Opening Salvo - USS Indiana and Hindenberg

While we wait for the decks to be printed lets have another Opening Salvo. At this point in the expansion card making process it is the "rares" - battleships and aircraft carriers - that are sorely lacking. Virtually non-existent for the Axis at this point. Yet it is the rares that still draw the most interest and generate the most sales. Rich Baker at WotC even realized this by the 5th set when he introduced "what-ifs" Friedrich der Grosse and Sovyetskiy Soyuz. Not to mention the USS Montana and Moltke in the sixth set. The other option is to make "variants" of ships that already have cards in the game like Rheinübung Bismarck and Sho-Go Yamato. Not surprisingly, we have continued with that in the expansion decks. The Axis powers are particularly thin in these categories as they had smaller navies to start with, and did not build nearly as many sister-ships of the same design.

Reflecting that reality we reveal the USS Indiana - the last of the South Dakota class that we do not have as a card, and Hindenburg - the "what-if" sister ship to Friedrich der Grosse. USS Indiana reflects the improved anti-aircaft weapons being installed by mid-war.  With Hindenburg we recognize the fact that the Kriegsmarine actually had functioning radar and radar-directed gunnery early in the war. In fact, Germany had the first naval radar sets before the war. Unfortunately, German naval doctrine for the use of radar was poor. They tended to turn their radar sets off because they were more afraid of their radar scans being detected and giving them away than the benefits of using radar to detect their opponents. They did turn on their radar when they were ready to use their guns. However, as with all early naval radar sets, the blast concussion from the guns often shut down the radars!  Anyway, we hope you enjoy them.

USS Indiana