It's been a while since I plugged the various excellent magazines that deal with "German" games and their ilk, so here goes:

Games Games Games: This is a somewhat pricey UK magazine that is more than worth the money thanks to the writings of one Mike Siggins. For the uninitiated, Mike used to produce a zine called Sumo that turned a *lot* of people on to "German" style games. His reviews are always interesting and informative, and whether you agree with him or not you will always be entertained. I recommend snapping up any back issues of Sumo that you can find. One thing I tend to dislike about G3 (as it’s known by the gaming cognoscenti) is their editorial stance - they prefer to only run positive reviews. They won’t fudge a review to say something good about a game; they merely won’t run a review of a stinker. That’s changing a bit now that Siggins is on board. The magazine also has a decidedly UK slant to it, not surprisingly I suppose. Too many pages “wasted” on UK gaming clubs and events for my tastes. All that being what it is, I still heartily recommend G3. Contact pevands@ sfcp .co.uk for subscription info. Check out http://www.gamecabinet .com for back issues of Sumo.

Counter: This is the successor to Sumo. It's filled with tons of reviews and reader comments, and is a must-read for anyone into strategy games. Quite often the games designers themselves write in to comment. Dense and info-laden, Counter is definitely for really hard-core gamers. Each issue runs about 200-300 dense pages – no graphics, no pretty pictures, just pure gaming info. The reader community is very tight and the letter column is astounding (In all fairness, G3’s letter column is getting much better, again thanks to Siggins). If you subscribe to only one of these mags, I would be forced to recommend Counter as your sole magazine. It reviews games both good and bad, and will keep you up-to-date in the most cutting edge gaming goods (OK, so maybe “cutting edge” is a little overwrought). Contact SWDagger@aol.com for subscription info.

The Game Report: Peter Barrett’s labor of love. Smaller than the other two, but still chock-full of insightful commentary. It tends to be a little slanted towards word and puzzle games (since that's what Peter basically does for a living), but still has good coverage of strategy games. It’s not as varied in it’s viewpoints as the previous two since most of the reviews are done by about 3 people or so. It has some really great features, though, such as the Desert Island Gaming Lists. Go to http://www.gamereport.com/index.shtml for subscription info and online back-issues.

This list is by no means exhaustive, and only represents the magazines I subscribe to and know of. If you know of any other good ones, please speak up