Modern Naval

[Easy E]

I've been thinking about putting together a small collection of modern naval vessels for gaming purposes...other than Harpoon/Sea Krieg.  Does anyone know of a good modern naval combat rules system?

I am looking for more game-y abstraction than simulationist but have not found much to my liking.

[Arrigo]

I have only perused free materials, but Rory Crabb Naval Command seems promising.

Shipwreck is not bad. But very traditional, let's call it a streamlined and less granular Harpoon.

David Manley's bulldogs away is alos very, very good. Not that complex, but extremely realistic (David being David...). It is aimed at small craft actions, but nothing prevent you to use larger ships (frigate/destroyer). 

To be quite honest I found that in 1970+ games probably the small approach works better with miniatures due to ranges and capabilities. Even with Harpoon I ended up eschewing larger actions.  Reducing the number of ships made even Harpoon easy.

Larger actions (let's say attacking a CVBG...) are played better with hex and counter wargames (Fleet Series from Victory Games soon to be reprinted by Compass or even Compass' South China Sea) or going to a very abstracted route.  I have tried Dan Verssen Modern Naval Battles (both the new edition, and the old, free now, edition) replacing the ship card with miniatures, and the results are interesting.

[has.been]

Try & pick up a copy of Sea Strike by Wargames Research Group.
It was Ultra modern when it came out, many many years ago.
For crying out loud I was still at school when I bought my copy
(and I'm 63 now).
It is a VERY good game, well worth tracking down a copy.

[fastolfrus]

I would second that call for Sea Strike.
Had some very interesting/innovative features.
Such as instead of points lists each player takes a brown envelope with a mission in it. Missions give objectives e.g. capture enemy base or sink enemy submarine, and also specify your budget (varied from about £50m to £400m). You then have a list of possible forces, including aircraft and a mix of ships (prices varied from about £5m to £100m). Obviously you keep the objective quiet until the game is over.
The entertaining feature being that if you have the objective of sinking the enemy sub and your enemy doesn't actually field one you cannot get your objective, although you might be able to stop them getting theirs.


 

[fastolfrus]

Also the combat results didn't use dice but a deck of combat cards, which included systems failure amongst the results

[Ben Waterhouse]

Just had a look on evilbay for a copy of Seastrike, I need to lie down in a darkened room now...