Autumn is upon us and our mighty HMGS chapter has indeed been busy. First off, the editor's baton has been passed to me, Mark Parker. As your new editor I'll do my best to continue the great tradition of quality from my predecessor Bill Heizer. Bill has been a good friend for many years and his work as Editor of The Messenger indeed set a high standard. Bill would work long and hard on layouts and content, often writing most of the articles himself when promised work from other members never materialized. (Sony Bill I) Bill has since returned to college to add to his degrees and further his career. This new busier schedule has forced him to give up the Editorship. I just hope my tenure as Editor can' be as good, and I join the other members of HMGS in wishing Bill all the very best! Onward to New Business The biggest event for our chapter in Autumn, is of course the HMGS/PSW convention. Steve (Lonely Guy) Verdoliva has once more bravely stepped into the breach and is Convention Manager. If you wish to run a game at the con or need flea market or retailer tables please contact Steve for table space and availability. In fact, if you have any questions at all please contact Steve. He gets very lonely at his store and would love to have ANYBODY call him. This year our Convention will feature a new activity. We are starting a new award "The President's Award". This new citation will be an award for the best game put on at the convention. Judging will be based on Terrain, Beauty of Figures Used, How Did it Play? (You can have a beautiful game, but what good is it if everybody did nothing but argue?) and Overall Presentation. The judging will conclude Sunday night, and the winner will be announced in November's Messenger. Once again, if you have any questions at all Steve is eagerly waiting to hear from any of you. Again this year, our mighty chapter sent a sizable platoon to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to attend Historicon. Steve Verdoliva has written recon report of this convention. As a past attendee I heartily recommend going to this con! 1 And no matter how many of us go, "Momma" Nacchio always feeds all of us the greatest home cooked Italian dinner ever. This woman has a heart of gold, is always happy to see us, and treats all of us like family. This HMGS/PSW tradition is worth the trip by itself. One last comment; we often compare our chapter to the other HMGS chapters and feel a bit like the proverbial lost orphans. HMGS/East is sooo much bigger, IiMGS/South is sooo much more organized, HMGS Tornado Alley has better conventions etc. Do you want to know the truth? We are a GREAT chapter. Our membership usually hovers around 150. We're not a giant, but we are larger titan some others. IHMGS/East is bigger and richer than us true, but have you seen an HMGS/East election? They hate each other! They spend more time screaming and making accusations than they do playing wargames. They don't have elections, they have a coup detats! Have you seen our elections? We get together and anybody who wants to run for an office says so, we all say "works for me" and then we ask around for a show of hands and the candidate wins. Steve calls this our "Haitian Democracy" style of elections. Yes, its crazy. But it works. When the HMGS/National Board came to us asking for money to help fight the Anti-Lead Hill we didn't argue, we all said "Works for me' and pitched in. The Board members were shocked at how civilized we were. (I petition that "Works For Me" be adopted as our chapter motto.) You want friendship? Take our cons. We don't have conventions, we have love-ins. I have never had so many backslaps and "Good to see ya's" as I have as when I'm on the main floor of either of our two cons. Wa have about $5600 in the bank and no bills. This makes us more solvent than 90% of IHMGS. We stage 2 successful conventions a year that make us money. We stage regular Game Days that support local hobby shops. Not bad guys, not bad at all. Back to Table of Contents The Messenger August 2001 Back to The Messenger List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by HMGS/PSW. 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