Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord’s War Sails expansion is terraforming the land to encourage maximum boat bastardry
Sorry, historical farming village folk. You live in the sea now. Ok, fine. By the sea. But that’s the best we can do. Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord’s War Sails expansion is due this Autumn, and TaleWorlds have put out a new deep dive blog covering what to expect from the big battle strategy RPG’s first foray into wavely warfare. Shiver me tambourines and other such phrases that would have confused a viking, here’s the first trailer in case you missed it.
As is good journalistic practise, I’ll start with the bit I find the funniest, conceptually, especially if I imagine it as a newspaper headline. “Several towns have been moved closer to water”. Rivers have also been widened, and bridges have been “reconsidered”. This is all part of TaleWorld’s efforts to reshape “the very veins of the continent”, ostensibly to widen the maritime trade network, though I suspect it’s actually just to give you more targets to boat batter.
“For settlements now hugging rivers and coasts, danger sails closer — rival ports are now just a voyage away. To meet this new maritime threat, both parties and armies can now travel by water, gaining access to naval movement and combat.”
The world map is also being expanded with “a new rugged long strip of a south-facing coastline”. Coincidentally, rugged long is also my stripper name. Here’s the map:
Returning to coastline plundering, TaleWorlds have also detailed the part naval warfare will play in sieges. Namely blockades, which will be automatically formed after setting up a siege camp, as long as the siege target is a naval settlement and the besiegers have ships available. As a player, you can also reinforce besieged towns from water – “either by breaking through the blockade at the cost of some troops, or by attacking the fleet directly to lift it.”
A few other bits of interest: If you dock and then go pottering about on land, you’ll be able to summon your ships again from any coastal town. Sailing itself will be aided or hindered by wind speed and currents, and you’ll have to contend with attrition, from hazards like storms and regular old disrepair, while you’re out there.
How is Bannerlord these days? I played it for about fifty very good hours when it came out and haven’t touched it since. Sin reviewed it back in 2022 and didn’t reckon it was a meaningful upgrade from the previous. “I still enjoy Bannerlord because there’s nothing else doing those open world battles,” she wrote. “But almost everything else is a robotic, shallow grind offering no surprises, with a plethora of complaints that early access is supposed to iron out”.
