Scenario Design & Discussion

The First new scenario of the year has just been released! Incoming Mail is a rebuild of a scenario from the original paper rules of Harpoon as was published in "Battles of the Third World War." It is Dave's fourth scenario effort. Thanks for sharing it with the community. The Soviets have two weapons that can reach NATO convoys in the Atlantic: submarines and long-range aircraft. Long-range bombers on the Kola peninsula can easily hunt the Atlantic. With Iceland in Soviet hands, however, they can attack at will and their range would be greatly increased. A standard NATO convoy crossing the Atlantic would consist of 40-50 merchant ships. Eight to ten…

File Name: Defending Dili (2018) File Submitter: Mgellis File Submitted: 23 May 2013 File Category: Scenarios My 17th ANW/HUD-4 scenario for 2013... In the near future, a civil war is raging in East Timor. Indonesia has formally recognized the rebels and Australia is concerned it will enter into the conflict. The Australian government makes the decision to move forces into the area and to protect the city of Dili if Indonesia decides to attack. Image: Two RAAF F-18s (Source: U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Matthew Bruch.) Click here to download this file

As CinCPac: The screen was studded with numerous subsurface and unknown contacts from the very beginning. I re-organized my ships within their patrol zones and immediately launched ASW aircraft to prosecute the submarines. Two subs were detected in very close proximity to the Wasp and Yorktown ASW Groups and both died soon afterwards. Subs were being detected all around the board from my sub units. I guess that they must have been tracking them already. An AGI trawler was found near the Aleutians chain. A quick visit by a lone Crusader pilot put paid to his ticket with ammo to spare. These subs had teeth. DDG Byrd detected incoming torpedoes! The Essex t…

One thing I really like about ANW is how you can tweak the ships for realism by modifying what weapons they have onboard. For a scenario set in 1981, what would have been the likely missile loads for a Leahy-class cruiser (Halsey, CG 23) and Adams-class destroyers (Hoel & Berekely, DDG-13 and DDG-15)? The Leahy-class is listed as "85+" and I know there was a major upgrade program in the 1980s...how much did the Leahy change between 1981 and 1985? Should I replace the Standard missiles with the Tartars (an available loadout)? What about doing this for the Adams-class ships, or is it okay the use the default setting of the RIM-66B? Any other suggestions …

File Name: Attacking the Fortress for Harpoon 3.6 and db2000 File Submitter: RKoelbach File Submitted: 3 Aug 2010 File Updated: 3 Aug 2010 File Category: Scenarios DB Used: db2000 (latest version = 10.0.0; editor: Ragnar Emsoy) Authors: Ralf Koelbach Battleset: Standalone Attacking the Fortress A scenario for Harpoon 3.6 and db2000 (editor: Ragnar Emsoy) by Ralf Koelbach I wrote "Attacking the Fortress" back in 2004. It was my first built-from-scratch Harpoon 3 scenario. It took me a long time to write it since it should be as realistic as possible. This was only achievable by massive support from Ragnar Emsoy who taught me a lot about Harpoon 3, the …

Here's another AAR by Dave Steinmeyer. It is re-printed here with permission from the author. AAR: Indian [spoiler Alert] A Harpoon 3 scenario By Freek Schepers As I started the scenario, I had a bit of trouble locating all of the transports I was supposed to have. I eventually found the thirteenth as part of one of the FFG TF east of the base. Here's what I did, I sent ten ships NW at flank to get the hell out of Dodge before the hell I figured was gonna break loose did so. They were to link up with the CG/DDG TF off the Horn of Africa. That part of my plan went off without a hitch. The two remaining transports were sent at flank to the ENE to link up …

Guys, With the H3DB under construction, I just want to remind everyone that the HUD2 is posted and available and there are many scenarios written for it. So give one or two of them a shot and let us know since the H3DB will have some of the elements and spirit of the HUD2. It would also be great to see some new scenarios using this db.

INVASION OF ANTILLES Harpoon ANW scenario for the PlayersDB Author: Freek Schepers Jerome (a.k.a. Angle of Attack) came looking to try another scenario from Freek Scheper's Hugo's Folly battleset, made with ANW's most functional database, the PlayersDB. Having played the first one, we chose the second one in the series, "Invasion of Antilles" with Jerome continuing in his role of S. American aggressor. Elections in the Netherlands Antilles have seen gains for the political party seeking closer ties to Venezuela and its President, Chavez. The Government has fallen and the legal status of the islands is unclear; with Curacao an independent nation w…

AAR: Indian Expansion [spoiler Alert] A Harpoon 3 scenario By Paul Bridge Defence Minister Singh had no experience in military matters. He had been appointed for his connections and his political shrewdness. He saw his opportunity to rise further in the Indian government with his latest scheme. He sold the cabinet on his vision for India to rise above her former masters and prove to the world that the Indian Ocean was for the Indians. His plan called for their former imperialists to be lulled into a false sense of security at the negotiating table while the real voice of negotiation would be spoken by the air force and the navy. He proposed a surprise at…

File Name: Kurils - Sea of Japan File Submitter: TonyE File Submitted: 10 Mar 2007 File Category: Scenarios The Kuril Islands is the setting for this dispute between Russia and Japan. The Russsians invaded the Kurils near the end of World War II and Japan wants these islands back. Neither side has signed a formal peace treaty following the war because of the Kurils Islands. Whenever negotiations take place, Japan brings up the Kurils in an effort to get them returned. So far, the Russians have not yielded, despite their inability to support the Islands. The economic situation of the Kurils and its native, largely Japanese, population is deterioriating as each day p…

The 286th NEW Harpoon scenario of the year! Belgrano The sinking of the General Belgrano on May 2nd 1982 caused the single heaviest loss of the Falklands war. HMS Conqueror showed that Argentinean escorts could not prevent nuclear subs from killing their ships. As a direct result of this attack, the Argentine aircraft carrier 'Veinticinco de Mayo', which had successfully detected the Task Force with her Trackers and was preparing a strike with her A-4Q Skyhawks, returned to port and played no further part in the conflict. Author: Freek Schepers With over 106,000 PlayersDB scenarios downloaded in the last 34 weeks alone, the PlayersDB…

The 269th NEW Harpoon scenario of the year! Eric Weincam is the 16th author to release a Harpoon scenario. Many thanks for sharing your work and I hope that everyone welcomes him into the community with After-Action Reports and reviews. Eric has asked that comments be sent to him at: eweincam @ tx.rr.com EU1-The Iranhattan Project This scenario is a study of a US air campaign to eliminate Iran's nuclear capability. I have tried to represent all of Iran's major facilities that they are using for mining, refining, and preparing uranium as well as their research and production facilities. The US Forces involved include the Eisenhower and h…

A question... Generally speaking, if you want to really harass or intimidate another nation, without actually blowing stuff up, how do you do it? And how do you model these things in Harpoon ANW? I suppose one way is to create a Recon Ship mission, so that a potentially hostile ship or aircraft will get right up in the face of anything that gets close enough, like merchant traffic, so it can make a solid identification. It might make people think an attack is imminent, but then nothing happens besides the ship getting right up in your face. I suppose another way, although frankly illegal and probably more risky, would be to board and seize merchant ships, c…

Does anyone know of a resource for the US Navy (or any other navy, but I'm especially interested in the US navy) that says where ships were deployed, what squadrons they were assigned to, etc. during certain years? I mean, you would think somewhere there should be a year-by-year order of battle, right? Considering how expensive ships are, one would think they would keep track of that sort of thing, and perhaps even write it down somewhere. And especially for something like the 1980s and 1990s, where it hardly matters where the ships were, since it was 20-30 years ago. So it's not like they need to keep it secret. Right? Mind you, while I'm sure it must exist so…

I'm having quite the time putting into place an IADS system into a scenerio. What I'm not understanding in the advanced manual is placing a central command on one side (friendly) and then putting up another side (neutral) for the SAM batallions and having all of them linked together through data links. Can anyone simply explain how this is done? If a site is labeled as friendly how am I going to be able to attack it? And the real big question is how do I have two sides communicate with eachother through data links that have differnet postures?

File Name: C Level Brawl File Submitter: Mgellis File Submitted: 10 May 2011 File Updated: 10 May 2011 File Category: Scenarios DB Used: ANW/HUD3 Authors: Mark Gellis Battleset: No Information A small action...Canada takes on Colombia. Enjoy. Click here to download this file

I'm working on some ideas for realistic Cold War scenarios involving Soviets, and I'm trying to figure out something. Under what circumstances would you have the Soviet Navy shooting at people, possibly even NATO ships, c. 1985, where things do not rapidly turn into a global exchange of nuclear weapons? Some ideas... 1. Spies on the run. Submarines on both sides probably sneaked in close to enemy shores all the time to gather intelligence, etc. I'm guessing that if those submarines had been forced to surface, perhaps even fired on, there would have been a lot of grumbling from the country that sent them and maybe a tit-for-tat response like sending an ambass…

File Name: Perisher File Submitter: Herman File Submitted: 6 Nov 2008 File Category: Scenarios DB Used: Y2kDB v10.0.0 Authors: Klaus Behrmann Battleset: Stand-alone Perisher Special The USA have agreed a joint exercise with Canada to simulate the forced entry into a hostile country, using moderate air force assets, shore batteries modeling Silkworm launchers and frigates simulating missile boats. Canadian diesel submarines and one British SSN are participating; for the British commander this is a Perisher Special giving him the opportunity to try out an attack on a sophisticated carrier battle group. These scenarios have been tested with the Harpoon 3.6 …

AAR: Operation Raffles - Invasion [spoiler Alert] By Paul Bridge Today was the day that Imperial forces would remove the Communist government from Indonesia. The British Empire might be on the road to granting her colonial possessions independence, but today, she would prove that the Lion Rampant still had her claws. After a quick examination of the forces available, I ordered the ready-force Canberra bombers aloft from Selatar - destination: Adisumarmo. After reading reports of how HMS Eagle was almost blown out of the water, the Badger bombers were judged to be the most lethal force in the Indonesian arsenal. I hoped that a swift strike on their home ba…

File Name: Chinese Aggression File Submitter: Steven File Submitted: 22 Nov 2012 File Category: Scenarios A Japanese oil research vessel has been attacked and sunk off the coast of China and survivors have been taken hostage by pirates. The PLAN has claimed that the vessel was a military ECM vessel that had been hampering Chinese military communications and was well within Chinese territorial waters. The PLAN has threatened to sink any vessel and shoot down any aircraft that dare to approach the location of the sunken vessel or any attempt to rescue hostages. Click here to download this file