After many years, there's a new name on the top of this page of Europa Magazine. Much to my surprise, Rick Gayler has decided to call it quits as editor. As of right now, we're not sure exactly how things will shake out, but Rick will finish up TEM 47 himself while things get sorted out.

Rich Velay has agreed to take over as Rules Court judge and jury. Rich is wellsuited for the job; he has turned into a Second Front rules expert and this is the game that is currently generating the most questions.

I'll leave Rick his farewell address for next issue, but I'm sure everybody even remotely involved with our series will miss Rick's incredible Europa talents and energy level.

With Rick and I splitting duty plans were to get the magazine back on schedule by the middle of the year and we still think we can do that. Of course, this is the same thing we said at the start of '95. We might have done it this that year but "Clash of Titans" did indeed turn out to rival the Beast of Revelations (as Phil Mason aptly described it in TEM 44) in ways we never planned.

One course that I personally think is not an option, however, is to settle for a fair magazine on time instead of a very good one (presumptuous, aren't I?) a little bit late. We can always catch up on the schedule, we can't make up for a bad issue.

And what about my opening question "How did I get this job?" I'm still trying to figure it out myself, but I think I hear Rick laughing at me.

About this Issue

For this issue we decided on a special Finland theme and put in just about everything that has accumulated in the files involving that country. If you like A Winter War this is probably a good issue; if you don't it's probably a flop. I tend to like theme issues because if I get interested in a particular game I only need to pull out one back issue instead of a dozen to find the article I want.

The fact that the material in the magazine comes from reader submissions leads to some strange situations. "A Summer War" was written as a scenario for Scorched Earth and that's how we have basically presented it, updating it to map 35, but with no other changes.

We also have Jason Long's "New Toys for the Winter Wonderland" that explains how to use the most current Finnish order of battle into SE. We considered trying to integrate Jason's changes into Lars' scenario, but decided against it. That way you don't have to mix any counters from two different games, something that bothers me even when I suggest doing it. I'm never quite sure I'll get them sorted back correctly. If you must have the latest research incorporated into "A Summer War" -- well, you can have a nice personal project melding the two yourself.

Our lineup of contributors has an even more international flavor than usual. Our authors include:

Lars Wistedt - Sweden
Sven Ake-Bengtsson - Sweden
Chris Riches - England
Rich Velay - Canada
Murray Quarmby - Australia
Peter Rogers - Tanzania

My hat goes off the our Swedish contributors. I can only imagine the challenge of writing material such as theirs in a second language. I can imagine editing it, but that's another story.

Upcoming

This issue closes out this year of TEM, er, last year of TEM. There's plenty to look forward to in the next six issues. Next time we'll sport a For Whom the Bell Tolls theme along with Victor Hauser's transplant of the SF air system to the East. After that will be the Sicily scenario in a summer double issue (48/49).

Alan Tibbets and Jim Broshot have been doing some outstanding playtest work on "Sicily". After that a special naval issue (50) and one of the east front scenarios - all subject to change, particularly if something juicy shows up in the mailbox unexpectedly, like this issue's scenario did. As we can, we will give priority to some War in the Desert articles if they are available.

We're trying to upgrade our graphics a little, as you hopefully can tell from this issue. We'll try to keep moving along that learning curve through the next year. Actually, between producing this thing in Iowa and Virginia, I don't have a clue if the pictures and maps will even approach being readable. If they are not, please be assured that we already know.

Scenario Playtesting

As I scan the newly arrived TEM #45, it occurs to me that some of you may wonder just what that playtest report is supposed to be. We had a lot of excellent playtesting on "Battle for Rome," however, I was repeatedly frustrated in reading the playtest reports. Things such as "In our game, I thought the Allied air TBFs were just about right, but so-and-so thought they were too high." I wanted to scream, "So were you the Allies and your opponent the Axis, or what?" Think about it. It makes a difference.

I also wanted to say, "Thank you for pointing out the typos, but WHO WON YOUR GAME?"' I finally said. "Enough!" We need to standardize our feedback. I worked up a playtest report form. Having long ago learned in my real job that no one would follow written directions on how to fill in a form, I made a sample that showed what we envisioned as a useful playtest report. This is what showed up in TEM 45.

These (blanks) will be going out with the scenarios we send to playtest groups. Combined with a completed play aid sheet (victory points scored is probably the most important info) this should help our development of upcoming scenarios. Incidentally, most of the comments included on the mock form were real playtester comments.

Revision Time

With, as I write, War in the Desert somewhere in the production and delivery pipeline, we're thinking about updating some of the already published scenarios for Western Desert and Near East. If you have played these, we would like to hear from you. Let us know what works and what doesn't. Don't let us make the same mistakes twice.

If It Worked for Churchill...

In TEM 45's EXchange, Mark Royer discussed the challenge of the physical mechanics of GE. I'll disclose that my own personal plan is to hire twelve comely English gals and let them push the counters around with pool cues like I see in those Battle of Britain movies.