It is time to put The Gamers' Open Retreat on your calendar again. Quite a few folks have asked when it will be this year and last year's retreat was most gratifying (as well as a lot of fun). So, mark your calendar for 22-26 September in Homer. For those who were unable to attend last year (or have never heard of our retreat), it is a free from pick-up gaming event where you operate on your own schedule, play the games you want, and go as hard (or easy) as suits your temperament. It is a relaxation weekend for us a chance to just play a game for a change and meet with friends from all over. See you there.

Don Nesbitt has taken over as our Computer Network Rep. Time expended on GEnie and NVN became too much for me given the number of things I need to do around here. I ended up having to disappear for days on end and felt our players on those networks (as well as the Internet e-mail links) needed more consistent attention-so Don got that job as well.

Work has begun in earnest on Tunisia and 'Big Afrika'. (I welcome title suggestions for the latter.) The map research is coming along steadily. Anyone wanting in on the OOB work should let me know. Several are already working on these things, but more information is always useful. If you come to the Retreat this year, expect to see the maps for one or both of these games and possibly a playtest or two. Let me know if you can help with these projects.

At this writing, the last of the Enemy at the Gates printing is being done. I am glad to see that project put to bed-I can now cast the OCS rules in concrete and move on to other projects (such as the above). I hope players get as much out of EatG as we did. There were numerous and fascinating insights available in that game: the qualities (or lack thereof) of the armies involved, what they can or cannot do, the contextual relationships of things such as the German airlift that players might reject as a waste of time if considered in isolation. Have fun with it and the enormous effort expended on the project will have been worth it.

If you are interested in playtesting but have not signed up with Mike, please let him know. He is moving the backlog of submissions that developed before he came from my office shelf to playtesting at a decent rate. I know he needs more SCS and TCS testers.

If your local game store does not carry our games or if your store does not get the preview maps and box wraps (so you can see them early, if for no other reason), let Sara know here so she can get in touch with the store to see if they are interested.

A couple of you (that is, two) have complained about the number of historical articles we have been running. Unless I hear from others saying they would rather see them more often, I will run a historical article in at most every other issue. (Sorry, Boyd, this means yours will have to wait until next time.) For our writers, please send in more strategy and game play articles (we've gotten quite a few historical ones) as they will be published sooner.

The Enemy at the Gates pre-pub will be the last one we will run. The reasons are simple-Shirley (and everyone else here) is hard-pressed to keep up as they roll in, not to mention the effort involved in the mailing itself (which one cannot appreciate until they have personally stuck 3,000 labels on envelopes). That combined with our new bi-monthly game publication schedule means we can no longer afford the personnel to run pre-pubs. We will accept pre-orders, but there will be no additional discounts and no formal mailings.

As soon as this issue is put to bed, Sara and I will be leaving for Games Spectacular III in Eindhoven, Holland and the German Hexacon convention in Marksburg, Germany. I hope to see many of our European players there and have more interesting conversations with players of different backgrounds. I also hope to brush up my rather rusty German.