Wargaming Recon

My case of Flank Speed from Miniature Market arrived today.  It is the 2nd case I’ve opened (you can read about my first at War at Sea: Flank Speed Opened First Case & Singles).

I’ve been waiting for this 2nd case for two days.  Miniature Market (I’ll share my review of my experience buying from them soon) shipped it UPS Ground, they didn’t have to, and it arrived in Massachusetts Monday morning where it sat not more than 50 miles from my house all day long.  Today it arrived at the local distribution center, ten minutes from my house in the next town over, and then spent over 12 hours on a truck.  Normally UPS delivers by Noon but today it didn’t arrive until 8pm.  I was crestfallen but that was nothing compared to how I felt after opening the case.

This case has the worst distribution I have ever seen for any War at Sea case.  You will recall the awful distributions I faced in my Task Force cases.  This is worse or so I think.  You’ll find more ranting on the set’s quality, or lack thereof, after my pulls are listed.

Here are my pulls (Quantity then Name, in order by set number):

2 HMCS Sackville

2 Milan

0 Suffren

1 HMNZS Leander

2 HMS Belfast

1 HMS Prince of Wales

1 HMS Repulse

3 HMS Saumarez

2 Martlet Mk. II

2 SB2C Helldiver

1 USS Alaska

0 USS Arizona

1 USS Gunston Hall

1 USS Intrepid (I received 2 more as singles)

2 USS Kidd

2 USS North Carolina

3 USS Phelps

2 USS Richmond

2 USS San Diego

2 Gromkiy

1 Oktybraskaya Revolutsia

1 Kirov

1 Ju 88A-4

0 Prinz Eugen

2 Schleswig-Holstein

2 T27

3 U-47

0 Aquila

0 Gorizia

1 Guiseppe Garibaldi

3 Pegaso

1 Re. 2001 CB

2 A65M “Zeke”

0 Aoba

3 B6N2 “Jill”

1 Nagato

2 Oi

2 Shigure

1 Soryu

2 T1 Landing Ship

This means I am still lacking the Suffren (#3 French Rare) and Prinz Eugen (#24 German Rare).  The pulls may not look too bad since I did beef up some of my aircraft and cruisers.  But, let’s look at the Rares and their duplication.

I did not get the Suffren (out of 60 models in a case I couldn’t pull a 1 in 40 model) nor the Prinz Eugen (also 1 in 40).  I got duplicates of the USS North Carolina and Schleswig-Holstein.  I believe duplicates of any Rares in a case is poor distribution.  Furthermore I received enough U47s for a Wolfpack, it does not have the Wolfpack SA so why would you ever use more than one?  I pulled another Intrepid bringing my total up to 4, which is unnecessary.

In all this excess I’m still short on models.  Most notable are the two Rares I’m missing but I’m also short on aircraft.  The Re. 2001 CB numbers three, I’ve only a single Aquila and Gorizia, very few Russian vessels (I’ve all three they released but with so few vessels I need quantity to create a fleet).  I realizing I am very whiny about my pulls and I will stop whining now but I want to mention that I had hoped and expected to get some doubles but thought I would have pulled my Suffren and Prinz Eugen in this case.  I’m most disturbed at not getting the Prinz Eugen.  I’ve wanted this ship since Base Set and it is one of the few units I’ve looked forward to in this set.

Moving on let’s address the plethora of errors in this set.  Nobody is perfect but I’m amazed at the lack of quality control in this set.  If I ran a business with the same quality control exhibited in this set I’d go out of business (especially if it was a restaurant).  The great people at the Axis & Allies ForuMINI (you guys rock!) have compiled a growing list of the defects.  They will, I believe, be submitting this information to Richard Baker who is the game designer for War at Sea and hopefully he will issue a new set of Rules Clarifications.  It took less than 48 hours (less than 1 business day) to release rules clarifications after Task Force released.  Let’s see how long it takes for them to be released on Flank Speed.

• The name of the Zero is wrong.  It should say A6M5 NOT A65M.
• Suffren has incorrect armor.  It should say 3 NOT 4 (she had no armor belt).
• The Lay Smoke Screen Special Ability (see Milan, T27, and Shigure) is incorrect.  It makes no mention of Concealment.  Correct Lay Smoke Screen SA appears in the February 27, 2009 Update and Clarifications document.
• U-47’s Armor 4 is incorrect.  Should be Armor 3
• The roundel on Italian stat cards is still wrong (since Task Force).  I think they used the roundel for Iran.
• The Guiseppe Garbialdi is spelled incorrectly.  It should be Guiseppe Garibaldi
• All aircraft have the Ship Main Gun icon instead of Airplane Gun icon on their stat cards.

Until these are officially clarified I suggest enacting the following House Rules.

1. Suffren is Armor 3.
2. Lay Smoke Screen Special Ability on all Flank Speed units (Milan, T27, Shigure, and any I missed) is replaced with the one from the February 27, 2009 Update and Clarifications document.
3. U-47 is Armor 3.

Don’t forget to come back to read my review of my experience purchasing from Miniature Market and my pulls from my 3rd and final case.  They will be shared soon and as soon as I get my Suffren and Prinz Eugen I will begin digitizing the stat cards.

I am pleased to share the results of opening my first case of Flank Speed with all of you. I am only missing 4 ships.  You may recall this is where I stood after purchasing 4+ cases of the previous set, Task Force, so this clearly is an improvement of distribution but more on that later.

I asked the owner of my FLGS to let me know when the new set arrived.  I received an instant message today alerting me to their arrival.  I left work on time, a rarity, and then drove the 29 miles in rush hour traffic to the store.  All in all the commute wasn’t bad lasting 45 minutes.

Paying $160 and change for the case, stupid sales tax increase, I cracked my case writing down what I received.  Additionally my singles from MiniatureMarket.com arrived today although my case, which I ordered several days before the singles, did not.  Interestingly enough I was informed that my singles would arrive near the end of this week and my case would arrive tomorrow.

Here are my pulls (Quantity then Name, in order by set number):

2 HMCS Sackville

2 Milan

0 Suffren

1 HMNZS Leander

1 HMS Belfast

1 HMS Prince of Wales

1 HMS Repulse

2 HMS Saumarez

2 Martlet Mk. II

1 SB2C Helldiver

1 USS Alaska

1 USS Arizona

2 USS Gunston Hall

1 USS Intrepid (I received 2 more as singles)

2 USS Kidd

1 USS North Carolina

3 USS Phelps

1 USS Richmond

2 USS San Diego

2 Gromkiy

0 Oktybraskaya Revolutsia

1 Kirov

1 Ju 88A-4

0 Prinz Eugen

1 Schleswig-Holstein

3 T27

2 U-47

1 Aquila

1 Gorizia

2 Guiseppe Garibaldi

3 Pegaso

2 Re. 2001 CB

2 A65M “Zeke”

1 Aoba

0 B6N2 “Jill”

0 Nagato

2 Oi

3 Shigure

1 Soryu

3 T1 Landing Ship

I’m amazed at the great distribution in this case.  I received 1 of almost everything in the set.  I’m surprised to have received so many T1 Landing Ships yet no Jills.  Luckily I have no repeats of rares.  This was not the case with Task Force so this has been a major improvement.

I think by and large the quality of the models has increased.  I have issues with some of them such as the Aquila where it is a poor cast.  Some of the ships still suffer from poor casting beneath their hull.  This has resulted in some ship names being indecipherable.  Both issues are still problematic enough to take into account.  However, I must stress that the quantity of these errors has greatly diminished compared to previous sets.  I’m not happy with how many faults exist but it has decreased.

I am generally happy with my first case.  I had to open 1/4 of my case before I got the Aquila, a ship I very much wanted, and I was a little crestfallen at pulling an Intrepid because I bought 2 singles of them.  It has a solid market value that I believe will soar.  That could allow me to recoup some losses.  Based on early singles market prices, which traditionally soar right before and as a new set is released and then slightly diminish yet remain strong over all, I believe that my pulls more than pay for the cost of my case.

I have one more case coming from MiniatureMarket.com and I will be doing a review of them based on my experience ordering the case and the singles as the two purchases are intwined.  I also will be purchasing one more case from my FLGS.  He only got two cases because Wizards would not allow him to purchase more.  He will have 6 more cases arriving the end of this week.

Without making this article too lengthy, I have a tendency to be loquacious, I want to remark on one special ability.  I need to preface this with a warning that I am strictly interpreting the SA, have no intention to exploit it, and have gotten into lengthy discussions of this with the kind people at the Axis & Allies ForuMINI (we have agreed to seek official clarification and agree to disagree until then).

The 25th unit in the set is the Schleswig-Holstein.  This WWI battleship served as flag of the Kriegsmarine at the start of WWII.  In the game it receives two special abilities but I will restrict myself to the one titled Early Deployment.  It says:

Early Deployment – This unit may deploy in any sector on your side of the map.  You may deploy one Cruiser or Destroyer in this unit’s sector.  Each unit deployed this way can’t claim an objective on turn 1 or 2.

That seems straight forward enough until you look at it more closely.  Wizards has repeatedly ruled that specific word choice means different things.  If an ability says “may” and not “must” then you are not required to do that action and can choose to ignore it.  I believe there is a problem with the last sentence in the special ability.  I believe Wizards has the intent of saying that units deployed in the manner described by the special ability cannot claim an objective on both turns 1 and 2.

As worded it uses the term “or” providing ambiguity.  One could argue, and I believe a rules lawyer could successfully argue, that units using the SA could choose to not claim an objective on turn 1 but then claim an objective on turn 2 or vice versa.  I think it is clear that Wizards does not wish for this to happen.  The ship, the Schleswig-Holstein (SH) costs 21 points, a paltry sum for a battleship, is only speed 1 and in general not that spectacular.  It would need to be priced significantly higher if Wizards intended players to have the choice of which turn, 1 or 2, to not claim an objective.  It just does not make sense.

I think we will see a rules clarification released for this ship because it may prove to be too powerful.  Imagine pairing up the Schleswig-Holstein, the Prinz Eugen (or other powerful cruiser) and the new submarine U-47.  The two surface ships deploy halfway up the map, but not in the neutral row, and the u-boat deploys in the neutral row.  You can dominate the objectives with your sphere of influence.  All of this for just 35 pts (excluding the cost of Prinz Eugen or other cruiser).  Insert the Koln as a third ship and it moves 2 spaces after deployment bringing more firepower near the objectives.  This rush tactic could be a tournament winner.

Perhaps instead you pair the Schleswig-Holstein with a destroyer like the Z18 Hans Ludemann up front and then plop a Graf Zeppelin (complete with 1 BF109 and 1 bomber or 2 BF109 for better air defense).  You can project surface power out 3 squares, have a potent anti-submarine warfare (ASW) component and then provide an offensive air wing.  The potential combinations are almost endless.

In closing I know a bunch of you will be eagerly awaiting my card scans for this set.  As soon as I have a complete set I will begin the digitization process and I promise it will not take as long to scan in Flank Speed as it did Task Force or the Base Set.  Hopefully I’ll complete the set tomorrow when my case from Miniature Market arrives.

Come back soon because I’ll have pictures of my pulls, of the booster box, and fleet builds.  Until then I wish you luck in your pulls.