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Season’s greetings, everybody! No Dark Sun this time around; as promised, I’m going to spill the beans on a couple of units appearing in War at Sea set 4, otherwise known as Condition Zebra. My apologies if switching between D&D and A&A leaves you a bit confused!

Before I get to the reveals, I want to touch on something I’ve seen under discussion on the boards regarding our upcoming Revised Starter Set. The eight units included in the new starter will NOT appear in a subsequent expansion; they’re only going to be in the starter. We may do sister ships to some of these units eventually (in fact, it’s hard to imagine that we’d let a set go by without the obligatory Fletcher-class destroyer; only 172 to go!) but these specific units won’t appear again. The eight fixed units is a different approach to the starter set, but it lets us do a couple of things we couldn’t do in the original starter set. The initial examples of play and “out-of-the-box” starter scenario are vastly improved by the fact that we *know* what the new player’s got to work with, so it should make the game easier to pick up and play—not a concern for you old bluenoses out there, but something that we need to keep in mind. You can play a fine balanced little scenario right out of the box, which is also nice, even if it’s short and bloody by the standards of most War at Sea games. In addition, there are plenty of incentives for existing players to pick up the starter too. First, the rules expansions and options that have previously existed as separate online files are now integrated into the rulebook, right where they belong. Second, the units in the starter are all “reprints,” but they’re reprints with new paint jobs like that beautiful new Betty and new stat cards, representing different units with new special abilities and unit histories. We knew most of you folks would consider this a must-buy, so we wanted to make sure we gave you the best value possible on picking up a new starter.

OK, now for the first of our “Three Ships…” the French aircraft carrier Béarn! Some of you folks had the Béarn as an early favorite, and we’ll just confirm it for you now. I’ll be brutally honest: It is a pig of a carrier, and a far cry from one of the lethal US or Japanese fleet carriers. But it’s tough, it’s well-gunned, it’s not terribly expensive, and it finally fills in a missing component of the Marine Nationale. To the greatest extent possible we want to complete national navies and provide representatives of every unit type, and the French have been woefully short of naval aviation up to now. Naturally we’re including some air assets for the French to go along with their carrier, which is all you’ll get from me on that for right now. Historically the French quickly abandoned any idea of trying to use Béarn in a fleet carrier role and turned her into an aircraft transport, but she’s certainly less hypothetical than Aquila or Graf Zeppelin, and she (and her planes) look reasonable in early-war scenarios.

Introducing our second contestant, weighing in at 10,993 tons (or so they reported), armed with 10 8-inch guns and the deadliest torpedoes of the war…the Suzuya! Suzuya represents the Mogami-class heavy cruisers; I’ve had Mogami on our wish list for three sets now, and we’ve finally managed to get one done. We would have done the Mogami herself, but she really was snakebit during the war, and was involved in a couple of real disasters such as collisions and possibly torpedoing her own transports. Suzuya had a better war record, so she gets the nod. The thing I like about this model is that we’ve managed to finally get the Japanese heavy cruiser proportions right. Our Myokos and Tones are somewhat fatter than they really ought to be; they were Set 1 sculpts, and were part of the first group of models we made. We’ve gotten a little better since then. Suzuya is slender and deadly-looking, a real beauty of a sculpt. She saw action at Midway, Guadalcanal, EmpressAugustaBay, PhillipineSea, and finally Leyte Gulf, where she was sunk. (Suzuya was, in fact, one of several Japanese cruisers to suffer severe damage from the detonation of her own Long Lances by enemy fire, which proved to be the one drawback of an otherwise splendid weapon system.)

For our third ship… the Nürnberg! I’m excited about this one because we don’t have very many opportunities to introduce new German cruisers. At first blush she’s a lot like the K-class cruisers we’ve already done, but Nürnberg didn’t have those staggered rear turrets. She carried more torpedoes than the K-class, and was a little more heavily armored. The interesting mechanic for the Nürnberg is mines—the first time the ability appears for an Axis unit. Nürnberg didn’t have a particularly successful war record and didn’t become involved in any surface actions, but she was part of the German fleet in Norway at times and is certainly a plausible candidate for what-if Murmansk Convoy scenarios.

And now, for a couple of Battle of the Atlantic bonus reveals: The B-24D Liberator, and the Leonardo da Vinci! The Liberator was used as a long-range maritime patrol bomber, and was instrumental in closing the air gap where convoys were at most risk from U-boat attack. It’s not a great ASW plane and isn’t very good for bombing ships, but it certainly contributes to ASW harassment and helps ASW ships to hunt subs. Leonardo da Vinci is the first new Italian sub we’ve managed to produce since set 1, and she’s a big, full-sized fleet boat as compared to the tiny Ambra. Leonardo da Vinci was the top-scoring Italian submarine of the war, and operated as part of an Italian submarine flotilla based in Bordeaux.  

So there you go! The Revised Starter is on the way soon, and Condition Zebra is just a couple of months behind it. We might have some more good news for you War at Sea fans soon, but more than that I can’t say right now.

NEXT TIME: I’ll get back to D&D and try to get a post up sometime early next week. I’m super-busy these days and I’ve got a big project to finish up by Christmas!