Arctic Convoy Developer's Preview
By Doug McNair
November 2008

Now that it’s finally done, I can say that Arctic Convoy was easily the most challenging Second World War at Sea or Great War at Sea development project I’ve worked on since Bismarck back in 2006. That game broke new ground for the SWWAS series by introducing such concepts as off-board task forces with Raiding and Supply missions, air search tables for use in detecting such task forces, and comprehensive rules for convoys. It also has a more complex weather table designed to simulate the wildly variable weather of the North Atlantic. Arctic Convoy builds on those concepts and adds many others, allowing the game to take into account all the environmental factors that make fighting a naval war in the Arctic Ocean uniquely challenging.

Daylight and Weather

While the weather in the North Atlantic is highly variable, weather on the Arctic Ocean is just plain bad. Winter weather alternates between clear skies and snowstorms, with frequent temperature inversions keeping the wind at least somewhat under control. On the other hand, weather during the short summer is cloudy and foggy and the winds can be higher than in winter. And then there’s the Arctic Night and the Midnight Sun. The southern edge of the Arctic Convoy map begins at Scapa Flow, and the farther north you go from there the darker it gets during the winter but the sunnier it gets during summer.

In order to accurately reflect all this, I divided the board into three sectors: Northern, Central and Southern. I then created special daylight tables for the Northern and Southern sectors, with daylight and night turns changing from month to month and with greater extremes of light and darkness taking place in the Northern Sector. Then I created special seasonal weather tables, with the winter table being more volatile and tending to skew the weather toward Rain and Squall conditions, and the Summer table tending to keep things in the Cloudy to Rain range.

I also created a special sighting ranges table for the Northern and Southern Sectors during winter months. Most precipitation at that time is snow, which limits visibility more severely than rain. What daylight glistens is also poor, so maximum sighting ranges during the day aren’t as good as in sunnier climes.

Finally, I included an optional rule that allows players to track weather separately in the Northern, Central and Southern sectors, with the Southern sector using the weather table from Bismarck and the other two sectors using the Arctic Ocean weather table.

This all makes weather and daylight much more dominant forces in Arctic Convoy than in other SWWAS games, which is as it should be. The Germans have plenty of airpower with which to attack convoys entering and leaving Murmansk, but bad weather and darkness will keep them grounded for long stretches of time. There often aren’t as many subs in the Arctic as in Bismarck scenarios, but turbulent undersea conditions in the Arctic Ocean can interfere with ASDIC and cause penalties to ASW dierolls. This will make it easier for subs to bypass escorts and attack convoys. And with sighting ranges reduced, surface combat is usually very “in your face,” with opposing ships setting up very close to each other and slugging it out hard and fast.

Pack Ice

I spent much time poring over maps and oceanographic websites trying to figure out how to approximate the advance and retreat of the Arctic pack ice over the course of a year. September is the only month with no pack ice on the board, and in almost all other months the farther east you go the farther south the pack ice encroaches. March is the cruelest month, with Murmansk convoys having to hew far more closely to the Norwegian coast (and German airbases there) than they’d like. Even in months we Temperate Zone dwellers think of as spring and summer, task forces can’t make it to the northernmost port of Dikson unless they’ve got one icebreaker along (ship class IB) for every four non-icebreaker ships. This latter rule is important in scenarios involving German surface raiders attacking Soviet coastal convoys, plus Pacific Fleet reinforcements coming through the Northeast Passage.

Convoys, New Missions and Other Cool Stuff

I gave the convoy rules from Bismarck their own numbered rules section in Arctic Convoy, refining and expanding them to allow for such things as refueling by oilers if a convoy stops moving for a day by use of a HOLD order. This latter is important if convoys want to keep up their speed while making the run past the German airbases on the way into or out of Murmansk.

I also imported the rules for random generation of coastal convoys I developed for Cone of Fire, and used them in scenarios depicting German raids on Soviet merchant traffic between Murmansk, Arkhangel’sk and Dikson. The Soviets get shore batteries in one of those scenarios, with which they can surprise German bombardment fleets.

In other developments: I imported and greatly expanded the ASW Mission from Leyte Gulf, writing detailed rules for cooperation between task forces doing ASW Sweeps and carriers with aircraft on ASW Patrol. Oilers on both sides often have Supply missions in Arctic Convoy scenarios, allowing them to use off-board movement and secretly refuel raiders or task forces searching for raiders and subs.

Finally, players can establish secret bases in some scenarios on remote northern islands like Svalbard. The owning player can station air units and refuel raiders at a secret base, while the enemy player can search for the bases with task forces and destroy them with bombardment fire.

Arctic Convoy offers a realistic simulation of some of the toughest naval missions mounted during World War II, and gives experienced SWWAS players a brand new and highly challenging environment in which to test their skills. We hope you enjoy it!

Arctic Convoy is now shipping. Click here to order!