Hexsides and Hand Grenades

I decided to take a little break from Pacific War and get back to playing Harpoon: Captain's Edition . If you haven't heard much about Harpoon: Captain's Edition , feel free to check out my overview of this fun GDW release from 1990.  Browsing through the game's rulebook, I realized I hadn't yet played any of its scenarios that involve submarine warfare.  I've always loved the slow-paced tension of submarine versus surface ship duels ever since watching "Run Silent Run Deep" on late night TV as a kid. Leafing through the scenario book, I finally found a match-up to whet my appetite. "Hunter Killer" is an exciting and tense scenario that pits a pack of Soviet submarines against a task force of American destroyers during a late-1980s World War III. The background story is that a US carrier group is due to pass between Iceland and Scotland in a few days. To secure its passage, the Americans send a hunter-killer formation of surface s...

I recently bought a very used copy of "Pacific War" (Victory Games, 1985) designed by Mark Herman during the heyday of Victory Games.  I realized that I could have just waited for the impending reprint to be released but I'm an impatient man.  I don't often get a jones for monster WW2 Pacific games but when I do, I want my fix right away. Anyway, I spent the first week of September going through the rules and playing a couple of the engagement scenarios just to get a feel for the game system.  Specifically, I muddled through the Pearl Harbor scenario and worked through the air strike rules. The rules seemed really dense at first but after I went through the examples carefully and took some notes, it all just clicked together at one point.  I had a similar experience with Gulf Strike too. After I finished playing Pearl Harbor and reading through the rules and the detailed example of the Battle of the Coral Sea scenario, I felt confident enough to try the larger ba...