The old Victory at Sea game from Mongoose Publishing has been transferred to Warlord Games and is being republished, updated, and sold with miniatures.
They sell starters and national fleets and individual ships. The models come with stat cards. However, they are about to publish a full rulebook that includes ship stats so you don't have to buy their minis to play the game.
It looks like Warlord Games is going to publish a complete book of game rules for Victory at Sea that includes stats for all the ships. At least that is what I interpret it to mean. I have preordered a copy. Hopefully I will be able to play the game now with my WotC and Shapeways minis!
I am interested in seeing the rules. I would also use my WaS models with the new rule set if it was good. I have seen Warlords models for this and IMO the base is horrific and they need to be painted and some assembly. No thanks.
I agree, $64 is expensive for a rule book with no minis. Perhaps I won't be playing it after all. Now to find some local players for WaS
If it really does contain the stats for all the ships, subs, and aircraft of WWII then it is probably a fairly thick book. I have the basic rules that came with the starter. The book is more like the original Victory at Sea that was just a rulebook and stats with no mini's.
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I went full in on Cruel Seas by Warlords and I don't regret it. The 1/300 models are very good IMO and there is after market models to expand scenario options. I will look into Naval Thunder if I can use my WaS minis.
I received the new "full" rulebook for Victory at Sea yesterday. It is basically the contents of the original two bound books, but updated.
1. It includes the stats for many of the ship classes for the USN, RN, IJN, Kriegsmarine, and Regina Marina. I checked and the stat tables are identical to the ship class card you get with the miniature in the boxed game.
2. The stat tables are definitely different from the old books. So the old version of the game is not compatible.
It is a very nicely produced book printed in color with thick glossy paper. 275 pages. It is sprinkled with paintings for the Osprey New Dimensions series of books. (With an advertisement for the books on the back page.)
The first part of the book is the rules. The middle is a bunch of scenarios. Pages 130 to 270 are the ship tables for the five navies covered in the book. Page 272 is a full color printed template for the tokens you could photocopy. Page 273 is the Index and the last two pages are a reference for key terms in the game.
So you can easily play the game with this rulebook and the WotC miniatures. There are stats for more ship classes and aircraft than WotC produced, but you can get the rest from our 3D print guys.
For the other nations navies we will just have to wait and see if they make those as additions. With the original game they slowly released additional nations with pdf's from the old Mongoose web site.
One big thing I noticed that is different is the ship classes all have a point value now. In the original game all ships were clumped into five general categories (Priority Levels). The point scale is much higher than WaS with an Iowa class battleship worth 850 points. The Yamato is 1,000 points. For comparison a Fubuki class destroyer is 50 points.
Now to find time to actually play the game. That might be awhile.
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If you can get a chance to listen to their podcast they have stated that they are working on the Russian fleet right now and will be introducing minor nations such as Canada etc. later.
A lot has been revealed about the rule book already from people on the FaceBook page. My biggest concern is the errors in the rule book. There's a lot of them and one noticeable case is the page on the Oii.
Also their mixing up the units already in the game. The Oii's Longelance torpedoes get wakeless however my Mogami's Longlances don't. In fact some American, German and Japanese ships get wakeless and other ships with the exact same torpedoes don't??
Also we are going to have to go back and add traits and data to the ship cards we already have brought because the ship stats are different in the rule book i.e. the rule book has already made the product we've brought outdated.
This means there's very little in the starter box that is correct, the rule book isn't the rule book but just a incomplete set of rules to get you addicted and some of the ship cards in the starter and fleet boxes have to be corrected. For something that costs $125 and a fleet box costs $200 this is Warlord Games just taking a lend of us.
I'm a little disappointed I have to do this in this day and age with a modern game, especially one where I've already trusted the company and spent over $1200 on their product. modern game companies have certainly gone backwards over there years.
Sorry to hear that. Sounds like there is still a lot of "Mongoose Publishing" in this game.
Yes why don't companies proof read their products any more?
They have computers doing it now. And computers suck at it. My son majored in technical communication and is a very good editor. But jobs for editors are few now. He works in digital marketing instead. And doesn't like it very much. But that is where the jobs are. It's all about gaming the Google and YouTube algorithms.
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Yes why don't companies proof read their products any more?
They have computers doing it now. And computers suck at it. My son majored in technical communication and is a very good editor. But jobs for editors are few now. He works in digital marketing instead. And doesn't like it very much. But that is where the jobs are. It's all about gaming the Google and YouTube algorithms.
Yes but while computers can spell check and gramma check there's no way they can tell if a unit has the right stats or the correct weapons load out. I think it's more of a case that they don't care about the product anymore and getting to the market and generating sales is paramount.
I'm in the final round of play testing a game ATM and I had a representative of a company that's interested in publishing it ask me if I was ready to release it. I told him that it still needs some play testing, his response was "play testing is overrated, just release it and fix it with FAQ and errata". I'm glad I didn't listen because the improvements gained by play testing has streamlined and it's at the level that a second edition would have been if I had done so.
The sad part about it all is that I've been seeing this trend since the early nineties with other game companies such as Agents of Gaming with B5Wars and Fleet Action, Mongoose with Victory at Sea 1st edition and others.
It's the same in the construction equipment sector. I'm a blacksmith/welder by trade and I work for a company that used to manufacture all our equipment, the original owner used to have a minimum level of quality and had great pride in the product. He past away from bowel cancer and a new company purchased ours and the new owners don't care about the products and imports everything. Their attitude is that quality isn't an issue just sell it and fix it through warranty We spend a lot of time running around and reworking machines and to be honest it takes a lot of work to even make them work as they should.