Foreword 2.0

Well then.

Almost exactly after I posted that original foreword, things sort of went sideways in the "real life" department. My first crack at a real time Silent War campaign lasted through August 1942 (2010), and was going very well.  Events intervened; the game went back into the box.

It is now two years to the day after I originally undertook this project. The dust has settled significantly, to the point that I recently started considering the possibility of giving this another go. I vacillated (as usual), but in the end, the round-number anniversary (1941-2011) was too enticing to resist.

Foreword

I first learned of Compass Games' Silent War: The United States' Submarine Campaign Against Imperial Japan, 1941-1945 a couple of years ago, very shortly after I started spending lots of time browsing BGG and other game sites. I imagine that most anyone who's reading these words probably is familiar, at least in passing, with the game. For the completely uninitiated, here's the publisher's synopsis:

Silent War is a solitaire simulation of the United States' Navy submarine war against Imperial Japan in World War Two. You serve as Commander of Submarines, US Pacific Fleet (ComSubPac). Your mission is to deploy your boats with maximum effect to destroy Japanese shipping, while limiting your own submarine losses.

Featured scenarios cover actions ranging from famous short single sub patrols, through small campaigns of about a year of the war, ending with the grand campaign covering the entire Pacific War....