If you are a regular on our Victory at Sea forum, you will know that the manuscript for the first supplement of the series, Order of Battle, arrived at our office. I have just finished editing the beast (and it is a beast - larger than the original rulebook!), and it is now making the rounds with our Naval experts to make sure there is nothing too powerful or just plain wrong within it.

The first Victory at Sea supplement was going to be a 'themed' book. Fairly small, focussing on just one area of WWII - the Pacific theatre was often mooted as a possibility. However, after drawing up a wish list of items to go in, it rapidly became a 'kitchen sink' supplement. Victory at Sea itself is a nice, quick and tightly confined game. The new supplement, Order of Battle, opens things right up, allowing you to do, well, pretty much anything on the sea during WWII, historical or otherwise.

So, what can you expect? Well, a page has been devoted to tweaking the original Victory at Sea rules, following feedback from the game's many, many players. Torpedo Belts have been reduced in potency, you will be glad to hear, and there will be no more invincible destroyers pounding along at full speed during night battles.

However, a great many new rules have been added - you can now run aground, as land has been added, for example. This allowed us to also add Shore Batteries. Night fights have been revised to include searchlights and starshells. Mines and minesweepers make an appearence, as well as suicide attacks (Kamikaze was perhaps the most requested new rule - you should be careful what you ask for!).

The next few chapters integrate MTBs into the rules properly, add experienced Admirals (those following A Call to Arms 2e will be familiar with this concept), and introduce Advanced Air Operations. You will now find aircraft as powerful as they were during real battles, and their options greatly expanded to cover, for example, ASW duties. Battleships will now fear a wave of dive bombers (and yes, many carriers have now gone up in Priority Level. . .). We also have some new scenarios, historical and otherwise, for you to try your hand at.

Then there are the fleets. In the end, we only added the Russian Navy to the original six - there were plans to do the smaller navies, such as Greece, but they will have to wait. We felt that covering the big fleets properly was better than covering many fleets briefly. Based on the S&P article, there have been many tweaks to the Russians.

The Royal Navy, perhaps predictably, gets the greater share of new ships - 32 pages of them at this time! From Archers to Lions, RN players are going to be well catered for.

The Kriegsmarine get fewer new ships, and we only included a few of the more sensible Z-Plan ships (hey, I like the idea of a 150,000 ton battleship as much as the next man, but we decided to keep reality at least in sight!). The Schleswig Holstein makes an appearence though. . .

On top of that, we have additions to the US and Japanese fleets, as well as the Italian and Free French (yes, the Surcouf made the grade!). There are new civilian ships, such as liners and oil tankers (BOOM!) to experiment with in scenarios too.

Overall, Order of Battle opens your options right up when playing Victory at Sea, and whether you like strictly historical matches or fanciful campaigns with the Kriegsmarine fighting in force across the Pacific, there is going to be plenty of material here for you. We will be releasing the book in November this year, with some previews in Signs & Portents in the run up to its printing.

Of course, that is not all that is in the works for Victory at Sea. An Age of Dreadnoughts edition is already close to completion, allowing you to smack seven bells out of your opponent in World War I (it will also get you to realise just how old some of the WWII ships actually were!), and I have seen an ACW version floating around the office. We have also sketched some rules out for using the game with sailing ships, though we are currently arguing whether it should be rooted in the Golden Age of Pirates, or during the Napoleonic Wars (go Nelson! Ahem. . .).

Victory at Sea was only ever meant to be a private project, and we always assumed World War II naval gaming was a tiny, tiny niche. However, having sold out of the first run of books within a few months (when we had expected to sell, at best, a few hundred!), it is clear we have hit a nerve somewhere.

Oh, that reminds me. We have started to reprint Victory at Sea in our own printing facility now. Though the game still includes counters, these are now of the black-and-white-cut-out-yourself variety. However, this also means we have been able to drop the price of the book by $5/£5 - so sinking the Bismarck has never been cheaper!