Praying Mantis AAR here.

The High Tide scenario is way to complex for beginners (I just learned that by myself) and I can't imagine that one of the additions is meant to be used by beginners. Nonetheless I'm interested in "sea of dragons".

 

If you mean the scenarios, just scale some down somewhat. Like the carrier air strike, scenario name escapes me, on some soviet ships, no need to launch the entire air wing. also, the convoy scenarios with countless merchantmen, again, scale it down until you get the mechanics down. 2-3 merchants and an escort vs an adversary sub, flight of aircraft, whatever..., game on!

You can get A3 graph paper in some stationery shops. I'd recommend that.

By the way, can you explain this whole Intermediate Turn to Tactical Turn change thing? I don't quite understand how it works.

I just bought "High Tide" and am still awaitng its arrival. I see they have also published three Harpoon Naval Reviews and

1) Sea of dragons, 2) South Atlantic War, 3) White ensign. What are these? Additional scenarios and or additions to the databases and rule changes. Would you recommend any of them for beginners? I was also wondering how large a piece of graph paper does one need to play a medium size scenario? I play computer Harpoon and the size covered in some of the scenarios is several hundred miles. I don't think my kitchen table is big enough to handle this large an area.

 

Hi Blue Duck.

 

The Harpoon Naval Reviews come out every couple of years with scenarios, articles, ship and aircraft data to play the specific scenarios, etc. The last one released was 2003, there is one in the pipeline for 2009.

 

Sea of Dragons is a very interesting, but in woeful need (in my opinion) of updating, book focussed on Harpoon4 in Asia. It catalogs all of the players (PRC, Japan, Taiwan, the Koreas, Philipines, Australia, Indonesia, etc), and their naval and airforces, and then puts together some scenarios...it comes with its own data annex.

 

South Atlantic War II uses Harpoon4 to game many individual situations which made up the 1982 Falklands campaign. It contains discussion, the scenarios, the data, and the Ground Combat System (GCS) rules, (along with some Falklands ground scenarios). GCS is needed for some of the amphibious scenarios found in High Tide.

 

White Ensign focusses exclusively on the Royal Navy, with the exception of the 1982 Falklands. Many interesting situations during the drawdowns from the Middle East and Asia, and even a 1970's version of the Falklands if I recall correctly.

 

I find that most of my Harpoon scenarios played are much smaller affairs that scenarios found in computer HCE or H3. There is so much platform interaction and calculations needed, that I have not been able to break the code and "do" a HCE scaled scenario. One caveat is that some scenarios I've done with H4., though small affairs, would not be particularly enjoyable in HCE due to the small size, not enough to do when the computer is crunching all of your numbers. The biggest sceanio that I was able to pull off solo was using Stratsims Combat Plotter and the 1987 Operation Praying Mantis scenario from a paper H3 booklet Dangerous Waters. There were about 30 platforms involved and a great time. There is an AAR to it here on Harpgamer in the H4 section.

 

Once you get your arms around the mechanics, I'd recommend whichever topic interests you. Note: White Ensign was recently updated. Sea of Dragons is, again in my opinion, woefully in need of a overhaul, though still interesting if you can get by that by updating the platforms should you be interested in such scenarios.

 

Graph paper size: all dependant upon the size of the squares, and scale that you assigned each square. I've used everything from 0.5nm (1,000 yards), 1nm, 5nm, 10km. Graph paper with 0.5cm boxes can give you a fairly large area provided the scale is set likewise. Like all tactics, dependent upon the situation. Doing it with (graph)paper and a pencil allows you to roll it up and put it away if family and/or little munchin fingers prevent you from leaving something like that out, all over the kitchen table...like me.

 

Hope that help

Pete

 

 

Thanks guys for the responses. I saw all the published extras and was wondering what they were all about. I will probably stay with small scenarios. I have played computer Harpoon since the late 80's and thought it was about time to get the paper rules to see how the computer comes up with things. I am especially interested in what weapons cause what kind of damage and aircraft performance against others.

I was kind of wondering if I would need half the living room to conduct a battle. I remember my old days of playing Avalon Hills "Jutland". Seems I would have cardboard ships sailing under the tables and every where in the room until the dog would run thru and annihilate half the fleet.

Thanks again,

Steve

I was kind of wondering if I would need half the living room to conduct a battle. I remember my old days of playing Avalon Hills "Jutland". Seems I would have cardboard ships sailing under the tables and every where in the room until the dog would run thru and annihilate half the fleet.

Thanks again,

Steve

oohhhh, the old days of floor playing and adhesive tape to simulate smoke screens ......

Anyone doing anything paper rules wise? I'm about to start my AAR for a bombing run over an airport. & I just ordered South Atlantic War (falklands).

 

PS: i'm loving this "posts appear immeadiatly" thing. Congrats to mods.

Anyone doing anything paper rules wise? I'm about to start my AAR for a bombing run over an airport. & I just ordered South Atlantic War (falklands).

 

PS: i'm loving this "posts appear immeadiatly" thing. Congrats to mods.

 

I primarily do harpoon via paper. Right now it is restricted to the Surge in the Barents PBEM/CPX. If I put anymore detail it would have to be redacted.

 

Looking forward to your AAR.

I'm going to second the idea of virtual plotting board in an effort to make things easy to start and stop (and avoid the wife/dog wiping out both a multiregimental Backfire raid and its multiple CVN strike group at the same time) and the Stratsims Combat Plotter is an awesome tool for that (along with an attentive and interested developer!). I'd also recommend either making your own or looking up (or even asking around) about computer assists to some of the number crunching. An excel spreadsheet and a couple of notes can go a long way to easing some of the load on the player.