Nine Navies War begins at the start of 1915 after a victorious Germany has overrun France the year before. (Perhaps the BEF didn't land on time or at all or they got bottled up in Mons or the Germans kept to their full-blown keep the right super-strong and pull back on the left Schlieffen Plan scheme thereby bagging two French armies in the Rhineland etc.) Italy seeing the German victory train leaving the station joins the Central Powers as do Spain and Greece. All of which makes for a dreadnought showdown in the Mediterranean Atlantic Ocean and North Seas as the avidly Mahanist Kaiser Wilhelm seeks to finally defeat the Royal Navy and thus make Germany into a true global power. It will be the battleships of Britain Russia and 'Free France' versus those of Germany Italy Turkey Austria-Hungary and the captured portion of the divided French fleet. (Each French ship is rolled for at the start of every game. Each can be scuttled go over to the British or be captured by the Germans.) There will also be the possibility of later US entry when/if the Japanese switch sides in the Pacific and launch a dastardly surprise attack that finally draws in the Yanks. Victory is determined on victory points awarded for controlling the various sea zones around Europe. The geography thereby creates a kind of two front war one in the Mediterranean and one in the Atlantic. The Central Powers player is also able to win a sudden death victory by controlling the waters immediately surrounding the British Isles for one full year (three turns). If he does so the British have just been starved into submission. All the battleships and battle cruisers afloat during that era along with three late-game British aircraft carriers are represented in the various nations' orders of battle as well as ships that were scheduled to be completed during 1919 if the war had gone on that long. Random events account for the larger developments taking place in the
