RogerBW's Blog

Fifteenth Harpoon PBEM AAR: Gulf Escort Deja Vu 24 November 2017 - 3 comments

After a long break while I was busy doing other things, I've returned to Harpoon. I really need to rewrite the support software from scratch, but it just about holds up.

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Fourteenth Harpoon PBEM AAR: Black Buck One 04 December 2015 - 5 comments

Another scenario from South Atlantic War, the Black Buck One raid on the airfield at Port Stanley.

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Thirteenth Harpoon PBEM AAR: Radar Contact! 17 October 2015 - 1 comment

I've started playing through the South Atlantic War scenario book for Harpoon (and for Combined Arms for land actions, which I'm ignoring). This is the first naval scenario in it: the Argentine submarine Santa Fe (formerly the Balao-class USS Catfish) tries to escape from South Georgia.

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Twelfth Harpoon PBEM AAR: Still Gulf Escort Deja Vu 25 September 2015 - 1 comment

The latest Harpoon PBEM game was a return to the old standard scenario, to get a new player up to speed.

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Eleventh Harpoon PBEM AAR: A Question of Sovereignty 10 August 2015 - 9 comments

The latest Harpoon PBEM game used a scenario from the Harpoon Naval Review 2009, written by Gorka L. Martínez Mezo: Moroccan fundamentalists attack the Spanish outposts at Ceuta and Melilla, and the Spanish try to get convoys across the western Mediterranean to evacuate civilians and bring in troops.

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Tenth Harpoon PBEM AAR: Maybe the Last Gulf Escort Deja Vu 27 May 2015 - 1 comment

This one took a while, largely because I've been busy with a writing project that's stuck its tentacles into all my space time.

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Ninth Harpoon PBEM AAR: Again, Gulf Escort Deja Vu 04 May 2015 - 3 comments

Back to basics with this introductory scenario, which we completed in a little over three weeks. This time things went very differently…

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Eighth Harpoon PBEM AAR: Gulf Escort Deja Vu One More Time 06 April 2015 - 1 comment

This scenario took a while, because two Blue players in a row became unresponsive and had to be replaced. But we got there in the end.

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Seventh Harpoon PBEM AAR: Hurrying Home 30 March 2015 - 3 comments

This scenario is set in 1975; it deals with a British carrier group, heading home across the Atlantic at the outbreak of war, attacked by Soviet submarine and air forces. Total play time has been nearly two months, my goodness.

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Sixth Harpoon PBEM AAR: Gulf Escort Deja Vu III 21 January 2015 - 1 comment

As an introduction for new players, I ran this variant scenario: it's Gulf Escort Deja Vu, but with a British Type 23 (Somerset) and Lynx rather than the Canadian Halifax and CH-124A attempting to get the tanker past the Iranian missile boats. Total real time was two weeks.

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Fifth Harpoon PBEM AAR: Northern Aggression 26 December 2014

Since some of the players had requested a game with submarines in it, I used this scenario out of the book. In 1997, three Russian surface ships violate Polish coastal waters in a show of force; a German Type 206 submarine tries to sink them. Total playing time was six days.

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Fourth Harpoon PBEM AAR: Gulf Escort Deja Vu Again 10 December 2014 - 2 comments

Having had some interest after I posted the second AAR, I thought I'd run a game for new players to get the hang of the way I do things before I set up another complex scenario. But the new players didn't apply, so I ran this one with two old hands instead. Total real time was two weeks, including a break over Thanksgiving as one of the players is American.

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Third Harpoon PBEM AAR: The Russians Are Coming 21 November 2014 - 2 comments

This third game went a lot faster than the last, taking about twelve days of real time to run.

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Second Harpoon PBEM AAR: Non-Nuclear Nuclear Exchange 30 October 2014 - 1 comment

I managed to get some players together for another Harpoon game, again played by email; it took nearly two months all told, though we did have several breaks of a day or two along the way. Here's the after-action report, as before plotted onto Tactical Pilotage Charts.

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Twilight for Harpoon 28 October 2014 - 2 comments

Sighting conditions in Harpoon are typically set by the scenario author. This means there's little guidance to the designer. Particularly if the scenario spans a large area, it might take several game hours to resolve, and it would be good to know how conditions change over time.

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First Harpoon PBEM AAR: Gulf Escort Deja Vu 24 June 2014

After I'd written the software, I had to try it out; I had one experienced player and one newcomer to Harpoon (though he knows the real-world technologies and tactics), and we played by email over about a week. Here's the after-action report.

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Plotting onto Tactical Pilotage Charts 10 June 2014

Sometimes my interests intersect. I've been working on a way to plot markers and objects onto real-world charts.

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