War @ Sea: A History According to Game Designer Richard Baker

Richard Baker, Wizards of the Coast game designer for War at Sea, recently shared a brief history of the making of War at Sea. This is of interest to War at Sea players for obvious reasons. But, it is also pertinent for CCG/CMG gamers to see how a major game company thinks when it approaches collectible games.

The brief history is shared below for your reading pleasure and can be found in its original form at Set II – Any News.

“Just so you guys can understand a little more about what decisions we made, I’ll try to run down the development history of War at Sea as best I can. There’s a lot that I am not really at liberty to elaborate on, but perhaps this will help shed some light on things.”

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War @ Sea: GenCon 2007 Update

Richard Baker, War at Sea game designer, promised news on the upcoming Set 2 would be available and GenCon. Per the official forum it was announced that Set 2 would be out in 2008 and hopefully early 2008. Now, it has been announced that Set 2 will be out summer 2008.

Additionally, the makeup of Set 2 has been made public. It will consist of 60 models with half the set consisting of new models. The other half will be so called “sister ships.” That is to say they will be ships already released but with new names. There were many classes of ships and many ships in a class. For example, the USS Enterprise is a Yorktown class carrier. The Yorktown class consisted of the USS Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown. You can bet one of them will be in the class.

Other examples are the Yamato battleship (the Musashi as sister ship), USS Iowa (New Jersey, Missouri, & Wisconsin) and the Vittorio Veneto aka Littorio class BB (Littorio, Roma, and Impero) not to name the multitude of destroyers and cruisers.

To those who, like me, are frustrated by the release date for Set 2 and for those who, unlike me, are upset by the number of sister ships in Set 2 we can find an answer from Richard Baker who said “…to be honest, we were sort of caught off guard by the success of the game” in his official Gen Con blog. Another reason for the delayed release of Set 2…at least according to WoTC, is the release of Axis & Allies Minis 1939-1945 around Christmas 2007.

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Protected: War @ Sea: Banners

Here are the banners we will use at the top of every War at Sea article. This lets visitors, at a glance, visually know what game the article covers. Many thanks, and all credit, goes to Cinnibar and Jesse_James on the official War at Sea forum (look at their To those who wanted forum Signatures… thread) who have made all the banners and graphical signatures we share with you.

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War @ Sea: Better Tokens?

War at Sea Token Set

In War at Sea the tokens, that come with the starter box, are quite important. They denote damage, alert to crippled and destroyed vessels, mark objectives, and even state when aircraft is aborted or re-arming. All in all the tokens are bloody useful and nicely made. However, they do have a drawback that every serious gamer needs to consider. The tokens are thin cardboard that is difficult to pick up from the map. This dexterous task is further enfeebled when trying to prevent the map’s disarrangement.

Some players on the official War at Sea forum are discussing better tokens from a premier online retailer. The company, Litko Aerosystems, is a poor man’s GF9 that doesn’t sacrifice quality. Litko has agreed to make a set of War at Sea tokens, top left at full size, for a reasonable price of $20 if they get 25 pre-orders.

At first glance it may seem a waste of money instead of trying to do it yourself. But, after looking at their existing product (see the custom tokens below) and especially their token sets it is easy to see that $20 is a good deal for everything included in the War at Sea token set.

All the products made by Litko are really nice. Just look at their token sets to see what I mean. Before you pre-order the War at Sea token set (40 tokens for just $20 USD) there’s 1 thing that may be a downside for some gamers. The tokens are not licensed and that mans they cannot have any official War at Sea logos or icons on the tokens. I think that doesn’t matter at all in this case. Who really needs some logo on a token that says my carrier is sunk? Not I.

Be sure to place your pre-order now for the nice token set.

Printing Easier Than Ever With Printer Friendly Articles

Don’t you hate going to a website, finding something you like, and then trying to print it without all that extra stuff? Or, when it prints parts of the website out on tons of pages of paper?

Websites have created printer friendly versions that print much easier. Now, the CWF Game Cast has done the same.

We are using a great plugin that helps you to print articles from this blog and bring them with you when you game.

At the bottom of each article, right under the ratings, is a printer icon and the words “Print this article” Click that and you will get a printer friendly version of the article. For example here is a printer friendly version of our War @ Sea: 8/15/07 100pt Tourney @ Battleground Games article. Compare that to the regular, printer unfriendly, War @ Sea: 8/15/07 100pt Tourney @ Battleground Games article.

Once you have your printer friendly version you can either print as normal (File>Print, Ctrl+P, Apple+P, etc) or you can scroll to the bottom of the printer friendly page and click the “Click here to print” text. Moments later the article arrives out of your printer.

For the interested parties the articles will print all graphics/pictures, comments, and links. To save on ink please set your printer to print in black & white. We can alter the settings on our end and if the demand is high we will alter them. We can toggle the setting for printing graphics, comments, and links separately.

Hope you enjoy this new feature and happy printing!