Seas of Thunder is one of my favorite games that I had a hand in designing. It covers a topic that I find fascinating. And it does it in a way that I find satisfying. It is easy to teach and learn. It has a fun factor with a lot of dice rolling. It also requires some thoughtful approaches to it if you want to do well. There are some mistakes that I have owned up to, but in the end the mistakes you think are there really play no part in the play, fun, or strategy of the game. I will not be addressing those so-called errors here. But what we did have to do to get the game to a point where it was feasible to print was to cut out a lot of extras. Now I appreciate the folks here at GMT and they make my games better by giving me a deadline or a component limit and those not only help make the game better but help me to be a better designer. But in the case of this particular game there were a few things that were dropped on the cutting room floor that I am interested in returning to the game and that I think make an even better experience. Unfortunately, low sales and low interest have ensured that Seas of Thunder remains a one-box game with no official GMT expansions on the horizon. That is their choice, and I respect that, but I have so much more that was prepared and ready to go. I have no intention of scrapping it completely.

Today I am happy to announce that Laboratory H has released the first expansion for Seas of Thunder, Blueprints. This 207-piece add-on covers a multitude of “what-if” ships from World War 2 and the eras leading up to it. The expansion includes the giant ships that would have been built except for the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty that reigned in the massive shipbuilding projects after World War I. There are a handful of mothballed ships that could have seen action. Some of the minor navies that were not included in Seas of Thunder like the Danish and Polish are added. And finally, there are two classes of speculative ships; the ones that were started and never finished like the Graf Zeppelin, and the drawing board-only ships that could have been built but were scrapped by circumstances or the end of the war.

https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/seas-of-thunder-blueprints1

All these ships can be used to suit your own taste in play. We have included rules for adding the ships in, but you can also just add them in as you see fit, or to test a theory. Whatever you want to do with them you can. We finished this expansion first because it is just data that can be plugged into a formula and the pieces then quickly extracted. I think you’ll see that the other expansions all have more test work to do on them and will be much more impactful to the game.

Future expansions will include Operations, where players will have missions that they will need to assign ships to execute and defend against. This will become a drain on the ships available for standard play and make things more challenging. Auxiliaries will add small ships, more areas to cover, and thirteen new two-turn scenarios. Admirals will add in strategy cards (these were originally in the game for quite a while before they were removed near the end) to allow for more technology, weather, and human elements in the game. Treaties will be a small expansion to mix up some of the minors and neutrals from game to game. And finally, Fleets which will allow for the same game to be played but with many fewer “fleet” pieces as opposed to individual ships. As you can see, it was always obvious that something as straight-forward as Blueprints was destined to be the first expansion to cross the finish line. The others will actually require some time and work to complete.

I hope if you are interested in following not only Seas of Thunder, but Carla & I in general that you will join our Patreon page. Membership is free and we will be using it as an online headquarters and communication hub from now on. One thing we will be doing is allowing patrons to vote on what comes next in not only this series, but all our projects. We hope to see you there.

patreon.com/LabH

We are trying to make the page interesting for everyone that enjoys our racing games, to the war games, to Dark Domains, to our sports-themed games and lighter fare. We will organize fantasy sports leagues, brackets, voting, and special gifts for Lab Rats. Everyone is welcome and this will be our community moving forward. Now that it is just Carla & myself making the decisions, look for a lot more interactivity with the fans and consumers.

If I were to ask you what nation in Seas of Thunder had the most challenging setup in the game, you might be hard pressed to come up with the correct answer (unless you read the title, then have a cookie). Yes, it’s Russia. In fact, the only nation even close to having as unforgiving a start is Italy, who must only decide which ships start in the Mediterranean and which start outside those waters. For the Communists, that would be child’s play. The Soviet Union must fight four separate battles that for the most part cannot be reinforced. Failure in any of these arenas can be crushing to the Allies.

In a Seas of Thunder campaign game, Italy is a very enjoyable nation to play; either as part of a team or just by yourself. Italy can expect to have the upper hand in the Mediterranean from the instant that France is conquered until they leave the game in September of 1943 (Turn 17). They prowl ground valuable to both sides, but not the most valuable. The Allies will make Italian life challenging but seldom miserable as there is always a larger bounty to be had. The world is a big place and only so many British and later American ships can be expended in the Middle Sea, when there are fights across the entire globe demanding ships and air.

The most challenging and I’m sure the most controversial choice in Seas of Thunder was what to do with the French Fleet. Always remember that in Seas of Thunder, our first nod was always to history, but only if it maintained an interesting game. If the history made the game bad, we worked to change focal points of the game so that the history had less to do with the game’s outcome. That’s why some ocean-going activities have not been covered. Refueling, seaborne invasions, some ports, and a few other things did not make the game. Not because they weren’t important or even crucial to the conflict, but because the game didn’t support or reflect them, at least in the manner we were presenting them.

In a previous article I discussed the power, flexibility and dominating nature of air power in a Seas of Thunder battle. As a companion to that I would like to address the counter-balance to air power, the specialists. Every ship in the game can be put on the gunnery line, from the mightiest battleship to the lowliest submarine and everything in-between. However many ships, at last count over half, have their own specialties that make them more potent in the game than their 5-inch guns would allow. Today we will look at the specialist actions; anti-sub warfare, raiding, subsurface attack, mine laying, and mine sweeping.