95 percent of original size.

After screams and threats and printer firings, all those got reprinted and all those games got released. But time went on, and the complete Arctic Convoy files sat waiting for their turn: There was no way that Susan Robinson, our production director, would send new work to a firm that could not get its current assignment right.

Finally, Arctic Convoy went to press in the early summer of 2008. Samples came back just right, with counters cut properly, exactly matching their proofs, and maps done to the proper size, overlapping just right, and showing Beth's work very well. We were so pleased that we placed large new orders for further games. Boxes, maps and counters took ship on August 8th, due to arrive exactly one month later, and so they did: no typhoons, torpedoings or pirate attacks along the way.

It couldn't last. While our container was being unloaded in Norfolk, things were happening well outside our little world. The U.S. government seized control of two large mortgage companies, and a large investment bank collapsed. Stock markets plummeted, and around the world credit instantly tightened. I received an e-mail refusing to hand over the import documents and demanding immediate payment for our shipment, unilaterally canceling the agreed 30-day terms since "many American companies are now going out of business." Our contract? Sue us. They even talked smack about our incompetent president and corrupt government.

Deja vu all over again, only different. We seem to be able to make games and print them pretty well. It's actually getting them into our hands that's wrecking my hairline. We did, eventually, get our container, but with the added delays of collecting the payment early without the revenue from the items in the container (which included many needed parts for out-of-stock and good-selling items like Black Sea Fleets). And with still more added bureaucratic delays as the container had gone into storage, something we'd enjoyed in 2007 as well, though that one was due to the shipping company losing our documents.

And of course, thanks to the added weeks of delay, the new materials arrived on top of our warehouse staff madly loading older games for our move from Virginia to Alabama. But finally, we managed to release the game. Who cares about Bush-bashing Chinese — what about the game?

Germans in the Skies

Arctic Convoy comes with two maps, covering far northern seas from Iceland to Siberia. While I know some fans hoped they would overlap with those in Bismarck, the Bismarck maps were drawn using a different global projection. Continuing them to the north resulted in a badly distorted view, and so we went with a fresh projection from the pole to keep Iceland and Archangel at their proper relationship.

In practice, that's no problem at all. Both Axis and Allies saw the Arctic and North Atlantic as completely separate theaters of war. Convoys for North Russia formed up in Iceland, and their escorts worked out of that future center of bank collapse or from Scapa Flow, both of which are present on both games' maps. Neither merchant nor warships moved directly between them. The Germans based their commerce raiders from some of the same Norwegian ports, but didn't move them directly from one area to the other, either. Cruisers headed for the Atlantic did so with a full load of fuel.

There are just over 2 1/2 sheets of counters, with all the expected ships and planes. The pieces I wanted for the game design almost exactly matched the number budgeted — I did have to squeeze 20 counters out of Rumors of War to give Arctic Convoy some more transports. But there was no desperate need to reduce the counter count, or to fill blank cardboard, as there always is in game publishing.

The Germans don't have many warships, but then, they don't really need many. There's a lot of water in which to hide, the weather's going to protect them from Allied air searches, and they pretty much know where the convoys have to pass. The Allies have most of the Royal Navy, plus a large contingent of American ships and Canadian, Polish and Soviet vessels, too. There's even a tiny Norwegian element and a lone Australian ship.

For once, the Germans have air superiority. Except for some long-range search planes and a small Red Air Force element, the only planes the Allies are going to deploy over the convoys are those they bring with them. Aircraft carriers are vital to cover the merchant ships, yet in the abominable weather they will have a hard time keeping their planes aloft.

Scenarios cover the entire stretch of the Murmansk Run, from the fall of 1941 until early 1944. The famous convoy battles are in there: Battle of the Barents Sea, North Cape, PQ.17 and many more. There are also lesser-known actions, like German-Soviet destroyer clashes along the coast of Lapland and the cruiser Scheer's raid along the Soviet north coast.

In terms of play, it's similar to Bomb Alley but with much more open water and far dirtier weather. The Allies are trying to push convoys along a known route, in the face of enemy aircraft, surface ships and submarines. The Axis has only limited force, but can concentrate it at a single point.

I'm very pleased with the game itself. It did exactly what I wanted to it, and it came together smoothly. But our adventures in overseas printing are over. Miss Sykes would understand.

Click here to order Arctic Convoy now!