FALL ELECTIONS

Elections are hereby called for all offices in the Strategy Gaming Society, these being the five National Offices (President, Vice President, Membership Secretary, Treasurer, Editor) and the Regional Directors of the 11 Regions. Under the Society By-Laws, Region 11 is all points outside the United States of America (including US APO and FPO addresses). Regions 1- 10 are defined by the first digit of the ZIP Code, except that all points of New York and New Jersey are in Region 1, and New England is in Region 10. All members are eligible to run for any of the live National Offices. Only residents of a Region may run for Regional Director from a Region. Any member may make nominations for any office. Send nominations to George Phillies, Editor, 87-6 Park Avenue, Worcester MA, 01605.

SPECIAL ELECTION

We have a vacancy for Regional Director of Region 11 (Overseas), because the original election yielded only write-in votes, and no candidate ever accepted nomination. The position has remained vacant since. We finally have an accepted nomination for the post, by John Kula of Canada. A ballot appears in this issue on page 11.

THE MIDWEST WARGAMING ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER

Hal Thinglum - Editor, recently reached issue 100. Congratulations to Hal, who produced the thickest (nearly 200 pages) bimonthly miniatures magazine in the United States. It's a true labor of love, made possible by a large editorial staff. MWAN is available for $35 per year fromHal Thinglum, 22554 Pleasant Drive Richton Park IL, 60471.

How BIG Is THE HOBBY?

This is a perennial question. I was talking about it with a number other old-timers at the show, and the number that was mentioned (I believe by Bill Krieg of HMGS-Midwest) was 30,000. I've heard tills nu ber from other sources as well, and I think it's a fairly widely-accepted number. But I can't figure out where it comes from, and the more at it the less I believe it. Consider the following:

Barry Geipel has about 300+ subscribers on his Command Decision mailing list. Nice list. But if the total for the hobby is 30,000, then it means he has 1% of the total hobby membership on that one maiiing. Impossible.

Avalon Hill sold over 20,000 copies of Napoleon's Battles. If the are only 30,000 players out there, two out of every three of them bought a copy of the rules. That's not two out of three Napoleonics players, that's two out of three Napoleonics players, microarmor players, Mustangs and Messerschmidt players, etc. Think about how many Napoleonics players you know and ask yourself how many of them have a copy of those rules. One in five?, If so, that suggest something like 100,000 Napoleonics players alone. And I think one in five might be high.

And how big a chunk of the market is Napoleonics? Pretty big, but not a majority, in my opinion. I'd say ACW is nearly as big, if not bigger, and the 20th Century crowd is awfully big as well.

Bottom line: I don't really know how big the hobby is, but I'd guess that 30,000 may be off by as much as an order of magnitude.

What do you think?

Frank Chadwick

Your Editor will chime in: The fomer Avalon Hill Game Company published a list of titles that had sold over 100,000 copies. It was not a short list. Those buyers are not all in the hobby any more. In the last 6 years we have had pushing 300 people belong to the SGS. I rarely encounter a gamer who has heard of us, and we have been around since 1973. There are several hundred gaming cons a year. What's a typical attendance? 100? 300?, And many gamers do not go to cons, while some go to many. I'd guess the hobby is several hundred thousand people. The real question is how can we get them more in touch with the rest of the hobby? How can we get them word about the SGS?
--George Phillies