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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