In the spirit of professional give-and-take, BROG disagrees (almost) entirely with guest critic, the eminent Rick Swan's, statement that wargaming is dying. Shifting, yes; growing older, perhaps. The past year has shown a remarkable vibrancy: several new companies, two full-schedule game magazines, a host of company-supported publications, and a plethora of games covering subjects that were considered "untouchable" a year or two ago - and covering them in depth and with panache. Rick laments the lack of young kids in the hobby. "Young kids" are notoriously fickle in their extra-curricular pursuits - as well as mightily "what's-in?" driven. Then again, how would he - or even I - know? Do we hang around with young kids? (Not unless they look like Kathy Ireland . . . .) We usually play within our peer group, but even that is misleading. My main "playtester" is a young professional who looks more like a Nike ad for cross-training than that old vision of the male gamer foreover immortalized by my wife's infamous, Origins III observation that, " . . . [she] never saw so many short, fat sweaty men in [her] entire life!" At the last two conventions I attended I saw no discernable swing towards pension-hauling seniors rolling dice with shaking hands. (I did see, though, several members of that heretofore mentioned, lamentable Origins III bunch.) It was a fairly varied group, and not an oxygen mask in sight. My teen-age son, Alex, has at least three friends who play "wargames" (although he doesn't . . . he's too busy trying to sneak into "Basic Instinct"), and I had a rather delightful conversation with a Tower Records clerk who, superficially, looked like an extra from "Spinal Tap" but proved to be a medieval history major with a solid interest in pre-gunpowder warfare . . . and games! Like any product, gaming needs sagacious marketing. Guest critic, and former newspaperman, Rick Swan is one of the hobby's most prolific writers, as well as the designer of such games as SNIPER: Special Forces. INCOMING ROUNDS The BROG #4 Firing Squad is loading up with soft-nosed bullets for such as 3W's Zitadelle and Napoleon's Later Battles, COA's Chancellorsville and Prelude to Disaster, TSR's PTO-ETO combo, Decision Games' Ancient Battles Quad, GMT's Thunderbolt/Apache Leader (or, T&A Leader), Victory's Flashpoint: Golan, The Gamer's Bloody Roads South and maybe even their Omaha (as soon as I undergo my operation to repair the Carpal Tunnel Syndrom I got in my wrist from excessive dierolling). That's a lot of games, dicemen . . . . Maybe one or two will even survive! Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. II #3 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com