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.
Continue reading →
