Great War at Sea Gifts
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
November 2010

I went into tack shop this past weekend, the sort of place that sells saddles and bridles and suchlike, to look at a saddle I can’t possibly afford on a wargame tycoon’s income. The staff was very nice, and plied me with doughnuts and hot cider to help soften me up on the idea of spending a couple grand on a piece of leather for my daughter to sit on.

That started my brain working on some twisted financial logic: If I’m going to collect some of the seemingly endless back salary Avalanche Press owes me so I can buy a saddle by Christmas, the company’s going to have to make some more money, and that means selling more stuff, and how can we do that? We can’t hand out free doughnuts and cider. But we already do hand out a lot of great free stuff. An amazing amount if you try to total it up.

I decided to total it up and see how large an amount equals “amazing.” I began to put together a list of all the free downloads on the website, and pretty soon found this to be pretty futile: The total is simply enormous. Instead, I decided to stick with those for the Great War at Sea series, because that’s where I started the list. It’s still a long list, and that surprised me even though I was responsible for all of it in some fashion (if only by approving its posting), because we consciously avoid putting too many additional pieces or scenarios for the naval series on the website. Panzer Grenadier games and games like Third Reich have a lot more downloads.

So here’s a listing of Free Stuff for Great War at Sea. These are just the ones that can be linked easily; there are a couple of others (Sea of Troubles ship data and Cruiser Warfare’s correctable ship data) that download directly off their host page. We don’t have any digital doughnuts or cider to offer, but maybe these will help us show you how much we appreciate your business throughout the year.

Five Minute Rules

If you’ve never played a Great War at Sea game, here’s the place to start. This download’s not nearly as crisp as I remember when it was new. I have no idea how that happened; none of the other older downloads show any diminished quality.

Markers

These are designed to make play on the tactical map a little bit easier, by helping you designate ships that have already fired their guns (useful in very large scenarios) or received damage of some sort.

Fired Guns/Torpedoes markers

Speed/Dead-in-the-Water markers

Smoke/Fire markers

Ship Data Sheets

These are the core of the game; you’ll use them any time you play a scenario. Having them in .pdf form lets you print out as many as needed.

Black Waters

Cone of Fire

Cruiser Warfare

Dreadnoughts

Jutland

Mediterranean

Pacific Crossroads

U.S. Navy Plan Gold

Troop Markers

Great War at Sea is a naval game series, but many games within the series involve invasions, and a few even have counter-invasions. In these scenarios, troops can fight each other and suffer losses (in a very abstracted process); these markers help keep track of troop strengths. Only the more recent games and scenarios have this sort of scenario.

Black Waters troop points

Cone of Fire troop points

Great White Fleet troop points

Plan Gold troop points

Target Markers

The rules require players to designate the target for each ships fire before resolving it; that’s to stop you from firing one ship’s guns and seeing how that turns out before committing the next ship’s fire to a target. These are fairly extensive downloads, but didn’t seem to generate much excitement when we first issued them so they were only ever created for two games.

Mediterranean Austrian target markers

Mediterranean French target markers

Mediterranean Italian target markers

Mediterranean Russian/Turkish target markers

Plan Gold U.S./Weimar target markers

Plan Gold French target markers

Leaders

A leader helps your fleet find the enemy and perform a number of other game functions. These markers let you place the leader on his flagship instead of writing his name on the ship data sheet. It’s not really necessary but it looks cool.

Cruiser Warfare leaders

Jutland leaders

Mediterranean leaders

Zeppelins Stuff

Zeppelin Bases

Operational Markers

Airship Movement Logsheet

German Airship Logsheet

Other Airships Logsheet

Play Aids

Fan-produced extras to speed play of the game.

Jutland aids

Tactical sequence card

Unusual Variants

These include my personal favorite of all the content on the site, Great War of the Worlds at Sea (H.G. Wells’ Martians battle the Royal Navy). And some other unusual pieces as well.

Royal Navy vs. Martians

Venezuela

Argentine Airships

Intermediate Gunnery Design Experiment

Variant Armored Cruisers

Solitaire Great War at Sea

So we have 38 free downloads, and that doesn’t count the dozens of other pieces of analysis, variants and historical background without free downloads attached to them. That means any Great War at Sea game comes with a huge amount of additional material at no extra charge — and every game series has similar support on the site. Help yourself to all the goodies, and come back every day; we’ll keep adding more!