As I have been using the River Plate battle to train 10 newbies (7 of which never played any wargame) in GQ3 here in Uruguay, I added a new wrinkle the last replaying: the Brits catching Altmark in the vicinity. Not a campaign per se but my goal from the beginning is to get the players to stop thinking of the ships as rock'em sock'em robots.
Namely, Graf Spee should use some smoke to hide the Altmark hightailing out of the area. Which they then promptly ignored and actually let the Altmark linger "because he thought he might need its guns"!
I know that all of you experienced, well-read historian/wargamers are sniffing a this but we all have to start somewhere and nothing like seeing disasters to make you appreciate why it's important to avoid them.
Anyway, I made a ship's log PDF for Altmark (which I'd be glad to have feedback on) and a little bit about the AAR, history and situation that finds it in the same battlespace out in the South Atlantic at my site:
http://www.g-design.us/ships/#altmark
PS for those who have not been able to get into GQ3 yet, I made a slideshow to help with its exposition and indeed we run through it before each game to refresh the foggy memories at:
http://www.g-design....innersIntro.pdf
And a little handheld gunnery card so the players avoid TMI charitis at:
http://www.g-design....GunneryCard.pdf
