Toward a Brighter Tomorrow

Well, our first game is out by the time you read this or is about to be out. I have been gaining more and more experience (which is what you get when you don't get what you want) and now GR/D is on the books with a real live wargame.

Lessons Learned

The production flow is not the only factor to deal with in getting a game from your head to the retail shelf. There are variables to ponder. Consider this day in the life: "Hello, Winston? This is Mark at the warehouse. Your boxes have arrived, but there is this problem -- uh, well, the shipping company put the boxes in the front of the truck and then piled some heavy stuff behind them, and, well, somewhere in the trip from Chicago the load shifted and sort of fell on the boxes, kind of crushing them. What do you want to do about this?"

What I want to do is sit in my garage with the engine running, all night!

"Winston, this is Bob at Bloomington Offset Press. We have the color keys done for the countersheets and we need you to look them over and make sure that everything is okay. We will ship them to you next-day air (Saturday delivery, very expensive), okay?"

Imagine my surprise finding out that after 18 years of producing the Europa series that this company doesn't know how to read instructions on proof sheets and doesn't know the color scheme for the various armies, even after producing them for Scorched Earth, Western Desert, and all the other games. Imagine my surprise.

Another trip to the garage is in order.

In short, there are six vendors we deal with and thus six different methods of production, six different deadlines, six different of everything. Well, I thought I had gotten it right with The Urals, silly me. At least I am not making the same old mistakes; I have found all sorts of new ones.

What has come from this is a better understanding about production flow and I believe that I have gotten a pretty good handle on how to set up the next game so that when we tell you we are going to have the game ready by a date, we should be able to hit the target. This would be a novel twist for the Europa system and remains a goal. The next game in the series to undergo a complete face-lift will be Case White. It will be retitled First To Fight from a war poster of the time.

The Balkan Front box will have the black and gold side-strip that has received critical acclaim from industry artists, marketing directors, distributors, and even the "bros" on the West Coast. Each Collector Series box will also sport poster art from the period of the campaign being covered. John Astell and I have gone over the various posters available and have come up with a tentative selection for future covers. Covers are very important because they serve as the introduction to the series for both veterans and newcomers. We are out to win more hearts and minds and need the best cover we can get. If the general gaming public's reaction is half as good as that of the professionals, we have a hit!

Onward, Ever Onward

And speaking of freebies, the members of the Europa Association should be happy with the free countersheet of markers mailed to them with this issue of the magazine. More can be had for $3 each for members, or $4 each for non-members (it pays to belong). There is also a copy 'of the countersheet in the magazine that you can photocopy for personal use if you don't want to buy more sheets.

The next free item for the membership may be the best yet, but I am not telling tales out of school. You will have to wait to see what happens, but I believe that you will like it a whole bunch.

Big News at Baltimore Origins

That's right. We may have long been ignored - we will not be ignored after ORIGINS '91. We are on the move in a big way. It is about time that the system be given its due. In 1991 we will be commemorating the 50th anniversary of Barbarossa. GR/D has its Combat Command in place and will be at the center of "what is what" at ORIGINS '91

I speak of TASK FORCE JOHNSON. You may have experienced TASK FORCE JOHNSON, or maybe not. At Baltimore you will not be able to enter the convention without the experience of watching the TASK FORCE in action. Quite a sight to behold. I have seen dozens of brand new players bent over the table, sweating bullets to get the odds, get the attack. At ORIGINS '90 in Atlanta (even after they screwed us with a terrible program error, and other clusterf--ks), TASK FORCE JOHNSON pushed almost 70 players through the Europa Demo, and dazzled the veterans and newcomers with the system. GR/D had ten members of the TASK FORCE on hand, the biggest demo team at the convention, and the best. My hat is off to Tom Johnson and his crew for a job well done, and more to come. I was approached by no less than three convention organizers from Mississippi, Colorado, and California. They all wanted the TASK FORCE for their conventions (Tom agreed to go, immediately). Well, we don't have the financial ability to do this (sorry, Tom), but maybe someday, who knows?

Join Us for a Baltimore Bash

There will be a party for all to attend to celebrate another victory that looms on the horizon, a just reward that all of us can share. Yes, many things should come to pass in '91 including the release of Second Front. More on that in future issues.

Parting is such Sweet Sorrow

There is an announcement elsewhere in the magazine, but I want to say it here as well: No more parts are available for general purchase. We are almost out and we have to honor replacement parts requests for games that are still being bought over the counter that may be defective in some fashion or other. It was a tough decision, but I feel that we have to make sure that the customers buying games are covered, and we are almost out of stuff. This is the short term solution for the problem. Since we will not be reproducing the games as they were, we will at some point liquidate those parts stocks as remain. When that day comes you will be given notice and until depleted, the remaining parts will be available again. Okay tuned.