Gale Force Nine license for Axis & Allies products lapsed.

I don't know if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I didn't see it at first glance: Gale Force Nine reports that there license for Axis & Allies products has lapsed so they can no longer produce or sell those items.

this means that the vinyl War at Sea map, the tokens and the stands for the ships are all gone. I liked the map, especially, and I'm sorry that's gone. I used the tokens for both AAM and WAS but I believe Litko has tokens that are usable substitutes. I never tried the stands.

Gale Force 9 War at Sea tokens

Gale Force 9 specializes in producing licensed play aids for popular games. I have to say that my experience is that their products are a little bit on the pricey side, but very high quality. I got their vinyl play mat for Dreamblade and was very impressed. I haven't used a paper mat since.

I also got some of their Axis & Allies tokens for the land game, and liked the quality, although I'm not sure that the nationality specific approach was best. For one thing it kind of forced multiple purchases -- good fort heir bottom line, but not mine -- and for another thing it necessarily leaves out a lot of nations. There are no tokens for Axis or Allied minor powers such as China, Finland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria or Greece. And even if there were, I can't see them as worth buying.

Fortunately the Axis & Allies naval miniatures tokens skipped all this and are generic, usable by any power. They're very substantial and I happen to like the 1940s-style art font, although some people don't. The insubstantial light cardboard counters that come with the starter kit are shown with the Gale Force 9 tokens below.


The set includes a nice selection of tokens and seems to be a better value than the land tokens in every way. I understand Gale Force 9 has plans to produce a vinyl set of maps for use with War at Sea. I hope it does, as this would be a very nice enhancement for the game.

Gale Force 9 A&A tokens

Like most tactical wargames Axis & Allies miniatures requires the use of various status tokens to keep track of the game state of units affected by fire and a few other purposes. It's a simple tactical game, so the number and variety of tokens is not large and the starter set comes with some on light cardboard. These are shown above on the left.

These are functional enough, although hardly robust, and many players substitute their own home-made tokens or at least mount the provided tokens on chips or cardboard.

Gale Force 9 has been licensed to produce official A&A brand products and they've come out with a line of tokens for the land game. A set of Soviet-themed markers are shown above right. They are priced about the same as a booster set, which makes it a fairly straightforward calculus. Is a set of 25 markers worth as much to you as another booster?

The GF9 markers are fairly substantial. A stray breath won't blow them around. They are made of hard, clear plastic with a quality and clear illustration. The back of each marker is black felt. Every type of marker is a different shape. aiding in recognition.

There are marker sets available for each of the major powers: besides the Soviets shown, there are sets for the Americans, British, Germans and Japanese.

If you already have a set of home-made markers you are happy with I doubt these would cause you to switch, but if you're like me and was still using the small cardboard counters that came with the game then the new markers are pretty nice.

Besides the objective, destroyed, damaged and disrupted markers that come in the Starter Set, the marker set also includes markers for Defensive Fire and Overwatch, which are mentioned in the rules.