"Silly" question # 1 for Axis and Allies: WAS

In casual play for WAS I would certainly not have any problem with helper aids on the bottoms of the ship. I can’t speak to tournament play. There is plenty of room in the spaces and no facing rules for WAS. Land minis might be another issue.

I would think during a game though since you don’t really play with very big forces it shouldn’t be too difficult to learn which ship is which and keep track during the game. I usually also keep track by moving the stat cards about, keeping all the cards for ships and planes in a square together. Then you would find some method of labeling your ships in your transport and storage containers. But I’ve only played with the first set and don’t have many units. But if you’re dealing with a lot of repaints I can see where it would be a bigger issue keeping track because on anything smaller than a cruiser the text is tough to read.

You could maybe try using crayons in a reverse of the old trick for polyhedral dice.

here’s a thread from a different forum on it,
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75890/25744285/Reading_name__number_on_ships_bottom

I have a few with silver sharpie on the names that works very well

So I’m painting my board-game A&A pieces and I hear the “I can’t tell the difference” arguments all the time, so I’ve been pondering solutions ever since.
No matter how painstakingly I paint each individual piece with the nation’s roundel, they still whine about it… but hey NAVY SHIPS ARE GREY!
In this game it is ridiculously hard to keep track of what ship is what unless you’re a hardcore expert.  I was thinking about using the control markers from the board game in addition to drawing an alphanumerical symbol on the marker.  Something easily visible.  I’ll make two of each of them and place one next to the ship and one on the card.

rub a yellow highlighter under the ship and then rub your finger over it
it outlines the name.

I would not care what sytem any person I play uses, popsicle sticks, litko plastic, Gale force nine, whatever.

On my smallest ships, I just pick them up. Things like the australians, like sydney, I take a black magic marker, and write it out.  Especially those minis where they put ONLY the set numbers on them… I write it out. So that some of my planes say “BETTY” on the bottom of the clear stand.  USSTaylor, USS Montpelier, same deal.

I arrange my cards in the backfield to represent what is what ahead of me.

CV  + DD + DE, three card stack on the left, matches the ships 2 spaces out on the left. If they cross to the right, the stack of card crosses, staying in front of me. Just as a roungh reminder.

Tournament play? I don’t do tournaments.  I do demo games with a lot of fluff and glitz, and  my bud vs. me.

I wouldn’t care.