Welcome back. Or maybe you're saying welcome back to the magazine and The Gamers brand after the transition. Many of you are saying "it's about time."

Plenty has changed, with The Gamers now under new management, MMP promoting The Gamers brand for retail sales, and new direct sales policies. A new threshold-to-publish pre-publication ordering system is going into effect. The Gamers Consortium is no more, and The Gamers is no longer a retail outlet for non-consortium publishers products. Consimworld now hosts an Operations magazine forum (www.consimworld.com, Discussion Board, Magazine Publishers Forum). In the time since I last wrote an In Brief, customers of The Gamers have seen the most sweeping set of changes the company has ever undergone.

The scope and meaning of these changes has been much discussed, so I'll touch on what has remained the same. Operations is the same. We've had a longer hiatus than I wanted, but now we're putting the magazine back on the rails. The feature content will continue to emphasize The Gamers titles; there is some discussion of making the magazine "more of an MMP house organ," but were not going to make Ops into an ASL periodical or otherwise back off from supporting The Gamers brand games, new and old. You signed up for subscriptions to Operations, and you're going to get what you paid for. Also unchanged, therefore, is my need for interesting and intelligent articles on these games. Send article submissions, letters to the editor, or questions to ops-editor@multimanpublishing.com or by snail mail to MMP's main office.

HomerCon is still HomerCon. Dean has announced 3-6 October as the time for our 2002 retreat. See the announcement on page 3. Goofy rumors about Dean selling the hut and HomerCon being cancelled reflect nothing but somebody's failed morale roll.

Udo Grebe's role is essentially unchanged. UGG is the official The GamersEurope branch, offering The Gamers and UGG titles, various discounts, and Operations subscription fulfillment for our friends across the water. See www.ugg.de for details.

Finally, as if I need to say so, the games remain the same. You have already had the chance to see the excellent physical quality of Operation Michael and Screaming Eagles in Holland, and from what I hear they're great games too. Remember, publishing the games that have been in design and development for years, while freeing Dean to do more design work, is one big reason for moving The Gamers over to MME Dean is working on several projects, including Case Blue and World War 2 in Europe for SCS. There are more good games to look forward to.

If Dean, the honchos, MMP, and I all have our way, the only changes you should expect now are improvements.

This just in:

Friends, Romans, Countrymen!

Let it be know that there will be a Circus Minimus Tournament at HomerCon this year. It will be a simple format with 7 races on Friday night, the winner of each race will then face off in a final race on Saturday morning. Each of the of the first 7 races will be balanced on the number of charioteers. We will use the basic rules. Sign up will be at HomerCon; there is no advanced sign up. If you have any questions or comments, please direct them hippodrome master Ric Van Dyke at ric.van.dyke@oracle.com. Hard Whip!