It is interesting to see what our fellow wargamers are reading. Of course, I'm a little biased here, but this is about as close a survey as I can find on periods and habits and so on. Humor seems a universal attraction, but what an interesting list as individual preferences come into play. The following table shows a ranking of the top 250 articles in the MagWeb.com archive during the 2nd quarter 2002 (April-June).

(Editors Note: Russ included six pages of articles; I have taken the liberty of categorizing them, as best as possible, see below).

Congratulations are in order for MWAN as they grabbed the top spot with Sam Mustafa's "Designing the Anti-Simulation: Or 'How I learned to Hate Scale" article. Sam has consistently produced thought-provoking articles over the years. This one is in MWAN #116.

The runner-up spot was grabbed by a comic strip: Larry Leadhead. In fact, many of the top 20 spots were filled by the strip written by the talented duo of Doug Hamm and Erick Hotz. Their humor certainly hits the mark. They have their own website with more current comic strips (MagWeb.com serves as an archive for older strips) www.larryleadhead.org.

Third place also goes to MWAN for Orv Banasik's "The Rebel Yell" rules for the ACW. The actual article in MWAN #116 offered a much better layout that the bare bones MagWeb.com offers, but the inspiration for the rules shines through.

Obviously as you go through the list, there's a wide range of eras covered by an even wider variety of articles. The actual articles that appear in a quarterly list like this depends on what was posted in the archive during that time. Generally, new issues will receive more attention than previously posted issues. MWAN #116 and the specific Larry Leadhead strips were posted during the April-June timeframe. Ditto with many of the issues that appear multiple times.

During April-June 2002, we posted 76 issues or equivalents, 17 parts of WWII Operation Cartwheel, one convention report (Cold Wars), 15 book reviews, 20 news items, extensive WarLore section (14 articles) on Hannibal's Route to the Alps, two other WarLore articles, and two other articles. These are the ones that dominate the list.

MagWeb.com is running a proper Membership survey through the month of July and August and will release the results after we tally them. We last did this in 1999 and thought it was time to do so again. Stay tuned.

Editor: I did a count by subject/period and here's what we liked looking at during this time period. It would be interesting to see what it would look like over a full year. This is a small sample, granted; any surprises to you? I'm a little surprised that cartoons are so popular. Napoleonics and WWII are numbers one and two -- I expected that. Modern as number three? Ancients number four -- OK. We all seem to enjoy product reviews, rules and hobby discussions. What do you think? 

Napoleonics (40/16%)
WWII (39/15.6%)
Cartoons (34/13.6%)
Product Reviews (20/8%)
Modern (11/4.4%)
Gaming Accessories (11/4.4%)
Ancients (10/4%)
Rules Discussion (9/3.6%)
Hobby Thoughts/Discussion (9/3.6%)
French Indian War (8/3.2%)
Unknown (8/3.2%)
Editorial (7/2.8%)
Game Design (7/2.8%)
English Civil War (6/2.4%)
Colonials (6/2.4%)
Medieval (5/2%)
Humor Articles (3/1.2%)
WWI (3/1.291o)
American Civil War (2/0.8%)
Naval Wargaming (2/0.8%)
Book Reviews (2/0.8%)
Letters to the Editor (2/0.8%)
1st Carlist War (2/0.8%)
Wild West (2/0.8%)
Russo Japanese War (1/0.4%)
Sci-Fi (1/0.4%)

Please note the 250 articles are taken from a great many magazines available on MagWeb.com including some strictly historical 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