Yeah, so what have you done for us lately?

I have previously discussed the problems we had with the people who printed and who die-cut our counters. Well, I have found a company that should solve this dilemma. They will do the printing of our counters, boxes and maps. They will also die-cut our counters. They are doing more business with game companies as their high quality and on-time performance become known. As I understand, they were working for the DOD until cutbacks forced them to move to the private sector economy. All jokes aside, companies working for the DOD have high performance records. So, I contacted them and we entered into a contract. Starting with For Whom the Bell Tolls, we will have a new countersheet format, 280 per sheet. This gives us 40 more counters per countersheet. That is the up side. They cost more. That is the down side.

In my conversations with you it has become clear that an additional cost is perfectly acceptable if a marked increase in the quality of the game results.

You can see a sample of the type of counter quality I am talking about if you own any wargames produced by The Garners.

Most companies use what is called "process color" for their counters, as The Gamers do. We use "PMS direct," which gives you a different look. I prefer PMS to process color, and that is the way the counters have always been done in Europa games. This will continue with the new counters as well. No change there. The one thing that will change is the thickness; the new counters are 10% thinner. If you stack ten counters of your A Winter War or Second Front game next to a stack of the new counters you will see that it takes 11 of the new counters to equal a stack of 10 of the current counters. I had to laugh when the guy from the new company said, "Well, you guys don't have stacks that high, do you?"

Many other companies are doing business with this company, or starting to do business with them. The name of the company is SVC. They are in New Holland, MI.

The cost impact of this move will be about $10 to $15 dollars on an average game. For Whom the Bell Tolls had a target price of $50; now it is $65. That is what came out of the other end of the production tube after some hard work to keep the costs of the other components in line.

Another real problem is the price of paper. The price increases are averaging 8.6% per month on paper these days. Our print shop was put on a rationing schedule. We had a very hard time getting the paper for this issue of the magazine, and the wholesale price of the paper you are holding in your hands has doubled since this summer. Our suppliers have told us this will continue for the next two quarters, maybe more.

Finally, the cost of sending stuff is going up, as we all know. The USPS has raised the price of postage, and I will bet you that UPS is not far behind. I have just run the numbers for 1994 and GR/D spent $18,000 on shipping, mostly through UPS. If UPS tacks on 10%, figure it out.

Anyway, that is the good news about fixing the counters. I will be going to the plant in New Holland to give them original press-sheets so they can match the colors from the GDW series of games. They will then produce the matches and pass them on to me for approval. That will be done this month, January. We will be buying the dies to cut the counters and boxes, and will have to pay 50% down for FWTBT. Production time for them will be 28 to 38 days from the date they receive the film from us, and that should be in mid-to-late January.

If this all works out, the next game will be on the way to the preorder crowd in March. There will be a lot of stuff in this gamel

At the same time we do FWTBT, we will also run the corps and higher HQ counters for the German and Italian forces. The SF counter fixes for the Germans and Italians will be included on this sheet, too. Everyone gets this automatically, no need to inquire.

Yeah, so what else?

Well, Europafest is set up and ready to receive your reservations. This year we are in Philly and we have a trip scheduled to Aberdeen to visit the big iron monsters we all love so much. The company doing all the pre-registration work is Andon Unlimited. They have a toll free number, take plastic, and have a staff second to none to help you out with any questions or concerns you may have about Origins '95.

There will be demos of the WWI game and the first Glory game that we will be unveiling to get your feedback. The demos will be at the booth, or the Fest room. We have a tentative seminar schedule set and we have an early start up time for the Fest, Wednesday afternoon, which should get things rolling. We are ready!

And then there is the new game we plan to offer for sale at Origins: War in the Desert. This game will combine Western Desert, Torch and The Near East, with several other GE "things" thrown in.

The shape of the game at this time is four 280 countersheets and six maps, which, if I understand what Arthur told me, include the whole of Turkey, stuffing and all.

If the schedule holds we will do the equivalent of three Europa games, two Europa modules, a Glory game and, cross your fingers here, March To Victory, our first WWI game. Then we will decide what's next (I haven't told you about the secret game, yet!).