The following bits and pieces were gleaned from short reports on the Internet. They are presented for the interest of readers, with the firm warning that we have no way to check the accuracy of particular reports. With that caveat firmly in mind, we note a variety of claims:

The Game Depot in Tempe is very good. A good board game store is Michael's Magic, 3617 E Southern Avenue, Mesa, AZ 85206. Near New Orleans, two stores that do sell some games are Hub Hobby, 2618 South Broad Street, New Orleans and Galactic Games, 3544 West Esplanade Avenue, Metairie, LA. Danger Planet in Waltham, MA has an excellent selection of German boardgames. www.dangerplanetgames.com. Your MoveGames in Davis Square, Somerville, MA www.yourmovegames. com. The Compleat Strategist, near the Prudential Center, right on Massachusetts Avenue. A game store in Paris, France on Rue de l'Hirondelle is right near the Saint-Michel metro stop and not far from Notre Dame. Dallas Game Shops: The best game store in Texas is in Dallas, at Valley View Mall: The Game Chest. 972-490-7814

Columbus (Ohio) Area Boardgame Society Meetings, first and third Fridays of the month 6:30pm-2:00am: Ravenstone Games, Karl Court (just off 161 & Karl Road) Columbus, Ohio www. home.earthlink.net/~cratex ww.buckeyeboardgamers.org (Laserdog@columbus.rr.com)AFTER TURKEY DAY Game Fest is held annually at Ravenstone Games from noon to midnight the day after Thanksgiving. For Friday, September 20th. Here are the games recorded as being played by this group: Battle Grid, Virus Alert (both from Zeno Games, Bill and Elizabeth Stackpole were there to demo their game designs), Wooden Ships and Iron Men, Puerto Rico, Greed, Advanced Squad Leader, Cities and Knights (Settlers of Catan), 1856, Napoleon in Europe, Football Strategy, Auction, Risk 2210, Lord of the Rings, and Prince of Florence.

2nd championship in Reversi will start on 28th September. Until now 61 players are registered. "Richard Malaschitz" We quote Walter Mulder: The web site for the "Armed Settlers of Catan" with all the rules and requirements. http://members.tripod.com/ Charlemagne64/armiesofcatan.html The "Volcano" and other variants http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Metro/5303/catanvaria.html#section1

For conventions, GMT Games has GMT games available to play on large 'demo' maps: Napoleonic Wars, Wilderness Wars and 30 Years War. For details, contact GMT; the CABS group in Ohio speaks very highly of them.

As reported by Tom Sloper, author of "Making Games Fun, And Getting Them Done." http://www.sloperama.com/business.html.

20+ web pages of helpful free information and bulletin boards for game industry aspirants; a new article every month. www.sloperama.com/advice.html, and The Maj Exchange. 100+ web pages of free information and bulletin boards about the games of mah-jongg and hanafuda. http://www.sloperama.com/majexchange/ Los Angeles, CA 90066, USA. tomster@sloper ama.com:

Places where one can get cards printed professionally (by folks who can also help you make your game boards, boxes, pieces, etc.) are FRV Group, 1110 Park Village Drive, PO Box 2112, Neenah, WI 54957, 1-800-839-1023 Fax (920) 332-0008 info@frvgroup.com www.frvgroup.com Delano Service, 1300 Lncoln Rd., Allegan, MI 49010, 1-800-748-0318, Fax (616) 673-3749 info@delanoservice.com www.delanoservice.com. From the review, the author had not actually used these services, but was reporting the addresses for those who wanted to investigate further.

Bits on Miniatures:

Britannia Miniatures does 20mm WWI figures. www.wargame.com/britannia/ Old Glory has 25mm wwi that are good. www.oldgloryminiatures.com/ If you're looking for 15mm check out Peter Pig www.peterpig.demon.co.uk/range16.htm

http://www.oakglen.ns.ca/macduff/macduff.htm Great pictures and write-ups on 54mm gaming, plus it has a good set of free rules called "With MacDuff On The Frontier". Hope this helps. Western gunfight rules based on Games Workshop's Necromunda rules; website.lineone.net/~malcolm.mcdowall/html/downloads.html

Settlers of Catan Variant: Inspired by the "Civilizations of Catan" variant that was described here recently, I have made a variant that I call "The Settlers of Britannia". The idea is to set up the tiles in a coarse approximation of the British Isles and have players represent Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Norse. Each of these have different building costs and actions when they roll 7 (as in the civilizations variant). I have not playtested the variant yet, but in case you are interested, you can find a description (in PDF format) at www.diku.dk/~torbenm/settlers.pdf. Torben Mogensen (torbenm@diku.dk)

I have started a Yahoo group as a place to greet, meet and compete with fellow board gamers in the Federal Way, Kent, Auburn, Tacoma area. groups.yahoo.com/group/sokingtac

From: Allumbra: I've had a few requests to post my variaton of BIG CITY. This is the only way my game group plays this game now. You can find both an html version and an RTF version (in case you want to print it out) at this url: www.allumbra.com/variations/bigcity.jsp...

A computer clone of the AH game Titan is freeware game called Colossus, written in Java, which can be downloaded at colossus.sourceforge.net/

This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com