Getting the Band Back Together

A long-sought addition to my collection of games arrived yesterday---the 3rd Edition of Larry Bond's classic Harpoon.

Ordered from Noble Knight Games (link at left), my copy is yellowed with age, but otherwise pristine: unpunched counters, unruffled manuals, unused dice, and even the original Game Designers Workshop product registration card---not bad for a product printed in 1987.

When the original Harpoon came out in 1980, I was in junior high school and Ronald Reagan was the new president of the United States.  I didn’t learn about the game for a number of years, and when I did I was in college already, so I bought the original computer adaptation produced by Three-Sixty Pacific.  I was immediately hooked and ended up wearing out a few sectors of the hard drive on my MacIntosh Classic playing it.  I never did get a chance to buy the tabletop version of it, though, so since I have rekindled my interest in wargaming I decided to find a copy.  Of course, at last count the game was now in four editions, multiple scenario books, and at least one spinoff game---the unsuccessful Harpoon: Captain’s Edition---so I had to do a little research.  It really came down to two choices: the edition I have just acquired, or Harpoon 4. 

The boxed edition of Harpoon 4 is hard to get and quite expensive even when available.  Although it is relatively up-to-date in terms of weapons and platforms, my interest in “modern” naval wargaming ends with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, so an older edition was preferred.  I settled on the boxed set of the Third Edition as my goal.

Flipping through the rules last night brought back a whole lot of memories from the Evil Empire days, and I admit to some nostalgia for my Cold War youth. It will be interesting to fight the sea war against the old enemy that (thank God) never happened, using platforms that were so advanced at the time but which now are relegated to museums or the scrapyards.  It will feel like, well, getting the band back together thirty years after they churned the last album out. 

Although originally designed for miniatures, I won’t be assembling fleets of modern vessels for Harpoon like I will be for Age of Sail wargaming; I’ll be either purchasing or making my own counters over time, depending on the scenario. 

I have a lot of other things going at the moment, however, so Harpoon will sit on my shelf for now.