With Commonwealth Navies and Commonwealth Aircraft released, we are working on our legacy product High Tide, updating it to a second edition. It is in rough draft. While many scenarios have simply been updated, others have been replaced with new ones. This is based on our better understanding of Soviet naval doctrine, tactics, and systems twenty years after the first edition was published. Specifically, we are reducing the number of convoy scenarios, since Soviet naval strategy did not envision a prolonged Battle of the Atlantic like WW I or WW II. In addition to the original High Tide campaign, there is now a second one, Battle for the Fjords, based on Eric Grove’s excellent book.
In response to our player survey, only those ships, aircraft, weapons, and sensors not already published in the existing Navies series will be included in the High Tide book. This allows us to publish High Tide as a single volume (cheaper!), and avoids selling you information many players already have.
It will be released this Spring.
When we release High Tide, we will also publish Andy Doty’s High Tide Forms companion book. This will have stats for all the ship classes and aircraft called out by the scenarios in High Tide. Therefore, players new to Harpoon do not have to invest in the American, Russian and Commonwealth Navies books to play the scenarios. All they’ll need to start playing are the rules, High Tide, and High Tide Forms. Like our recent Tattletail product, also by Andy, it will have Alex Ramos’ superlative ship and aircraft art.
After that, Chang Lei’s Birth of the PLAN is in early draft. This is a Command at Sea (CaS)supplement that will show the many fierce surface and air battles that took place between the Chinese Communist and Nationalist Chinese forces in the late 1940s and 1950s. There’s a lot of history in it, as well as Annexes covering the equipment of both sides – a mixture of second and sometimes third-hand US, IJN, British, and Soviet equipment.
We will release Birth of the PLAN with Command at Sea Fifth edition. CaS is now the oldest of the four rules sets. The last major revision was in 2008, and it needs to be updated so that the rule mechanics are consistent across the ATG system. NOTE: As this will be a new edition, it will have to be purchased separately and is not part of the free pdf updates associated with CaS 4.1 Second Printing. Once we have a release date, we will remove the current edition from sale at least one calendar quarter before the planned release. We will offer the new edition at a special sale price for the first quarter after the initial release.
The rest of the CaS supplements will be brought up to fifth edition standard as soon as we can review and update the earlier versions.
With those two pairs of books released, we will put Captain’s Edition 2.0 (CE 2.0) on the front burner. Development will continue through the Summer and Fall. We will do our best to keep the very active Captain’s Edition community informed; and there will be much playtesting.
On a not-to-interfere basis with CE 2.0 development, we’ll start a couple of new projects.
Japan’s Self Defense Forces will be the next Navies supplement. It will be a single book.
After that will come the long-promised FG&DN annex book listing the other important, but less involved, navies of the WW I era.