As usual a mountain of work has delayed this PA. It is only likely to improve because I am giving up a lot of my work, but it will take me some time to recover my energy. Game Kit News Les Quatre-Bras: This game and Le Beau Soleil d'Austerlitz have been advanced into the slot behind Deathride, since I want to get on with designing the Waterloo and Eckmuhl versions. Mike Siggins is starting colouring the rosters. Gesta Regis Stephani: the downsizing has begun to take effect with the card back now handling all nobles. Some element of chains of strongpoints may yet prove possible giving us something akin to the GO element of We The People. But the reality is that the topic is not going to occupy my attention for a while. Chariotlords: Looks like a Winter 1998 release from CoA. Death Ride: Mars-La-Tour: The illustrations are now complete, and the final rule re-writes being done. I will do one more test series from newly assembled counters. I am bound to say I think our illos while not of Vae Victis quality (there are at least three levels of shading on those beauties) are handsome little fellows - de Vasey's Consular Guard is particularly fine. We have found some difficulties with the new Epson ink-jet printing processes and this techno-block sits plainly in our way. The work on Death Ride has prompted me to purchase some Franco-Prussian 15mm figures to do a 3D version. The cross-over from counter to stand of troops exposes a lot of the differences between the two arms of the hobby. I will have to prepare an article on the topic. The Withering Girls - I'll tell you what you don't want, what you really really don't want! Wholesale Withering Even the Americans are beginning to experience the effects of the Withering, and have added a few wrinkles of their own (inventive fellows to be sure). The baleful effect that Games Workshop's exclusive policy had in the UK retail scene is now mirrored in the US on the distribution front with Wizards of the Coast setting up its own distribution network that may pull product out of the other hobby distributors' hands. Bereft of the WOTC product the smaller distributors are less able to trade profitably unless in a monopoly position. You will remember that The Gamers have withdrawn from selling via distributors. In this case Homer has not nodded. Wallet Withering On top of this we have massive price-creep. The cycle of low sales, lower print runs, higher prices, lower print runs has continued until we are so far down the demand curve that price inelasticity is setting in. Ever alive to the jive Clash of Arms produced the enormous Home Before The Leaves Fall (£75 plus here) on a limited run and very high price correctly identifying a luxury market to be plucked. Of course these big games are never going to attract the newbies, but then again they will make money (on present trends). Though sadly a large number of them will never be played because of the loss of value of "de-minting" the games. Typical runs of 2,500 have backed off to 1,500. Brain Withering This seems to have set minds racing and, if I understand the plan, GMT are now proposing to set up groups of 500 gamers who will advance fund game production at (in the case of Kamikaze the Dan Verssen Pacific air game) $40 while the rest of us pay $55. This brilliant piece of marketing means the very people who would pay $55 are the ones who get the lower price, and the rest of us, who would not have bought at $40, do not buy at $55 - nice one GMT. However, Gene Billingsley gets his $20,000 in his back pocket to fund the printing, but in so doing he (notionally) foregoes $7,500. Work that out as an interest rate! Loan sharks would not charge that much! And yes he too has a $95 game in his range, now I hope you are all going to promise me you are not going to buy these games? Cardboard Withering Moments in History's ziplock All Quiet on The Western Front? is selling for over $40 (where a boxed game was until recently). Is it "worth" that much? Well, (donning my J.M.Keynes mask) it is worth what you will pay for it. Some folks get heavy about cardboard content (one chap telling me he would not pay more than £10 for a DTP game because it had very few components - and they were all paper) others work on the principle that its the game they are buying. The trend is up however, and if that's what it costs to produce it and make a few schekels for the publisher that is where the price will be - unless of course even less sell.... (see above). ...But all is not lost All of this pulls the boxed/ziplock well away from an impulse buy, leaving the magazine games as a key feature in providing accessible lower-cost games. And fortunately Command continues to produce good stuff at a low price, although I still have not subscribed. Vae Victis is now costing about £4 which compared to what you get for £40 reflects the way the fundamentals of the business are in deep trouble, and how Vae Victis has got it right. And let's not forget DTP games, where for a bit of work you access games designing with enthusiasm and knowledge. There's a couple of ideas for GMT. Doom, Doom, Doom It looks like Spearhead games (owned by John Vanore) is looking for a purchaser as cash-flow bites his bum. Their highly playable and demanding ACW games by Peter Perla will be sadly missed. Spearhead kept their prices pretty low, and the evidence is that there was no demand elasticity from which they could benefit. MagWeb A big hello to all those of you reading PA on MagWeb. MagWeb is a Web site on which subscribers can access articles from a very large number of magazines. The concept being that for $5 a month you can read twenty magazines (well forty-five actually) for what would be the price of two (at best). The publishers all benefit from a pool of hits. So that when you consult magazines that you would not otherwise buy or see you are giving the publishers the "gain" they have from putting the magazine on the service. Does one lose a few subbers? Inevitably but I reckon the gain outweigh these losses. MagWebbers should note a key difference between PA reviews and those in other magazines. Our reviews are supposed to be exactly that - the game reviewed honestly by the reviewer trying to extract the issues. Many reviews seem (to me) to be a laundry list with praise for the designer/publisher ("...another game from Dean Essig, need I say more?" well yes, actually you should). PA does not work on the basis of a fulsome exchange of squeals of joy or seeking the ego-enhancing world of consensus. This can mean that a game about which you are very positive gets a negative review from us. That's subjectivity for you, and if you can put together a good review (of the game not our review....) we will publish it as long as (a) it is interesting and (b) it views the game as history. This issue sees two reviews of The Gamers' products. The Gamers are a company I have never had any time for (the reasons are not material but what I have played I have neither enjoyed nor respected) but Marcus Watney and David Fox think otherwise, and off they jolly well go. You can e-mail MagWeb at magweb@magweb.com. As Pat Collins recently posted on Consim-L: "Of course, the issues of Perfidious Albion, a sort of English Paper Wars, may be worth the one month fee all by themselves. The editor never leaves you wondering, "what does he really think about this". You know, beyond all doubt." Amen Brother! It is also worth pointing out that like many English people I suffer from an incurable interest in bad puns, pastiche, and general word games. Just remember, you are only prematurely bald once! I hear that John Lynn has a new book out on the wars of Louis XIV to complement his book on the French Army to be reviewed herewith soon. This is one of the great unsimulated areas, on which topic Vae Victis have gone for Denain 1712 for their next magazine. And I still have to play Les Croisades and Meuse 1940. SIMULACRUM is a new quarterly journal of board wargame collecting. The first issue will be published in April 1998. SIMULACRUM will publish articles of interest to board wargame collectors, such as: how to organise a board wargame collection why is one game collectible and another not game production variants and runs game genealogy, i.e., what games are related reviews of the books and publications which purport to list published board wargames hints on where to look for collectible board wargames, and how to buy and sell at auction current trends in collectible board wargame prices and availability definitive lists of board wargames by company, by subject and by date detailed descriptions, including images, of collectible board wargame components comparative reviews of wargame systems discussions about the defining characteristics of board wargames SIMULACRUM is edited by John Kula, a board wargamer since 1969 and a collector since 1990, who has just finished two years as editor of Strategist, the monthly newsletter of the Strategy Gaming Society. The first issues of SIMULACRUM will follow a standard format of 48 8-1/2" x 11" pages, printed in black and white. They will be shipped airmail, unfolded in manila envelopes. Contact John Kula Editor, SIMULACRUM, 4020 Haro Road, Victoria BC Canada V8N 4B2 or email: johnkula@islandnet.com Merger, She Wrote News that the Small Furry Creature Press have merged Sumo's Karaoke Club with Games, Games, Games (said upon good authority to be a games magazine) shocked the Hobby (writes Eric Breathless our Man in The Stands with a Thesaurus and a Yorkie Bar). Over the years Mike Siggins has established Sumo as a strong brand providing PA style reviews of the fluffy Euro game market. Had the World heard the last of the Siggster? Apparently not, as he will continue to write a small Sumo session in the new magazine. But a small Sumo is like a kindly Geoffrey Boycott - nature knows of no such creature, so things will have to change. The exchange of eight pages per issue for eighty is certainly going to leave a lot of unsatisfied punters. Rumour hath it that "Mad" Mike Clifford is plotting a replacement magazine.... but I reckon the Jacobites have a better chance than Mad Mike. Step forward Kiltie Extraordinaire Stuart McDagger and take up the burden of the Siggoid One. Games Sale Time to cut some of the slack here at Foulenough Hall: copies of Glory, Battles for North Africa, Battles of Waterloo (GMT), Shiloh (West End), Die Macher, 2nd Fleet, 3rd Fleet, 5th Fleet and A Famous Victory. Send me your offers, oh........and a mint still shrunk-wrapped 1809. Gulf Crisis 8 Marcus Watney is holding Gulf Crisis 8, a political, diplomatic, military megagame, on 9 May 1998 contact him at POBox 745 Headington, Oxford OX3 7YT if interested. Back to Perfidious Albion #96 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com