Axis and Allies: War at Sea

One of my ongoing interests is WW2 naval and I have a reasonable collection of models from the Axis and Allies: War at Sea collectible miniatures game. I have focused on the the Royal Navy, the Kriegsmarine and the Italian Navy as my interests are more North Atlantic and Mediterranean facing than in the vast expanses of the Pacific. Thus far the game has seen the original release and two expansions with a further due in June of this year.

From the current expansion - called 'Flank Speed' - the Royal Navy gains a number of useful models including the following:

HMS Repulse

HMS Belfast

HMS Saumarez

A Martlet for the Fleet Air Arm and via the Canadian Navy; a Flower Class Corvette.

These are all really useful and I have managed to source two each of Repulse and Belfast, six of the S class and four each of the Flower class and the Martlet. All of this will give the RN additional flexibility - both in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

I was reading about HMS Repulse and was staggered to discover that she had managed to avoid 19 torpedoes before being hit and sunk during the action in company with HMS Prince of Wales against the Japanese.

The War at Sea ship card allows her the chance to completely negate a torpedo attack once a game with a high enough dice roll - the ship was eventually overwhelmed in the end and sunk pretty quickly after she was hit and the sustained a number of additional torpedo hits. The class was fairly lightly built and so once this form of damage had been sustained it was only a matter of time before it told.

The Germans now have a full wing of JU 88s (four models), six of the T26 type torpedo boats and two of the Schleswig Holstein class battleships. I am not sure what to do with these although I do have a couple of the Russian Gromkiy type destroyers and a Kirov class cruiser.

There are also some additional Italian ships that will serve to round out the Mediterranean set up although I really need to add a couple of additional Queen Elizabeth class battleships - HMS Valiant and HMS Queen Elizabeth probably. The only problem I have with this is that the only ship thus represented is HMS Warspite which was fairly unique looking compared to her sisters. I doubt that a new model that is better able to reflect the differences between the ships in the class will be forthcoming so I may have to go down the route of using the Warspite for the others and ignore the varying degrees of rebuild they were subjected to.

Much to ponder methinks although as it stands the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean is a little light in terms of capital ships - even if they are WW1 rebuilds!