We have absolutely wonderful news to share. War at Sea has a new set, Set 3, which will officially be released on June 9, 2009. The set is titled Flank Speed and will feature 40 new models. Most models, 31 in fact, will be brand new sculpts while the remaining 9 will be repaints of existing sculpts.
The set will be a booster only release meaning new players still need to purchase the original War at Sea Starter Box ($24.99). Each booster will cost $14.99 or 17.50 CAN. There will be 12 boxes per case meaning a case will cost gamers $179.88. The ISBN for the new set, so you can search for it on Amazon, is 978-0-7869-5255-7.
Wizards released all of this information in their 2009 product catalog sent exclusively to retailers. We managed to obtain this information from a reliable source. Additionally, we have 4 officially confirmed releases along with the entire set list (unofficially confirmed). More on the set list later but the four official releases are:
Germany – Schlesig-Holsten battleship – Rare
United States – USS Arizona battleship – Rare
Japan – “Jill” Torpedo Bomber – Common
Russia – October Revolution battleship – Rare
The 2009 Wizards product catalog had this to say about the new set.
All hands on deck for the second expansion [third set] to the War at Sea naval miniatures game. Flank Speed will contain 40 authentically detailed miniatures that war gamers, WWII enthusiasts, and collectors can use to assemble fleets with which to do battle on the seas of WWII. Battleships, cruisers, submarines and aircraft will help you bring the battle to your opponent. Flank Speed will let players add to their existing navies to recreate historical battles that rage across massive 30″ x 40″ battle maps.
This is exciting for a variety of reasons. Of course there’s the standard excitement over any new release. The confirmed releases are also exciting and discussion provoking. But, this is the first time that Wizards has put so much emphasis on the historical gamer for this game. The game has walked a very thin line between historical game and beer & pretzel game. It has managed to perform as a quick, fun and social game that also strives to be historically accurate.
I know many historical gamers who have held back from War at Sea because they viewed it as simply a beer and pretzel game. It seems that with Flank Speed the tide is turning and the game will delve into more historical waters.
In addition to the confirmed releases, the excerpt from the Wizards 2009 Product Catalog and our above banter on the meaning of the excerpt we are proud to share more exclusives. The first is the official box art you can see at left. We are the first place on the web to have this and share it with everyone. Not even Amazon or BoardGameGeek have this on their websites. Yes, you saw it here FIRST! This is a 600dpi hi-res scan of the actual box art. This is confirmed, official, and will be produced as such. The box art tells us a few things. First it is the same shape and size as the Task Force booster. This means Flank Speed will be a rectangular booster. It features new art, which looks wonderful, and says on the bottom of the box that the booster contains 5 random miniatures.
Additionally, the box shows the insignias for all the nations in this release. The box for Task Force showed no insignias leaving customers to guess at the nationalities of the set. The original set showed 7 insignias (Australia, France, United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Italy, and Japan). There are 9 insignias on Flank Speed’s box. Starting from left we see Australia, Russia, France, Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Italy, and Japan). This tells us that Canada will not have any new units despite its inclusion in Task Force. Most likely Canada was dumped to make room for Russia’s two ships.
Lastly, we have the unofficially confirmed set list. This comes to us straight from the wonderful people at Axis & Allies foruMINI. NeuralDream, the forum owner, in particular deserves a round of applause for compiling all the leaks and rumors into a single list (excluding Australia). Please be sure to give him a pat on the back along with your gratitude. We at CWF are eternally grateful to him and the entire Axis & Allies foruMINI team for everything they do to support and promote War at Sea. If you join their community you can find us as a member under the name cwfgamecast. We have reformatted the list to follow the order of nations from the Flank Speed box art.
*Italicized entries are subject to change.
Soviet Union
R October Revolution (New Sculpt)
R Lutzow/Petropavlovsk/Tallinn (Hipper reprint?)
C a Destroyer
France
At least two ships
No Surcouf
No aircraft
Netherlands
U Hr MS Java
United Kingdom
R Prince of Wales (KGV reprint)
R HMS Repulse (new sculpt)
U a flying boat (new sculpt, Sunderland?)
C Martlet (Wildcat reprint)
C Flower class corvette (new sculpt)
United States
R CV 11 Intrepid (new sculpt)
R BB 55 North Carolina (Washington reprint)
R BB 39 Arizona (new Sculpt)
R CB 1 USS Alaska (new sculpt)
U CL 53 San Diego (Atlanta reprint)
U B-24 Liberator (new sculpt)
C DD 661 Kidd (Fletcher reprint)
C DD 360 Phelps (new sculpt)
U LSD 5 Gunston Hall (new sculpt)
Germany
R Gneisenau (Scarnhorst reprint)
R Prinz Eugen (Admiral Hipper reprint)
R Schlewsig-Holstein (New Sculpt)
U Ju-88 Torpedo (New Sculpt)
C U-47 (New, VIIB class)
*Auxiliary
Italy
R CV Aquila (new sculpt)
C Re.2001 (new sculpt?)
Japan
R Nagato (new sculpt)
R Soryu (new sculpt)
R Aoba (new sculpt)
U Oi (new sculpt)
C A6M5 Zero (reprint, new stats)
C Jill Torpedo Bomber (reprint?)
*Auxiliary
*we know we are getting an Axis equivalent to the LSD for the US, we do not know which nation is receiving it though
Recently one of you great visitors had some eagle eyes and e-mailed me about a possible error in this article. The user, major props for the eagle eyes and e-mailing me, thought I made a mistake when I said the Lutzow would be included for the Soviet Union. This is not a mistake.
The Kriegsmarine had two vessels named Lutzow. The first Lutzow was an Admiral Hipper class just like the Blucher, Prinz Eugen (made famous by its trek with the Bismarck on her final journey), Seydlitz and of course Admiral Hipper. This Lutzow was sold to the Soviet Union prior to its completion. The Soviets then renamed the ship the Petropavlovsk after they tried to finish her in mid to late 1940. They didn’t have enough time before Hitler ordered the invasion of the SU, so she was used a floating battery and eventually sunk. Even this wasn’t the end of the Petropavlovsk, formerly the Lutzow, because the SU raised her and renamed her the Tallinn but she was never completed as a cruiser because of the cost.
The confusion, and Nazi propaganda machine, comes into play when Germany decided to build a panzerschiffe (pocket battleship) named the Deutschland class. This is the class of ships that the Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee were both part of. The Deutschland is the ship that was renamed to the Lutzow. The Germans did this to get around the Paris Treaty limitations, as they did with all of their surface vessels, and thought that re-using the name Luzow would provide enough confusion to shield some of what they were doing.
There’s some basic information on this over at Wikipedia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_cruiser_L%C3%BCtzow_(Hipper_class) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_class_cruiser) but you can get more in depth, and better information elsewhere. I read the Osprey Publishing titles German Heavy Cruisers 1939-45 and German Pocket Battleships 1939-45 both by Gordon Williamson (check out my Librarything.com section at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/jreinhart&tag=Osprey%2BPublishing where you can find more information on these two books). Plus, Fleets of World War II by Richard Worth is a great title. I know him online and have read it several times. It is very accessible but in depth covering all of the major, and minor, nations during the war. He has good coverage on the Lutzow swap performed by Germany.
I’ll give this for Germany it is rather ingenious in its simplicity “let’s rename the ship and nobody will know the difference.” It seems to have worked well enough during the war and it still gets people today.
Thanks,
Jonathan
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There’s a different and newer picture of the box art out for flank speed, you can find it on the officer website and http://www.axisandallies.com. The Dutch and Australian Roundels are gone and have been replaced by what appears to be a new ‘mystery nationality’. It appears to be either Finland or New Zealand (they didn’t use the kiwi emblem till after the war).
A Kirov Class cruiser is very likely for the Russians instead of a second Hipper reprint in the same set. Tallinn was incomplete and did very little fighting, it’d be another Jean Bart, and even though I like that ship, most others didn’t, and Rich Baker knows that now.
The Gneisenau seems highly unlikely now with the Schleswig-Holsten in the set. Don’t get me wrong, I want it, but it just seems unlikely with Germany’s lack of battleships left to print, especially if we get the Prinz Eugan. Still have to have room for an Italian BB.
The New Zealand unit might be a Catalina reprint which would kill the need for a Sunderland for a while since New Zealand, Canadain and Astralian forces are really part of the UK forces in WWII. Rich Baker told folks at the convention the UK is getting a flying boat, never said what kind.
Instead of the Regianne 2001 it also seems highly likely the Italians will just get a BF109 reprint and RB will just not put landbased on it for use with the Aquila. I did some research on the Oi, she was converted into a fast troop transport about midwar, still had an ungodly amount of torpedoes, but would make a cheaper version with a cargo ability, so that might end up being the landing ship/auxiliary unit for the Japanese.
Basically, if you take the new sculpts from Set II and Set III and put them together and you have Rich Baker’s original Set II that he cut in half (minus the Aquila and Graf Zeppelin since he once admitted the GZ was a last minut add-on to Set II in a blog entry) to make our current Sets II and III.
Just some I thought you might find usefull,
ET
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/aam/WaratSeaFS
here’s the link to that hard to find flank speed page