Welcome back after a year respite! And what a busy year it was, too. I thought the final issue of the Gauntlet would be number 21, so I issued refunds to those who had subscriptions beyond that point and I closed up the Gauntlet shop. I concentrated on the book import business and the quality and availability of titles that I carried grew, along with the quality and substance of the translations. Tom Hillman did an incredible job doing complete translations of the entire Russian Civil War series from AST publications (White Armies, Red Army, Nationalist Armies, and Interventionist Forces) and the RCW Air title. The RCW Air book is an incredible work in Russian, but what Tom did besides a complete translation, is he added notes and information to supplement the book. Thanks to Tom, I would submit that the book with his translation is better than the original book alone! I picked up a title from the Children’s book section called Kiev (or Kievan) Rus’. It is about the Russian middle ages period from the seat of power for the Rus’ people (these slavs would later become Russians) from the X to the XIII Centuries. This is no children’s book! The quality of the artwork is as good as any Osprey title, but this title contains 142 pages! In this issue, I’ve included the translation of the captions and some supplemental material so you can see for yourselves what is in the book. For any other questions, you can refer to my new web page: www.gauntletinternational.com I expanded the business into Soviet/Russian flight gear and Zvezda games (see one of the Ancients scenarios in this issue). Everything was going great and my inventory grew, then the FBI spymaster Hansen was arrested. This resulted in the expulsion of 50 Russian “diplomats” from the U.S. In response, the Russian Government expelled 50 U.S. members, ostensibly to do the most damage to U.S. intelligence collection inside of Russia. Unfortunately, I was swept up in this dragnet and expelled from Russia. I was not declared persona non grata, but the truth of the matter is that I cannot return to Russia. However, from the business standpoint, I continue to import books and games – it’s just that my overhead has grown immensely as I now have to pay my friend in Moscow to act as my agent and my shipping costs have quadrupled. The good news is that my prices only went up about 25% to compensate for all this. I cut my profit margin and limited my books and games to things guaranteed to sell, as opposed to the more exploratory books and lines (which required a higher profit margin from the guaranteed sales to cover the inevitable losses of exploratory products). All that is business speak and is meaningless for the gamers and historians who simply want the information and materials at a good price. I dropped all my militaria lines and am selling off the last of my Soviet Navy flags and flight gear. So, the U.S. took me back and I now live in Fairfax, VA. I work in the D.C. beltway, just in time for the terrorist attacks. I just happened to be in Moscow in 1999 when someone (terrorist?) was blowing up apartment buildings. L.A. during the race riots of 1992. St. Petersburg, Florida during some more race riots in the mid-90’s. It seems that violence and destruction is a part of my life that I cannot escape – always present, yet not threatening. I’ve had the pleasure of gaming with Scott Fisher – especially his rules and scenarios for Tac Skirmish. If you haven’t had a chance to play Tac Skirmish, you need to get yourself a copy and throw down with some 25mm Icon minis. Scott has a great setup in his basement and is very congenial about hosting games, as long as others bring dinner (which we always do). Now that I’m back in the U.S., my reasons for not continuing with the Gauntlet are not as firm. Thanks to Mike Crane, I have a set of rules that could use publishing. The Gauntlet is the best venue as they are a short set and play well. The good thing is that these rules also come with the graphics so you can use your color printer to print the planes you need to play. Don’t scoff! Mike did some great work on these planes and they are some of the highest quality 1:72nd planes you’ll see around. Mike sent me the ones he put together himself, plus I printed some and was very impressed. In any case, you’ll see Mike’s B-17 rules (based on a set from an earlier Gauntlet U.S. issue) right here in this issue. If you try them, you’ll find yourself a quick and very good game. You’ll see that I’ve done a little work on some Russian Civil War translations and OOB. I’ve included some of this work in this issue of the Gauntlet U.S. too. All of this while I’m currently deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. No, I did not have to learn how to ride a horse during this trip. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone from home, but at least I have my wife’s laptop with me so I can continue my translation work. My sincere condolences to those who are in pain following the September 11 terrorist attacks. I am glad that I was able to contribute, even in a miniscule way, to the justice laid down upon the terrorists. Good luck on those morale rolls. Back to The Gauntlet No. 22 Table of Contents Back to The Gauntlet List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by Craig Martelle Publications 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