The miniatures themselves are soft plastic 1:1800 scale waterline models with vessels too narrow to stand or too small to be manipulable mounted on a clear plastic base.

I initially bought a starer pack and three boosters and was able to field both an Axis and an Allied force of 100 points (the recommended basic game) but the force composition was ahistorical and not very well developed as a synergistic force. Because each pack endeavours to deliver a balance of Axis and Allied forces and also a balance of unit types, you actually need quite a lot of purchases to play. A booster pack (around $17 CAD) gets you five more units and still probably not enough to play the game. In fact not enough to even play one side. Not enough miniatures, it should be noted, to actually play the game. A starter kit (around $30 CAD) gets you some simple maps, some terrain counters (islands and shoals), 8 fairly nice six sided dice, and some miniatures. But I love World War 2 games and especially naval games and I've never found one that was at once crunchy enough to reward synergistic tactics and at the same time simple enough to play in an hour or two.ДЄxis & Allies Naval Miniatures appears to have solved this problem in a very satisfactory fashion.ДЇirst, the physical goods.

Obviously, as this is a game borne of the success of that genre and as it's produced by a company that knows the genre well (in terms of making a buck from it) I was skeptical. I've been suckered in to collectible miniatures games before and I always feel kind of shafted because the games just aren't usually all that great, being sacrificed for the marketing strategy that is the collectible component game. Once again I am faced with a game I wanted to dislike.

Axis and allies variants