In a suprising turn of events, TaleWorlds Entertainment has announced the first full-featured expansion pack forMount & Blade 2: Bannerlord. TitledWar Sails, this new DLC is supposed to introduce a whole new dimension of warfare to the sandbox strategy/RPG hybrid, but is it going to work out?
Mount & Blade 2has gone through a very long and arduous development process. It only launched in Steam Early Access back in March 2020, with a subsequent mild 1.0 release in October 2022, and there’s not been much happening on that front ever since. With almost three years having gone by in a breeze, nobody really expected TaleWorlds to suddenly announce a huge new DLC, but here we are, withWar Sailsin tow. Though the Viking aesthetic commands the announcement trailer, there’s much more toWar Sailsthan just that, and it is poised to revitalizeBannerlord‘s tired old gameplay loop.
Can the War Sails DLC rejuvenate Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord?
Bannerlord: War Sailsis due to release on July 28, 2025, and its feature list is nothing if not impressive:
Crucially, naval combat is supposed to be fully physics-driven, with the behavior of the sea and wind greatly affecting the vessels’ performance in combat. Ramming will be a thing, too, with dynamic boarding parties and other related features coming into their own in close-quarters combat.
Frankly,War Sailssounds much more promising and exhaustive than I’d have dared to expect from aMount & Blade 2: BannerlordDLC. Make no mistake: this is a genuinely good game with a thriving modding community, it’s just that it’s a kind of a reinvention of the originalMount & Bladegames rather than its own thing.War Sailsis the first time we’re seeing something genuinely novel and exciting from TaleWorlds, and though there’s every chance the expansion pack ends up falling flat on its face, the alternative is that it finally elevates the game to a whole new level.
Of course,War Sails‘ more-or-less imminent release means that all of ourMount & Blade 2modlists are about to get broken. To that end, if you’re looking to experience the game anew in mid-June with the DLC in tow, I recommend wiping your modlist clean and maybe even reinstalling the whole thing just to be safe. This may well be the Big ThingMount & Blade 2fans have been waiting for, so I’ve got my fingers crossed for TaleWorlds this time around.
