While some of you are shaking those gift boxes under the tree to detect the rattle of dice, The Gamers is getting ready to enter its tenth year of bringing you games for the table (not just the shelf). As you can see, next year's game schedule is ambitious, with every series but the OCS represented. (OCS fans: I hope DAK and Hube's can keep you busy just a bit longer.)

If you follow the Game Ratings Chart, you may have noticed some changes. No game titles showed up in italics in the last two issues. That was a problem with reformatting or font substitution somewhere downstream. Other changes are intentional. I no longer enforce the exclusion of long-out-of-print games or magazine games. The voting, including games that received only a few votes, shows some interest in rating magazine games. Finally, I may raise the number of votes a game needs to appear on the list. Taken together, these minor policy changes should mean that the games that more than a handful of you are interested in will get space in the main list, regardless of their publication date or format.

A big apology and mea culpa to all of you who a) know how to read and b) tried to read some of the error-riddled material I included in issue 26. The fault, of course, is mine, not the authors'. A few guys have written to offer proofreading help. Thanks very much. I have proofreaders; what I need is to resist the temptation to swap in articles at the last minute and skip parts of the proofing process.

HomerCon was a lot of fun, with wall-to-wall gaming, hilarious trash-talking, socializing, and chip-eating. Along with these usual passtimes, we had visits from some of "the competition." Ed Wimble and Rick Barber were there with their forthcoming Summer Storm, a Gettysburg game focusing on command and morale. And yes, the map is going to shine. Kevin Zucker was on hand also, playing the 1997 edition of his Napoleon at Bay. While still immediately accessible to series veterans, the game includes new design ideas even compared with 1807: TETE. See Kevin's article in this issue. You can order Napoleon at Bay through The Gamers since Operational Studies Group, Kevin's new company, has joined our direct-mail consortium.

Now that I've piqued your interest in other publishers' titles, let me remind you to get your orders in for A Raging Storm and Semper Fi! On the topic of orders, we are in the alpha test of our new order-handling/customer-tracking software. This software, developed by a customer volunteer, should help keep us from a repetition of the order fulfillment melt-down we had this past summer.

Rounding out the 1997 product line (so to speak), the Christmas Countersheet this year has something for everbody. The remaining TCS artillery markers, airplane counters for the earlier TCS games, destroyed bridges for CWB, breakdown regiments with different action ratings for EatG and DAK (for guys who must break down those Italian divisions), the rest of the SPII errata counters (the ones Dean missed last time), the two errata counters from Gaines Mill, NBPtD Union cavalry with "+" weapons on them, units for the SP variant originally published in Ops 6 redone with values for SPII, and a whole bunch of vanity counters. The latter include some "unique" ones, such as:

• Opponent's Brain (in case he needs one).
• A Can of Whupass (in case he deserves a good whuppin').
• A few Me-262s, Me-163s and an AR-234 to adorn your OCS games. Don't set up the Me-163 in Crete (it has a range of 4 hexes).
• Steiner's Platoon (for guys who have watched Cross of Iron too much).
• A firetruck for the TCS.
• A 1T condom counter (the required last token in the Stalingrad airlift in EatG): Hmm: I see a bordello unit tie-in here somewhere.
• The usual assortment of guys making themselves Civil War generals.