Turns 8, 9, and 10 of the campaign game make up Scenario 3 of Seas of Thunder. The scenario’s name is Drumbeat and the rhythm of the game does seem to be reaching a steady and predictable pace. The German U-Boats are overtaking the Atlantic. Italy and Great Britain are engaged in a death spiral for control of the Med. The USA and Japan continue to eye each other warily across the Pacific. But the big news is Operation Barbarossa, Germany’s invitation to the Soviet Union to enter the war on the high seas.

As usual, the advice I will impart here is meant for players trying to play well in this scenario without an eye to the campaign game. Many bits of advice may apply in that case as well, but not all of them. Scenario 3 opens up a few more sea zones for scoring, notably the Arctic, the Soviet Pacific Coast and the Black Sea. It also introduces a localized Allied threat into the Baltic that has not been fully realized until now.

You may be dreading it, you may have hoped I’d forget, but yes, it’s time for the math portion of the article. The Sea Zones in this scenario, increased due to the Arctic Sea and the Black Sea’s introduction into the war, provides a new ratio of 144 possible points for the Axis versus 39 possible points for the Allies. The contested Sea Zones (zones with points available for both sides are now 79 Axis to 39 Allied. Uncontested Sea Zones are worth 65 for the Axis. The newly contested Black Sea is a possible 5-1 in favor of the Axis.

The high points for Allied strategy are as follows.

• Continue to make the Axis pay to score points. Put 2 ships or air into a Sea Zone for each VP the Axis can score if they can score above 1 (except in the Pacific) or if it is a contested Sea Zone.
• Give away nothing. Put 1 ship in every 1/0 Sea Zone or 2/0 Sea Zone in the Pacific.
• Protect Convoys or route them into the less-important waters.
• Find your personal balance in the Black Sea. Reinforcements need to be included at the start.
• Avoid any French fleet of 3 or greater ships, it’s a trap!
• Deploy the Dutch in the Pacific and Caribbean.
• The Baltic. You are doomed to lose it, how do you exact a cost. 3 Turn Attrition vs 1 Turn catfight.

Cover every 1/0 Sea Zone with a ship or a potential land-based air unit. Nothing can be given away for free. These spots should have Dutch ships in them if possible. If the Axis put multiple ships into any of these zones, consider it a success. In the Pacific, treat 2/0 Sea Zones in the same way. The distance is pretty formidable for the Axis to mount a serious threat here and if they do, you’ll just have to weather the storm. You simply run out of ships for the formula if you try to over-extend.

Any Sea Zone (other than mentioned above) that would score the Axis 2 or more points needs to have twice that many units defending them. A Sea Zone that would score the Axis 3 VP needs to have 6 Allied (British) units guarding it. The Axis can overpower you in whichever Sea Zones they desire, but not in every Sea Zone they want. When the fight comes, and it will, you need to be able to inflict attrition damage and force the commitment of enough ships to keep you from contesting the Zone. As mentioned in previous articles, simple outnumbering is rarely the requirement for complete victory in a Sea Zone. To guarantee control of a Zone, you need to hold a serious numerical advantage or utilize some type of odd combination of ships.

Your convoys need to be in two places, either sitting under those stacks of 6-10 warships on key zones or floating alone in the zones that score nothing at all. Losing a convoy in in a zero-point ocean is no worse than losing a 1/0 Sea Zone. On the other hand losing a convoy and a 1/0 Sea Zone and the defending warship is much worse. Place all of the Axis convoys you can onto the 1/0 spaces and hope you can down some merchants while patrolling these unlikely combat zones.

It is the Russian fleet that will pose the most interesting challenges to the Allied player. I hate to use the words crucial for these new areas of operation. So I will stick with interesting. Two new fronts will be opened and an old one will be re-introduced. The Arctic sea zones begin to score in this scenario and will require Soviet protection. The Black Sea will get hot and only the Soviets can contest it unless you decide to go to war with Turkey and force the Bosporus. Finally, the Baltic will heat up with a Soviet fleet in Leningrad. How should you deal with all of these new fronts?

Patrolling the Arctic Sea Zones will take the bulk of your northern fleet. However some of that fleet should be able to sail far enough west to help the English in the Norwegian Sea. To this end, your northern fleet should have the best ranges since they need to be the most flexible. Otherwise the Arctic is pretty standard and fits into the overall Allied strategy.

The Black Sea on the other hand, requires some thought. The Allied player only has one chance to deploy ships into the theater. After that, the Turks close the access and no one goes in or out without declaring war on the gate-keeper. I will assume that no one wants to fight extra Turkish ships and what is placed in there on Turn 8 is the extent of it. That translates into a need for 5 ships minimum in the area. But realistically it requires a commitment of between 8-10 ships, since the only way to make do on losses is with ships already in the zone. The biggest problem is going to be the feeling of waste. If you succeed beyond expectation on turn 8, the extra ships will feel like a waste of resources. If you fail miserably on turn 8, the lack of ships will frustrate you. As much as I hate to say it, the Black Sea really does require that you find your own stomach for your waste threshold and just accept the outcome that results. Luckily the swing is minimal with the Axis only being able to score a maximum of 5 VP per turn and 15 points for the game if they succeed fully.

In the Baltic, your appearance in Leningrad will trouble your Axis counterpart. This should be his Sea Zone and with the Finnish and German air power, he will hold it. The question is can you divert his forces here and away from other theaters of the war. There are really three trains of thought on the front. Each has its merits and each definitely has drawbacks.

You can go in guns-a-blazin’ on turn 8 with a full-strength fleet and give the Germans ‘what for’ right away. You will suffer extreme and possibly even total loss of the fleet. If you are lucky, you contest the zone for one turn. If you are unlucky, you lose your fleet and the zone on turn 8, then 9, and again on turn 10. Success means taking the bulk of the German fleet out of the Atlantic for one turn and maybe having a partial fleet to return on turn 9 and make them fight again to eliminate your fleet.

A second option is to go in limited each turn with three ships and hope the Axis player tries to soft-shoe you with a smaller force. I would not expect it, I would expect a three-to-one response at the lightest. The benefit in this approach is that it does tie up significant Axis resources for each of the three turns. The down side is that each turn you are going to lose three ships and the Baltic to the Axis.

The final option is to sit in Leningrad and not sail each turn and then sail on turn 10 in force. This opens up the possibility of attrition weakening the German fleet in the first two turns of the scenario and then allowing you to sail in on the last turn of the scenario and do some damage. The best thing here is that they have no real idea what ships are in the fleet so perhaps a surprise combo of some sort can carry the day here. The drawback is that for two turns you give a large German force free reign to sail into the Atlantic and fight on a spot of their choosing.

In summary, this is another scenario that the Allies will not be able to run away with. The scores should be close but probably leaning a bit to the Axis advantage without disciplined reliance on doctrine and an appreciation for the math. If you respect the enemy and count your points, you can manage a victory in the Drumbeat scenario. But it shouldn’t be easy.

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