Welcome to MWAN Magazine, Issue #130. We've had a busy few months! Everything seems to be going well for us, though, so knock on wood, we'll continue! I mentioned in the last issue that I was running for a position on the HMGS East Board of Directors. Of all the candidates, I came in dead-last in the vote counting. Congratulations go to Fred Hubig, Bill Rutherford and Pete Panzeri for winning the three slots on the board. Very well done! Bill Rutherford is a returning member to the board, having already served as Secretary, and will, I'm sure, continue to provide excellent service to the organization. He puts more work into HMGS East than the organization has a right to ask, and we should thank him for it! Fred Hubig is another great choice for the Board of Directors. He ran Fall-In! last year in Baltimore, Maryland, and has great leadership skills. His service to our hobby and history in general is evident in his Georgetown Center for Living History work. He is well-known in the field, and an excellent choice for the Board of Directors. Pete Panzeri is the third of a great bunch. He's a US Army Major (Infantry), and has not only served his country in war and peace, he's served us as the Director of Miniatures at the Origins Convention and turned it into something outstanding! He brings a fresh desire and fresh insights to move our hobby forward, and will no doubt make future Board of Directors' meetings rather colorful and exciting as time moves forward. Congratulations to these three! Serve us well! No sooner did I jump into the HMGS East race, but I was asked by friends in the Adventure Games Industry to be their campaign leader to run for the Board of Directors of the Game Manufacturers' Association (GAMA). I agreed, and at the Origins Game Convention in Columbus, Ohio, in June, I was elected President of GAMA, and the rest of the slate of candidates that ran with me all won as well. My experience in the card game, role-playing game and fiction side of the house helped me get elected. What it means for us is that there's now a historical miniature gamer in the GAMA Board of Directors, and with luck, I can bring our issues more to the forefront. Wish me luck! David Jackson of True North Miniatures in Canada called me a month or so ago and asked if I'd like to work with him in that company. I had recently left Noble Miniatures, and was looking for a new spincasting and mold making experience, so I jumped at it. Kathy, Mike and I (the three principals in Legio X, Inc.) decided that it was worth doing. Dave sold us the World War II 15mm early war lines, the start of a 28mm World War II early war line, and his excellent line of 1:144 scale World War II aircraft. It looks like World War II will be our thing! Dave will be continuing to work with us, helping us develop the lines, and move forward. He's also going to be our sculptor liaison, as he's got some of the best guys out there, and we don't want to mess with the magic! Dave will continue to own his 15mm Napoleonic range, and sell that separately. Our first foray into the vendor hall at a convention with True North Miniatures will be at Historicon. It should be fun! In the last issue, Issue #129, Pete Panzeri wrote an article about the state of the historical miniatures hobby. In it, he referenced a seminar by Heather Barnhorst at the GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, back in March. Heather called me a while after Issue #129 came out, and expressed some concern that her seminar content was mis-represented in Pete's article. To set the record straight, she's allowed us to print the seminar notes in this issue. It's not only to set the record straight, but to get the information out there. It's an excellent seminar on how to sell historical miniatures in a games retail store. First, she points out that many stores are not ready for historical miniatures, and to try them would most likely lead to a money drain and no profit. She goes on to show that there are retail stores that could benefit from historical miniatures, and how to carry them. I think it's good reading, even if you're not a retailer or potential retailer. It allows us to see into the problems of the retailer and how they can possibly be solved. MWAN Magazine has now produced three issues under the new format. We've learned a bunch on how to make things smoother, and slightly more on time. We have suffered, even up to this issue, with being slow in getting the magazine to press. We are taking steps to make it more timely. For our lateness, I apologize. Our articles are nothing short of outstanding every time we run an issue. The success of this magazine in solely on the shoulders of those creative people who are willing to take the time to write articles, rules and reports. In this issue, we've got George Knapp's DDay game, we've got GHQs excellent World War II MicroArmourŽ rules (lite edition). You can be pushing tanks and charging positions in no time with these rules. James Manto takes us back to the roaring 20s again with a second look at his Gangster's Project, and Sam Mustafa shows us the trials and tribulations of writing a rules set. This is just a small sample of what you'll find in this issue to get you excited! I very much encourage any of you who'd like to write for the magazine to do so. Not everyone has a rules set that they can publish, or a how-to article. Each and every one of us, though, has played a game and had a good time doing it. Why not write us a report on how the game went. What rules did you use? What figures did you use? What tactics worked and what went horribly wrong? You might think that it would be too self-indulgent to share these experiences. After all, it may be exciting to the gamers, but to other people? Remember, we're all "the converted!" We love to read about this sort of thing. I find myself getting excited to play Romans reading Chris Hahn's Roman Civil War battle report. If you've got a painting technique that you think is good, or a way to make interesting terrain, we'd like to see that too. Rules are always welcome. We know that not everyone writes rules, but we're happy for those that do. Some rules writers are worried about copyright if they publish their rules with MWAN Magazine. We're not out to take your creation. We'll publish your rules as you send them to us (edited and graphically designed for the magazine, of course). Once they are published, they are protected by MWAN Magazine's copyright. That copyright only protects you. It doesn't restrict you from doing anything. If you want to publish the rules at a later point, feel free to do so. They're your rules, and you don't need permission from us! In fact, many people use MWAN Magazine as a "testbed" for their rules. You can put out a not-quite-finished set and see what feedback you get. There are hundreds of people who read this magazine who are into the very same period and scale that you are. Get their feedback, and make your next version that much better! Our copyright allows us to publish your work in our magazine, and it also allows us to make a compendium in the future and reprint your rules there. You are free to do whatever you like, including selling them to a company willing to buy them. In short, feel safe with us. Digital photography is a great tool for our hobby, too. You've noticed that we can now get rather good results from digital photography in the magazine. The pictures reproduce well! When taking photos of miniatures, use good lighting, as much as you can get. Use a macro-lens (usually a setting on your digital camera) for close-in shots of miniatures. Make them high resolution images. We can't use the small one's, I'm afraid. Don't worry about converting to black-and-white or sizing it. We'll take care of all of that. It will make your articles and rules sets look great and visually entertaining. Give it a try! I mentioned going to the Origins Game Convention earlier in this editorial. I had two reasons to go. First, I was running for the Board of Directors, but second, I was helping out Uncle Duke Seifried (good of Uncle Duke!) run his amazing Lord of the Rings series of miniature games. It was quite an event. Uncle Duke set up six huge games. He had the Battle of Helm's Deep, the Battle of Pelenor Fields and the Battle at the Black Gates, with absolutely spectacular terrain. In front, he had three smaller battles that happened in the books but did not show up in the movie. The Battle of the Lonely Mountain, the Battle for the Greenwood, and the Battle of Loth Lorien were all displayed with equal splendor. Mike Cosentino and I, along with a few volunteers, ran the evening games while Uncle Duke and Frank Chadwick ran the big games during the day. The rules used were Frank's modified Dwarf Wars rules, that worked very well for a convention game. They were quick, decisive, and things started to die right on turn one! I had one player come to me and say that he'd play, but the last game he was in, he moved his figures for the whole game and never fired a shot. He sat down and smiled all the way through our game! Back in Issue #128, we ran an article by Steve Winter on How to Run a Great Convention Game. I wish more people would read that article before putting on a convention game. If they did, we would have a lot of happy convention goers! I know that I've been complaining about this and that over the last two editorials. This one, I'd like to point out a phenomenon that I am pleased to report. While I joined the GAMA Board of Directors, sitting at the top of the Origins organization and looking down, I could see nothing but a smooth running convention. While working down in the Miniatures Hall, I was working as the lowest level volunteer and seeing the chaos and mayhem that happens at all conventions. There's always so much to do, and no way can a small bunch of people handle every problem. Yet, somehow, they do. I am pleased to report that despite all the headaches and problems thrown up by the convention itself, or the management thereof, the volunteers made the show work. To many of the volunteers, it was a frustrating experience. People were given titles but no job. People were given jobs but no information on how to do it, where it was to be done, or even why it needed doing! As I said, chaos reigned supreme. On the Miniatures Hall floor, though, it was those very same volunteers that stepped up and made the whole show run. Four people come to mind that I'd like to single out for praise: Monica Hobbs, Neil Brennen, Bob Giglio and Roni Giglio. It's not just that they were the ones that I saw the most. They ran the Miniatures Hall, despite poor direction, and were able to give the conventioneers an excellent experience. If you asked any of the convention goers what they thought of the organization, I'm sure many would laud it, saying that it was well run and that they had a great time. These four, along with a host of other volunteers, made the convention a success. We can do things better at Origins next year. Of that I'm sure. Still, we wouldn't have a next year if it weren't for the work of these volunteers. I've since learned that the Miniatures Hall was not alone. All over the convention, problems were encountered, and it was the volunteers, regardless of job or training, stepped in and made the convention goer feel like they had a good time. Well done, my friends! Well done! Back to MWAN # 130 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2004 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com