From: Frédéric Bey You will find the pictures of the Lonato tournament there (click on 'Lonato,') Thanks again to you for the help provided. http://perso.club-internet.fr/fredbey/trophee.html From: Steven Weber Thank you Mr. Zucker, I understand your message, and the historical excercise of playing one of your games sounds challenging. I am looking at boardgaming again, due to the decline in the quality of PC gaming in favor of catering to the general public. I have had a strong interest in military history for years, including reenactments of Civil War Battles in the South and East, in addition to doing living history presentations for the public. I just turned 50, but am an amateur historian in between my duties at a major insurer in compliance and law. I am well read, but very interested in either civil war or Napoleonic gaming. Years ago I did Avalon Hill at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and own most of the older strategic games on PC by Tiller and Grigsby. I realize that the operational art of warfare is a different approach than the usual war of attrition and and victory objectives. Other than that I am married with a family of teenagers in a near suburb of Milwaukee. I enjoy competition, but I like to enjoy the gaming process for its own sake and to meet others. [Ed sez: You asked whether our games are suitable for solitaire play. This same question comes up from time to time. It is difficult to answer because in order to get the full historical effect, they should be played hidden (face-down) forces, sometimes with off-map force composition charts. The games were designed to be played with an opponent. That is where the true suspense and excitement come in. Of course, if you don't have an opponent nearby, you can still get a lot out of the game package. With almost all of our products you can use the game's set-ups and historical materials to do a historical run-through. This is particularly the case with 1806 and Highway to the Kremlin, which give you a turn by turn account of where all the forces were. And some people are able to 'turn off' their memory of the 'other side's' forces when they move! We will help you find an opponent in your area, at your request. We'll send postal addresses of OSG customers in your zip code and surrounding ones.] From: "Christopher 'Kit' Howard" I'm very excited about the depth and range of games you're offering currently. Not only Napoleonic games either. My understanding of the Napoleonic era has of late come mostly from games, OSG games in particular. I no longer wonder why Napoleon has such a lofty reputation. Please keep producing superb titles. Also I believe that earlier I placed an enthusiastic response for "swords around the throne" but I'm changing my preferred numbering in order to get directly from you folks. One thing I would suggest is putting full-color charts on your website that users could download, put cardstock in their printer, and print out those charts at home. These would be things that the printer who's cranking out the completed games would otherwise charge a hefty fee for and drive up the end price of the games. But if we could just print those out at home it would greatly enhance the visual value of the completed product at no extra cost to either you or the consumers. From: Pete Henninger I'm the new customer that you helped purchase the Sun of Austerlitz game on that last Saturday of the sale (I couldn't get Paypal to work so I left a message and you returned it) I received the game immediately that Monday morning. Well, I've gotten into play and I wanted to say 'Thank you' Kevin for getting it right. Thank you for hanging in there all of these years and continuing to work and develop your game systems. Thank You for moving the state of wargaming to an art form! I'm 44 and began playing wargames as a high schooler in the mid -70's. Subscribed to SPI's Strategy & Tactics.... I was fascinated with the whole process and even submitted my own design to SPI in 75 or 76, an Invasion of Sicily ... with very thoroughly researched campaign analysis from my father's West Point History of the Military Art Campaign Maps (I think you used the same set for some of your Sun of Austerlitz research). Graduated West Point myself in '81, taking an early retirement as a Major in '92. In addition to 3 1/2 years of line command time I spent 2 years as the G-3 Plans for the 1st Infantry Div (Fwd) in Germany --- I actually lived in Ulm for 4 years ('86-'90) and my youngest daughter was born there. As the G-3 Plans I re-wrote the GDP when we fielded M1's and Bradleys, but I was also able to wargame the plan on a regular basis ( a blast for an ex-high school gamer). I mention this because your map in the Sun of Austerlitz game has a very authentic feel to the military maps that we used there, same font for town names, same coloring for roads, etc. Again, I've walked, maneuvered, and wargamed that terrain for countless hours and your map has the best look & feel of anything I've seen yet! It actually conveys an accurate "feeling" to what is there. I also spent 2 years, '90 - '92, at Ft. Leavenworth in the Study and Analysis Center conducting gaming simulations for future forces and weapons systems. I was an Operations Research Systems Analysis officer & have a graduate degree in OR, so was able to gain a pretty good understanding of certain types of gaming systems. Once I left the service I was in the Printing industry until 2003, serving as Plant Manager, Director of Operations, VP of Operations, for companies like James River, International Paper, and oddly enough the United States Playing Card Company (largest in the world and makers of Bicycle & most of the worlds casino cards, both with their own line of games. While there we launched initial efforts into CCG markets). Now, as I said on the phone, I own a small engineering firm here in Houston. The reason I went into all of that is that I believe based on my experience with Sun of Austerlitz, that from a military (operational and planning), gaming simulations, and even a printing and product presentation viewpoint, that you have just simply raised the art of wargame design to a new level. The esthetics are just superb. The solid basis in history, and the supporting gaming system for the operation, make the game a pleasure to play. It's a treasure. I honestly had an emotional response when I played it, with just so many old memories tied up in so many different aspects of what I saw. Back to OSG News February 2004 Table of Contents Back to OSG News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Operational Studies Group 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