Recruiting for Midway battle - a PBEM game

I am looking to run a Play by E-mail ‘Battle for Midway’ 1942 game that requires ten players. Between them, they will be allocated various commands of carriers, Midway and ranking Admiralty.

The players that have an aircraft carrier will be responsible for setting reconnaissance searches for enemy carriers, plotting movement and arranging and arming their aircraft, cycling them between being on deck, below deck and flying missions and selecting targets.

The fleet commanders will be responsible for making strategic decisions, examples being, the opening plan, the opening dispositions, to switch attacks from anti-shipping to Midway facilities (or vice-versa) or co-ordinating your carriers to attack an identified target of importance or deciding whether to sink or protect one of your own ‘dead in the water’ carriers etc. Mostly, you will leave the carrier commanders to conduct the task as they see fit, but they will need direction and help in understanding what is happening in the bigger picture.

The Japanese fleet commander will also be in charge of managing the part of the fleet that contains the assault ships that carry infantry and which are heading for Midway.

The Midway Commander will be managing land based aircraft  and defending the island from infantry assault.

I will manage the administration of the game including the various combats and resulting damage and will contact players regarding their various options in each ‘Operational Phase’. 

The players will not contact each other, so all information will flow via my H.Q. (Admiral Grand Supremo) and I will ensure that each player is fed a narrative that keeps them true to their role and there could well be some ‘unintentional’ misinformation as military communications typically involve mistakes, exaggeration or simply misreading the situation.

There will be ‘gentle’ random events that build into the narrative.

In this game of cat and mouse, outcomes can be instantly brutal. If you are discovered, an airstrike could be upon you in the next operational phase and you might find yourself sunk and effectively out of the game quite quickly. For those knocked out, I will keep you partly in the game loop by BCC’ing you into various relevant e-mails to your own Fleet Commander, so that you still get a feel for the ongoing battle and its wider aspects.

At the conclusion of the battle, I will do a full write up so that all players will get to understand the bigger picture and relate their part to it. The readership of the blog will also have all revealed at that time.

I am going to use my own game system that I have developed specifically for this PBEM game.

Having done something similar a couple of years ago for the Germantown battle (see Resource Section below), I know that this will be a ton of work for me, there are many moving parts and I expect my H.Q. to handle more than 50 e-mails per operational Phase, so I need those that want to play to be fully committed to this and be able to respond promptly to all e-mails etc, the various time-zones around the world for participants will add their own disruptions to flow, so it is essential that players stay on top of this.

I will try to minimise the work needed to be done by the players by effective behind the scenes administration and to give hints / help for any sticking points in the game.

I am not publicising this anywhere else, so it will only be done for the benefit of those who naturally visit this blog by way of habit and only they who will get a chance to become involved.

I will include a small map of the battlescape, this is a simple gridded affair, though I think players would benefit from making their own simple map on something like an A3 piece of paper (put to x A4 or 2 x Letter side by side). This is small enough that it can be set aside for as long as play lasts, but large enough to fit counters (supplied) and information notes on.

If you fancy a go at joining in, use the CONTACT PAGE on my COMMANDERS site (see Resource Section below) to privately indicate your interest, include your e-mail address and also state whether you have limitations in getting to game very often.

Everyone who contacts me by Friday 18th November will have their name put into the hat and the reliable Mrs. Wargamer will make the draw against the role that the person will assume.

Those that state they have limited gaming opportunity will have their name put in the hat twice for 2 chances of getting involved. The game reinforces the ethos of the blog, which is gaming in small spaces and simply getting games to the table.

Anyone who is unsuccessful and not drawn from the hat will have their e-mail details deleted immediately and at the end of play, all those that participate will also have their e-mails deleted.

I would only ask two things; 

1) if you are interested in playing, don’t research the historical battle, you will only spoil your own fun by undermining the fog-of-war that I will be trying to create.

2) Don’t mention in the comments below that you are interested in applying. Due to the nature of carrier warfare, I would like to keep any familiarity between the players reduced to anonymous levels. When players step into this, I want the sense of the unknown to be as enhanced as it can be.

Below is a link to a write-up of the previously played Germantown game, which gives a sense of the value of true fog of war in a wargame, which we will be hoping to re-create in our Midway game.

Good luck to all those who apply (he says … hoping to get the ten needed!)

The next post will advise that things are underway. Those involved will get a summary sheet of rules, plus a personalised situation report, a map and some counters that they may wish to use.

I have put a lot of effort into the preparation of this, so if it is successful and works and my H.Q. (brain!) doesn’t explode, I will have the material to run it again at some point, so hopefully there will be a second chance for those that don’t make the play list.

Resource Section.

My sister webspace ‘COMMANDERS’ has a contact button at the bottom of the left margin for anyone who is interested in playing. Link.

https://commanders.simdif.com

Fighting at GERMANTOWN - a look at the previous play by e-mail game and the command realism that can come with fog of war. LINK

http://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2020/06/pbem-germantown-game.html