Maybe you've noticed that we've been late with the last couple of issues. While lateness has always been the norm among gaming magazines, we've been pretty much on time with every issue since 60 or so. Until this year.

The reason for our lateness is simple enough: money. Or the lack of it. Without it printers will not print, typesetters will not type, etc.

The problem has been aggravated by the necessity for Julie and I to take outside jobs. This helps keep body and soul together, but leaves us less time to work on the magazine. I'm now the sports editor of the local weekly, the Fallbrook Enterprise, and Julie does paste-up/layout work for a related publication.)

To save money we are type-setting this and future issues ourselves. But this will take even more of our time. A lot more. Neither of us is a very fast typist.

So, because of all this we have come to the reluctant conclusion that Campaign will have to become a quarterly publication. Actually it just about has anyway. All we're doing is making it official. We don't like having to do this, as we know many of you will be disappointed. But we have little choice. We either become an official quarterly or a bi-monthly that only comes out four times a year.

We worked too hard and too long to build our reputation for promptness to just let things slide. But we don't have the money or the time to keep putting out six issues a year. So the next issue you receive will be the fall issue, which we hope to mail by late October, in order to give you time to order things from it for Christmas.

This change will not effect the number of issues current subscribers will receive, only the time it takes for you to receive them. If you just bought a six issue subscription you will still receive six issues. It'll just take 18 months to receive them instead of 12. To compensate for the slowness, we plan to make the quarterly issues at least four pages longer than our current 48 pages plus order form and wrapper. Maybe more.

One thing that will change is the price of a subscription. A year's subscription will cost less since it consists of only four issues. We hope this will encourage more people to subscribe or resubscribe. (One problem with magazines is that they are a luxury that some people have to do without when economic conditions are bad.) At the same time, we can set a rate that gives us a little more profit on each issue -- thus helping to insure that we can continue to pay the printer. The new rates can be found on the order form and the ad in this issue. We are giving subscribers one last chance to renew or extend at the old rates on the Subscribers' Discounts order form on the mailing wrapper.

Incidentally, it looks, as I write this, as though we will have a new printer beginning with this issue. This will also cut costs, and may just lead to an even better looking magazine. More on that next issue.

Awards

The final results of the Campaign Subscribers Awards are announced elsewhere in this issue, but in case you haven't noticed them yet I'll repeat them here.

The Best Game of the Year (BGOTY) for 1981 is GDW's A House Divided. It won in a landslide, gathering about five times as many votes as the secondplace game, AH's new version of Battle of the Bulge. AH's Guns of August took third place, SPI's Spies was fourth, and Heritage's Star Viking finished fifth.

Squad Leader was voted Best Game of All Time (BGOAT) for 1981, the second straight year. This continues the tradition that every game that is voted BGOAT wins a "second term" the following year. The first winner was GDW's Drang Nach Osten in '74 and '75. After that is was Third Reich in '76 and '77, Russian Campaign in '78 and '79 and now Squad Leader in '80 and '81. This would seem to indicate either that it takes about two years for hard-core gamers to begin to tire of a really good game, or that it takes the industry that long to come up with a really good game. Or both.

Squad Leader received almost twice as many votes as second-place finisher Third Reich, which had dropped to fourth place last year. No doubt the revised version of the game that appeared in '81 is Iresponsible for the resurgence of interest. It'll be interesting to see if Squad Leader can break precedent and win a "third term" next year. Publication of GI: Anvil of Victory this year may keep interest high enough to make it possible. Last year's BGOTY Ace of Aces captured third place in the BGOAT voting this time. which is better than I expected. Russian Campaign dropped from second place in '80 to fourth place in '81, after having finished first in '78 and '79 and tying for second in '77.

Fifth place resulted in a tie between AnzioVictory in the Pacific. Both are older games which I can't recall ever being in contention for BGOAT before. Meanwhile another older game, Wooden Ships and Iron Men which came out of nowhere to finish third last year, dropped to tenth this year.

Note that all these games except Ace of Aces are published by Avalon Hill. whose games seem to stand the test of time better than those of their rivals.

And now, finally, to the "Return Fire" results from issue no. 108:

Battle for Leyte Gulf 8.35
Issue 108 as a whole 6.97
Mail Call 6.64
TA: Assault on Tobruk 6.62
A Most Gallant Action 6.54
TA: Raider 6.33
Line of Communication 6.07
Sloped Armor Effects 5.71
Press Releases 5.29
The Emperor's Viewpoint 5.08
TA: Demonlord 4.48

That 8.35 is the second-highest rating an article has ever received (you lose your bet, Tom Dworschak), second only to that still inexplicable 8.67 received by Thumbnail Analysis back in issue 74. The overall rating, however, is only slightly better than the previous issue's 6.93. It seems to be a rule that history articles, although often highly rated themselves, never seem to help the overall rating much. Which is why I'd rather have strategies, reviews etc.

As usual the voting for best three articles differs somewhat from the 1-10 ratings:

Leyte Gulf -- Dworschak $5
Most Gallant Action -- Burtt $3
Sloped Armor Effects -- Bird $2