It hardly seems a year since we put out the first issue of The Grenadier, but four issues later, here we are. We've learned a lot in the past year, struggled with and overcome a staggering number of production problems, and had some fun while we were doing it. Now we're starting in on our second year of production, and this is a natural place to stop, look back at our first year, and decide what things were good and what things weren't.

We've discovered that certain of our articles have been especially well received by our readers. Military history articles, particularly those by Frank Prieskop (see the Hungarian article in this issue), are sure-fire winners when it comes to reader response. My Two Cents, the regular design column by Frank Chadwick, is another article that consistently fares well in comments from our readers. On the other hand, some articles have not done so well: one of our scenarios suffered badly from insufficient playtesting, and you readers quite properly called us on it.

Besides continuing with the old winners, we plan to start exploring other areas of reader interest. When we started The Grenadier, we inherited a lot from the previous magazine, The Europa Newsletter; consequently, a lot of our emphasis has been on WWII games, particularly Europa games. A number of readers, however, have expressed interest in seeing different types of articles on different subjects. So, beginning with this issue, well start trying some new subjects. Naturally, we welcome your comments, opinions, and ideas about this plan.

This leads me to my last topic: a perpetual plea for help on a perpetual problem: a lack of articles. What many gainers never seem to realize is that they may be the play experts on a particular game. Once you realize that game reviews are not written in heaven, that your opinions can be as good as anybody else's, writing an article becomes much easier. And we do need articles; virtually all of the articles we print are written by our readers. There's more information in the back of this issue on how to go about it. Next time, instead of waiting for an article to come out on your favorite wargame, why not write it yourself'? Remember, if you don't write it, we never get a chance to print it.