Mount & Blade II brings proper ship combat — could this scratch your Black Flag itch?

Why War Sails actually matters to fans of open-sea combat

This caught my attention because I’ve always missed the teeth-rattling joy of naval fights in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord’s War Sails DLC doesn’t promise a pirate simulator – it brings Bannerlord’s huge, tactical battles to the ocean, and that’s an idea with real teeth. The expansion hands you fleets as units, gives you a flagship to steer, and forces you to manage sails, wind and crew. That sounds like the exact kind of sandbox naval chaos I’ve been waiting to see outside of Ubisoft’s era of wooden hulls and shanties.

• Command fleets as units: formations and a controllable flagship change the scale of combat.
• Sailing is mechanical: sails, wind dials, and rowing make movement tactical, not cinematic.
• Weapons and boarding: ballistas, fire arrows, ramming and boarding keep encounters varied.
• New Nordic faction and icy region expand Bannerlord’s world and paint a different combat canvas.

Breaking down War Sails: the actual gameplay

War Sails swaps out individual soldier micro for fleet macro. Rather than plopped soldiers in a field, your units are ships – several of them make up your navy and you choose one flagship to manually pilot. Before contact you can place vessels into formations that determine how they sail into the fight. That’s a big shift in Bannerlord’s strategic layer: ships behave like heavy infantry blobs with momentum and facing to manage.

Sailing itself is intentionally fiddly in a way that should delight strategists and annoy twitch-only players. You hoist sails, read a wind dial, and sometimes have to order your crew to row when the breeze dies. It’s not an arcade: positioning matters. When you finally get an angle on an enemy, you’ve got options. Ballistas fire stones or incendiaries. Archers can fire normal or ignited arrows if you’ve added a brazier. Or you can ram – and ramming is not just “slam to win.” TaleWorlds says “angle, speed, ship weight, and impact point all shape the damage dealt,” which means heavier ships trade agility for punch.

And yes — if you disable a vessel you can board it. Grappling hooks, tethering, and men crossing from deck to deck can turn a sea skirmish into a floating land battle. Multiple ships involved? Picture a chain of decks full of infantry spilling over in multiple directions. It’s Bannerlord’s bread-and-butter but on a wake-filled stage.

Why now: context and consequences

TaleWorlds has spent years perfecting Bannerlord’s massive land battles and moddable sandbox systems. War Sails feels like a natural extension — not a cash grab — because naval combat integrates with Bannerlord’s economy, faction warfare and sieges. Also, the timing makes sense: gamers nostalgic for Black Flag or who occasionally dip into Sea of Thieves are primed for robust naval mechanics elsewhere.

That said, there are open questions. TaleWorlds hasn’t been exhaustive about multiplayer integration for War Sails, and the experience will hinge on AI competence for fleet control and how well the UI handles complex naval formations. Big physics-heavy encounters also risk performance hits unless optimized — Bannerlord’s large land battles have historically been a litmus test for framerates on mid-range PCs.

What gamers should know before buying

If you loved tactical combat more than narrative sailing, War Sails will likely be a blast. The DLC brings new weapons, a Nordic faction and an icy northern region inspired by Norway’s fjords — a thematic fit for long-ship clashes. For anyone who owns Bannerlord and wanted naval content, this is a meaningful expansion of gameplay possibilities.

Price-wise: War Sails is 10% off until Wednesday, December 10 (bringing it to $22.99 / £18.89 during the sale), and the base game is half price on Steam until the same date. If you don’t own Bannerlord and you care about naval fights, the bundled math makes this an easy impulse purchase — especially if you want to experiment with fleet compositions and ramming tactics without waiting for a Black Flag remaster.

Final take — who should set sail

If you get giddy at the thought of commanding a squadron rather than a single ship, War Sails is worth a look. It won’t replace polished narrative-driven pirate romps, but it gives Bannerlord players a new sandbox to exploit: supply-lines, sea control, and boarding actions that feed back into your campaign. For me, it scratches that itch Black Flag left behind — with a lot more tactical depth and the occasional, deliciously chaotic multi-ship boarding cluster.

TL;DR: War Sails turns Bannerlord into a capable naval sandbox. It’s tactical, occasionally fiddly, and promises emergent chaos that modders and generals will love. If you’re on the fence, the current sale nudges this from “maybe” to “worth trying.” May the seas be kind to your flagship.