Volume III, No. 1!!! We begin our third year a little late due to too much conventioneering on the part of The Courier Staff, but also on a positive note. For the second year in a row, THE COURIER has won the H. G. WELLS award as BEST PROFESSIONAL MAGAZINE COVERING MINIATURES! It is especially satisfying this year as our competition included such great magazines as Military Modelling, Campaigns, Wargamer's Digest, The Dragon, and Gryphon. Many thanks to the staff, the editors, and all the authors without whom it could not have happened. With this issue, we start our theme year of the RENAISSANCE. This in ties nicely with the fact that the WRG RENAISSANCE RULES (distributed by The Courier Publishing Co.) also won the H. G. WELLS AS BEST ALL TIME PRENAPOLEONIC GUNPOWDER MINIATURE RULES! By now most of you will realize The Courier has always tried to find ways to save a buck for its subscribers -- e.g. The Supply Depot. I don't want to sound patronizing, but we think of our subscribers as members of the same wargame club we belong to -- we try to do the same for subscribers as we would for the guys we game with personally. In this regard we have been able to arrange a special price on a series of great books of special interest to historical gainers. A new selection will be available each issue. Indexes to Volumes I & II are at last available due entirely to the untireing efforts of Tom Desmond of our staff. Finally we have been able to put together a special price on all the back issues of Volume I for those of you who don't have them (and for new subscribers) -- see the various ads elsewhere in this issue for more details. The staff of The Courier was able to attend both Pacific Origins and GenCon East. While both had many events for Historical Miniature gainers, they were obvious by their absence. Perhaps they felt that they would be out numbered by gamers from other areas of the hobby -- of course this is a self- fulfilling prophecy! Ardent historical gaming buffs put in a lot of time to provide literally hundreds of historical gaming slots yet the historical gamer does not show up. It is no wonder that the figure manufacturer brings fewer and fewer historical items to these conventions! Considering that the manufacturer uses the sales history at these conventions, in part, as a guide to what he should produce and what he should drop -- is it any wonder that historical figure lines are going by the board? If the historical figure gamer does not support the hobby by attending conventions; demonstrating historical gaming; buying from the dealers who CATER to the historical hobby; by ferreting out and boycotting pirates; by supporting the hobby's magazines (make your buddy buy one rather than read yours) and by increasing the hobby size by nurturing new historical gamers (no matter what area of the hobby they come from) then there is no one else to blame if the hobby dies from a lack of supply. Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. III #1 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1981 by The Courier Publishing Company. 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