Axis & Allies Miniatures is a miniature wargaming system including both a rule set and a line of 1/100 scale miniature armor (15i mm figure scale) collectible miniatures. The game is set in the World War II era with units representing individual vehicles and artillery or squads of infantry. The system was first released in 2005 and is currently produced by Avalon Hill, a division of the game company Wizards of the Coast, which itself is a subsidiary of Hasbro.
It looks like we are in for some more excitement from the world of Axis & Allies Miniatures. Recently a full page ad for a new A&A Minis expansion was found in an Avalon Hill catalog included with the new Rocketville game. The new expansion appears to be a miniatures game, separate from the existing game, that focuses on naval battles. It will have it's own starter and boosters.
Axis and Allies: War at Sea is the latest Axis and Allies branded collectible miniature game (CMG) from Wizards of the Coast. The game, sold in nine miniature Starter packs and five miniature Booster packs, is a WWII miniature game that portrays 1:1800 scale vessels and 1:900 scale aircraft from the major forces engaged in combat during WWII. The figures in the game are made from a series of different plastics ranging from a rigid high density plastic for the larger ships, such as aircraft carriers, to a softer plastic used for the aircraft. The Starter contains:
Overall the game components are of the same excellent quality that Wizards typically puts into their games. The only exception to this are the two maps. The paper they are printed on is thin, certainly thinner than the maps in the Star Wars: Starship Battles game, and this seems quite odd given the amount of punishment that these maps are going to take. The maps also have the logo for the Axis and Allies: War at Sea game prominently placed in the middle of each map. While this helps to align the maps it does destroy the impression of playing a naval game when one is looking at a game logo. It is doubly annoying when you consider that the maps are actually quite well done and have interesting water patterns and shorelines printed on them. Ia’m not sure if it was a marketing decision to add this logo but it was a very bad one.
