Sealed play?

[Jaels]

I will be running a Sealed tournament for War at Sea to celebrate its release, but the question haunting my FLGS owner and I is the playability of the game in that format.

A starter is 9 minis, 6 of them commons, with a minimum of 3 axis and 3 allied ships (or planes). A booster is 5 minis, three of them commons.

Will one starter and one booster provide enough minis to build a fleet (let's say 80 points)? Since most of the commons are small ships and planes, will you get enough points to at least have something playable?

Should I wave the Axis/Allies limitation for this tournament only, so players will at least have some construction choices.

I'm loathe to go to 2 boosters and one starter, as this is expensive for a tournament aimed at letting people try the game...

JL

[TheJudge]

Sealed play sounds problematic at best. A starter set would seem appropriate but then you run into adding boosters and someone gets a fat rare that they can't use because they are Axis or vice versa.

I am not sure what advice to give there because distribution could be odd. Example: Player A opens his starter and is listed as one of the 4 Axis players and gets a Iowa class BB that he can't use! Bummer.

Player B is an Allied player and gets the Bismarck in his starter or booster but can't use it! Ugggh

Best solution, allow 15 minutes of trading depending how many players are there or match players up beforehand, they sit across from each other and thats who trades, they can then trade back after the tournament or whatever.

Solution 2- Drafting. Lets say you have 6 players.

Each gets a starter and a booster. Players 1,2,3 are Axis and players 4,5,6 are allied, they sit across from each other and packs are opened and Axis and Allied ships are seperated and bam- you got 6 players with all the stuff they need to build proper fleets. After the tournament, people can trade back the stuff they opened if they want but for playability, this is a great way to ensure proper distribution.

Good luck

[XAos]

The pre-viewed rares vary from Canberra (15 points) to Iowa (68 points)
And the actual spread might be a bit wider (Exeter to Yamato)
Uncommons are almost as variable, 6 of them are CL's but the other 8 are a mix of CVL's, land based aircraft & merchant ships. Commons should proably average out a bit better. I'd guess a selead tournament would be won by whoever drew the biggest rare. Partial fix might be to use the aam sealed rule of an 80 point force. So the big rares would be self crippling, with gurenteed inadaquate support units.
I suspect you are correct that you need to waive the Axis/Allied limitation. Otherwise one starter & one booster will give half the players a force of 1 axis rare & 1 allied rare. And the other half a force of 2 Axis or 2 Allied rares.

Alternative, play draft instead of sealed.

[MarcusAurelius]

I will be running a Sealed tournament for War at Sea to celebrate its release, but the question haunting my FLGS owner and I is the playability of the game in that format.

A starter is 9 minis, 6 of them commons, with a minimum of 3 axis and 3 allied ships (or planes). A booster is 5 minis, three of them commons.

Will one starter and one booster provide enough minis to build a fleet (let's say 80 points)? Since most of the commons are small ships and planes, will you get enough points to at least have something playable?

Should I wave the Axis/Allies limitation for this tournament only, so players will at least have some construction choices.

I'm loathe to go to 2 boosters and one starter, as this is expensive for a tournament aimed at letting people try the game...

JL

A starter and a booster will give you 2 rares, 3 uncommons and 9 commons. Let's break that down based on what we know so far.

We have point costs for 5 rares: Iowa (68), Bismarck (53), Enterprise (25), Tone (23) and Canberra (15). That's 2 battleships, 1 carrier and 2 heavy cruisers — probably a reasonable sampling of Set 1. The average cost is 37 points. A starter and a booster could give you anywhere from 30 to 100+ points worth of rares, with an average of about 70.

We know point costs for 2 uncommons: Atlanta (12) and Sydney (14). If the average cost of 13 points is representative, a starter and a booster would give you roughly 40 points of uncommons.

Haven't seen stats for any commons yet. I think it's reasonable to expect that they range in cost from 3 on the low end to 8 or so on the high end, with an average of around 5-6 points each. So you'd get 45-50 points of commons from a starter and a booster.

All told, you could pull 115 to 190 points of units from a starter and a booster — approximately 160 points on average. But it's hard to tell how evenly that will be split between Axis and Allies.

[Jaels]

I've already mentionned the 80 points limit in the original post, and I think I will definitely stick with it.

Running the tournament as a draft has its merit, and should solve the Axis/Allies problem with some luck (or at the very least diminish it). Worse case scenario, I'll drop the Axis/Allies restriction.

Should be a fun tournament.

JL