The demographics of onlike gamers continues its inexorable progression. In years past, those online were pretty self-reliant & comfortable with computers. They had to be to get anywhere on the internet. More recently, we've seen an widening of the spectrum of online gamers' knowledge. That is, there are more very recent converts to the internet and, in many cases, to computers themselves. Its a curious thing to watch from my side, much as it was when AOL dumped all of its subscribers onto the internet without any preparation a few years ago. One upshot of this is that a significant number of people have incorrect info in their emailer's setup info. Most often, the user's email address is incorrectly entered. When people the person writes to reply to the email, it bounces back undelivered & undeliverable due to a bad address. Is this you?

Another upshot is that gamers more often overlook resources at hand because they're less familiar with the software they use. A prime example is that you can use the FIND feature of your web browser (CTRL - F) to find any keywords anywhere within a catalog file. Want to find games on siege warfare? Call up one of the complete catalog listings, then search for "siege". Want to find decent beginners' games? Search for "beginner" or "novice". You get the idea. A formal search engine isn't necessary as you've got a more flexible, faster tool already on your computer.

Accusations of price fixing were traded between a couple of competitors on the usenet newsgroups recently. No need to repeat that little story here. I just want to say that we have not & will not participate in discussions for the purpose of fixing prices. Never have, never will. On the other hand, several manufacturers have attempted to control pricing of their product in recent months by attempting to influence who distributors sell their product to. This is another threat to the prices you pay -- and even whether you can get games from Fine Games.

Hobby Distributors are merging like mad And from my view point, it’s*really* scary. Longtime owners of Berkeley Games, a major west coast, full line hobby distributor, sold out to Topline, a Michigan based comics & card game distributor. Were it not for the volume expectations this type of owner brings to the table, this wouldn't raise an eyebrow. But the volume of board games is often trivial compared with successful collectable card games. Trouble brewing....

Also, Chessex, the nation's largest distributor, announced its planned merger with the Armory, another larger, national distributor. If we include the manufacturing ventures of these two firms, this is probably the continents #1 & #2 distributors merging together. Is this good? There will certainly be a better financed, larger firms trying to exploit econ-omies of scale. And we'll benefit from progress such as being able to check their stock accurately as its online. Yet economic competition is suffering here. And the relative power of distributors to determine thelife or death of gaming manufacturers -- esp. small board game companies -- is now stronger. Their power to extract more favorable terms, or to skate on their responsibilities to pay on time, is also greater. This is just what Fresno Gaming Assoc. (FGA) used to complain about.

We live in interesting times.

TimJim Games has announced that it has suspended publishing, but its not that simple. It appears that one partner is giving up on game publishing, leaving the other half (Prism Games) to pick up the pieces. That leaves the announced games Reign of Terror & perhaps 2038 Expansion in limbo for now. Too bad; TimJim produced good, solid if often complicated games.

New Game Releases:

You can always view my most recent listing of New Game Releases at http://www.finegames.com/text/new_rel2.txt. The Quiet Spring continued into May with only a few really notable releases. March to Victory is out, but you knew that. Competitive Edge publishes another issue, #13, but whether the games on the Hatfield/McCoy feud or pro wrestling grab you, we'll see.

Turning the Tables: Timoshenko Strikes is a promising game of the May '42 Soviet offensive followed by the crushing German response. Ziplocked with all the usual Moments in History quality. $20, in stock.

Prelude to Hell (Markham Designs) is a desktop publishing (DTP) game of the well planned, well executed, British 1917 offensive that ultimately failed thru lack of exploitation. $22 in stock.

The long awaited SPQR PLAYERS GUIDE finally arrived. This large mag coversmany angles of SPQR strategy & tactics, together with some scenario unit type analysis. A must have for followers of this game series. $15 in stock.

Critical Hits All American: Stanley Hill is the final part of a trilogy on the 82nd airborne's D-Day drop. $21, in stock.

Decision Games latest S&T w/ Charlemagne looks like a winner of a game. A 2 player contest of the Frankish empire's 2 centuries of glory. Unfortunately, due to a couple of BIG errors at DG, they didn't produce even enough for their preorders. So...its already out of print & hard to find. I managed to find only a few copies, those are $25 but in stock.

Columbia produced its Victory: Blocks of War. A beautiful game using its block system and fictitious geography to model WW2-era warfare between 2-4 players. Their most beautiful game with color illustrated unit types and the best map yet. Intended as an moderate simplicity game suitable for beginners as well as repeated play. They've also hinted that expansions of various sorts may be added. $30, in stock.

Lastly, and perhaps the biggie, AH's On to Richmond is out but I have yet to receive my copies. This is another in their popular Civil War series and covers the slow Union advance on Richmond, 1862.

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