1999 was a good year for Matrix Games especially play by email games. Simply put the internet is proving to be the perfect medium for spreading Matrix Games to a world audience. To give credit where it is due Loren Miller ran the first PBEM "Giants of the Deep" in the early 1990's. I was not on the web at that time but it looks as though the game used a variation on my 1992 rules and focused on world creation. At this time the web page describing it is still up. Loren's game was followed by a lull of many years till Paul Hayes started running his first game in the summer of 1999. Paul ran USSA: THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION OF 1917 IN THE USA. The game was about an alternate history in which the Bulshevik revolution happened here rather than in Russia. Eugene V Debbs acting as Lenin and with Al Capone stepping into the role of Stalin. Calvin Cooledge lead the White cause from Texas and the Europeans meddled but in the end the revolution was safe. The game was free flowing and open ended. In the end this caused its end when it got too big. Sadly we will never know if the Red invasion of Canada worked! Dylan Alliata jumped in next with MAD FORREST: THE ROMANIAN REVOLUTION OF 1989. I started to play in this but my email when down in December and missed some vital turn. Strangely my inactivity appears to have saved my character's (Ceauscescu) life – better than he did in real life! I started DAR AS SALAAM: THE 1880 BRITISH INVASION OF THE LAND OF PEACE in the winter of 2000. This game was the first to use my late fall 1999 rules (which are I reworked in the winter of 2000 to the present rules on my web page http://www.io.com/~hamster ) This rather bloodless colonial game saw the rise of Dylan's character to the status of the Mahdi, allowed Paul's French imperialists to take over real control of the country and allowed Dave Hutchen's character to espouse Ayatollah Khomeni's ideas a hundred years early. Paul Hayes returned to run VIETNAM 1946 about the French attempt to retake Indo-China. Which is still being played as I write. When it is done we will do a debriefing on it in THE MATRIX GAMER. Paul started using my late 99 rules unmodified this time and found that they were so easy to run (pat myself on the back – pat pat) that he has started another game THE INFERNAL ENGINE about an alternate history in which Babbage's steam computer was actually built. The Vietnam game is following a fairly concise story line while the Infernal Engine game is rambling about the whole Earth. What does the rest of the year hold in store? Well more and better by the looks of it! Mark McKinney wants to go next with a game about war in Ancient Korea. I am gearing up to is and X-files like game "We're from the government...we're here to help" that will be done a turn two days! This one should be over in just two weeks. Then John Cash is thinking of doing a game set during Passchendale 1917. Which I believe will have all of us playing soldiers in a single platoon trying to survive one of the worst offensives of the war! John will do this using the "You are there" rules included in my latest version of the rules. These games jump from trouble to trouble rather than being as open ended. I am certain that more games will follow. So as I said. Things are looking up for Matrix Games! Now we need to build the stadium so that "they will come…" Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #15 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Chris Engle. 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