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The reason my subject title is "Navy Books" is that I will emit I'm a landlubber [:)] give me a tank and I will shoot at other tanks, but put me on a ship and I haven't a clue on what to do. I need a book that will give a landlubber like me where the starboard and where the poopdeck is located on a ship and how to fight another ship with their weapons.

JohnO

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Going to stick my neck out somewhat, and be controversial. ( Like thats something new [:)] ).
 
Essentially naval combat tends to be more technical than land combat. By that I mean those with the highest tech weapons tend to have a significant edge. The same doesn't always hold true for land combat. If you have superior tanks, but the attack is wholly behind your flank and by surprise, you are likely in trouble. I'd argue that the same doesn't necessarily follow for naval combat in the same way. A naval group that is "outflanked", might manouevre to unmask batteries, but it isn't in the same amount of trouble as a land force in the same situation.
 
As an introduction to naval tactics etc, the manual stands out as pretty good to me. I agree both the above books are good. However they tend to be most useful for doctrine and so forth. They are great for scenario design and for trying to reproduce known tactics. They are less good as an introduction in my honest opinion. I found at times that Janes or Combat Fleets made easier reading too!
 
Harpoon as a wargame is pretty good at introducing players to increasingly complex scenarios. The training missions work decently enough, while even complex scenarios are a good introduction, you just tend to play them in lower speed settings/compression. Would particularly recommend the FOST series on HHQ plus the RED Flag set up for testing there also. Even if you dive in and get hammered, its a good introduction and I seem to recall I just kept replaying scenarios until I finally won them.
 
Overall, there is a dearth of books that actually cover Naval Tactics as such. Those that do tend to be fairly heavyweight.

If you can find them at sensible prices, I'd recommend getting the Official Harpoon II or III Strategy Guides. They teach you naval tactics and how to implement them in Harpoon. I have the H2 version by Ed Dille & Tom Basham and it's worth having for ANW.

<checks Amazon> : they have copies from $6.95 - you can't go wrong!

I'm even a fan of the Harpoon II manual, it covers the basics of weapons systems and ships in general but is a tad weak in how to actually go about winning a naval battle.&nbsp; Still a great primer.
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ORIGINAL: alcazar

If you can find them at sensible prices, I'd recommend getting the Official Harpoon II or III Strategy Guides. They teach you naval tactics and how to implement them in Harpoon. I have the H2 version by Ed Dille & Tom Basham and it's worth having for ANW.

<checks Amazon> : they have copies from $6.95 - you can't go wrong!

do you know what are the differences between the two version? The Harpoon III is more difficult to find, does it worth it?

PS/ it seems that there's also an earlier version Harpoon Battlebook: The Official Strategies & Tactics Guide by James Degoey published in 1991. Do you know it?

cheers,

Jan

i've received today the book Harpoon II: The Official Strategy Guide by Ed Dille and Tom Basham, it seems a very valuable read!

cheers,

Jan

If you want the best publicly available - Janes.
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Suggest selling your first born child to afford them, though.

Jan,

Glad to hear that. I just finished with the game manual and order that strategy guide (an hour ago) after realizing that I still have no idea what I am doing!

Seems that the H3 guide cannot be found anywhere only H2. However, H2 can be found for the less than the cost of shipping. I suppose it should be good enough.

If you do a search for "documentation" you should find the old H2 manuals listed in PDF form.
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They include some ideas on basic naval strategy.

I received my guide by Dille and Basham. Really useful stuff and an interesting read.

I also received an older book by DeGoey. It seems to be based on the Classic version of the game as opposed to the above based on H2. I have yet to really examine the book, but I expect that it will be worthwhile.

These days, if you don't count shipping, the above books can be had for no more than $2 USD. You can hardly lose at that cost.