Convention & Promotion Stuff

Game Research/Design has a plan to hold contests around the United States with the final four or eight winners of the contest to face off at Origins '94. The winner of this national tourney would receive an all expenses paid trip to Origins '95, which will be held in Baltimore. (Yes, I do mean all expenses: flight, room, convention tickets, meals, and maybe even some spending money.) The second, third, and fourth place winners of the contest would also receive prizes. That would mean that if you got to the play-off you would have a 50/50 chance of winning something.

During the next year we will be making plans and detailing how this tourney will work. Anyone may enter this Europa playoff, but if you are not a member of the Association you will be charged an entry fee. Members of the Association will be entitled to free entry.

The concept goes like this: at the kick-off at Origins in Dallas during 1993, players will be given a scenario pre-designed for this tourney. Each player will advance through to the next round each time he or she wins. The final round will be held at Origins '94 in San Jose, California. Those players who win at that convention will receive awards, plenty of publicity, and other good stuff (including the free trip to Origins '95 for #1).

The details that we are still working out require considerable thought and planning. If we are going to hold elimination rounds, where are they going to be held? The best place to hold elimination rounds is at regional conventions. There is a nice convention held in Minneapolis in March that I have attended in the past. The convention organizers have indicated to me that they would be happy to hold such an event. There are several other conventions held around the country: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Texas are some other states that have annual conventions which attract a fair-sized following.

I am sure that there are many others that I have not mentioned. To this end I need your help. If you are aware of a convention in your area that might be interested in holding one of the elimination rounds for the Europa Play-off, write to me at GRD and give me some details about the convention in your area. I would need to know the dates, time, and place of the convention; the name(s) of the organizer or organization that holds the event; a description of the convention (it must offer some historical boardgaming for us to be interested); the average attendance at the convention; how many years the convention has been running; and a solid contact person that GRD can deal with.

If we can get a good overlay of the country and offer play-offs in several different cities at different times, we will increase the base of participation.

The second part of the equation is which scenario should be played? I know that the majority of you who play our games prefer the German/Soviet front. I also know that this campaign has the most possibilities for a good scenario, with some exceptional competition during the 1943-1944 time frame. Since these facts are certain, an east front scenario will be the choice for this national Europa Play-off. There, that was easy, wasn't it?

Consideration of judging, central record keeping and overall rules for the event must be drafted. My second request for help is directed to anyone in the community that has experience in holding events like this one. We need some committed and experienced judges in several regions of the country to help us out. The criteria to be a judge have not been written down at this time, but I need to get a feel for the number of potential volunteers in this area, and I need for you to talk to me about this. If you would like to help us set this up, write to the usual address and mark the envelope: Attn: Europa Play-off Ref.

Somewhere out there is someone who can help us get this program going into second gear. Let us know who you are and we will work together to get this job done!

So, that gives you an idea of the overall plan and how it might work.

I am looking for help to review this situation and formulate the general organizational plans to avoid pitfalls and problems that may be overlooked. If you are interested and would like to help out on this project, let me know.

One thing that you must keep in mind: your participation in this tourney's planning, organization, preparation, and presentation will exclude you from participation in the tourney. Additionally, anyone working for GRD as staff or volunteer must be excluded as well. Considering just how many of you help us out, we may be down to just a handful of players left (yuk, yuk, yuk).

Details, as they develop, will appear here, and elsewhere in this magazine. Additionally, details will be made available to every retail store on the GAMA mailing list (5,000+), so we will have the word out to many players. Onward my brothers.

More Convention Stuff

I have recently been in touch with Mark Swenholt. He has been speaking to Victor Hauser about holding a regional type Europafest in his area of Texas. Mark wanted to know if we Would be interested in helping out with promotion and other stuff.

You bet! In the upcoming issues of the magazine I would like to see us promote several regional type fests. We would still keep our commitment to hold a national fest each year at Origins.

Mark is putting together the plan for his regional fest, and more information on it appears elsewhere in this issue of the magazine. The Europafest that was held in conjunction with DallasCon (the second fest) was put together by Mark, so we are confident in his ability to do the job.

Now, if there are any of you who feel that you would like to hold a regional fest, well, we would like to hear from you. I would caution that such a fest is not easy to put together. Many facets must be considered, such as event site, timing (other conventions in the area, etc.), potential base of attendance, and on and on. GRD would support such regional conventions to the best of our ability. As we release more games, our support capability will increase.

If You Are Reading This...

If you are reading this you will know something few others will know--SE is being reprinted in the next 60 days and should be in the stores by mid-January. So there.

This reprint of SE is a version 1.5. That means the counters will have been redone, with some MINOR corrections to them. It is not--I repeat--NOT a Collector Series game. The maps, the rules, the charts, the box, and the OBs have not been reworked. I do not think we will have a problem with gamers understanding this since we have not redesigned the box, which would clearly indicate if it were a Collector Series game. When time comes to redo this game, a substantial amount of work will have to be done on the other elements of the game to bring it up to the standard that we have currently achieved.

Fact is, we have been getting endless phone calls from gamers, distributors, and stores asking us when we will have the game back in print. This demand has reached a point where it must be answered. So we have worked out the details for the reprint and this game will soon be available once again.

Remember, it is only a reprint with some minor changes to the counters. Do not expect to get a redesigned game if you elect to buy this title when you see it in the stores.

We are taking some extra steps to ensure our customers are not confused in this matter.

In December we will be sending a notice to the stores on the GAMA mailing list letting them know that the game will soon be available.

There are some additional facts that will be presented.

• Only 1,000 games will be released in this reprint.
• The game will only be available through retail stores. We will not be selling it through direct mail from GRD.
• This reprint will be the last time you will see the current version of SE, but a new Collector Series version will be done later.
• We will do FitE in the Collector Series before we do the new SE, and that will be some time from now. We do not have a publication date fixed for the FitE reprint at this time, but you will be kept advised as to when it will occur.

I suspect that the 1,000 games will go rather quickly, but I may be wrong--time will tell.

This reprint will not affect any other projects we are working on. This redo of the counters is being managed by yours truly and Victor Hauser (blame him if anything goes wrong!).

This should help the series get some more legs, but I am here to tell you we are on a good course, my brothers. In 1992 it will get better and better.

Winter War Update

Work progresses on this game. I have done an initial counter mix and sent it off to Gary Stagliano to edit. I should be getting his feedback shortly and will make the corrections to the mix.

I believe I have solved the problem we faced with the panzer division counters, as seen in First To Fight. In that mix we had some 11-6-10 counters that required us to use non-bold type face. This made the counters look too different. They followed the same format that GDW used, but I didn't like the way they looked. I worked on the problem and believe I have found a way to get bold face within the space restrictions of the counter overlay.

Rick Gayler is at work on the rules even as we speak. We will be lifting the cover on this game a bit in the next issue of the magazine. Sneak a peek there.

Everything You Know is Wrong

With the experience of First To Fight behind me I can report even more lessons learned (when will they stop?!), and a better production stream means that all the elements will be coordinated to get the release timing down. This should be evident when the next game is out.

The next major concern John Astell and I have is the publication schedule of the magazine. It is going to be up to Victor Hauser to help us in this task. After working with Victor on a couple of things I am very happy with what he has done and equally confident in his ability to get the magazine out.

Rick Gayler has been kicked upstairs in GRD to the position of developer to assist John Astell. This means that Rick gets more responsibilities and has more problems to solve, but that is what the fool apparently wants.

So ends another column of news and sweat. Gloryosky! How time flies when you're having fun.

NOTE: Re-subscription time is near. We will be mailing you a form and a stamped return mail envelope in the near future.

Next issue: Another look at the GRD production schedule.