1. Some 20 good men and true gathered at the Simon household the weekend of November 21 to discuss the status of the historical miniatures gaming hobby. And so was born the Historical Miniatures Gaming Society (HMGS). The HMGS will be run by a triumvirate consisting of Ed Mohrmann (Triangle Simulation Society, Raleigh, NC), Bob Luddy (a PW member, Washington DC area), and Dave Waxtel (Mikes Models, New York). Pat Condray will act as treasurer. Bob Coggins was present to represent the ORIGINS group ... the '82 ORIGINS will be on the Baltimore campus of the University of Maryland. It was agreed the HMGS will run the historical miniatures portion of the '82 ORIGINS. The Potomac Wargamers will act as the lead organization in setting up, coordinating, and managing, the affair. Thus the PW group will undertake the functions that Ned Zuparko so ably performed for PACIFIC ORIGINS '81. GENCON EAST is scheduled for July, '82, ORIGINS is in JUNE , and the decision concerning the support of the GENCON affair was left hanging for a while. 2. It's getting to be dues collecting time. The 1981 membership fee of $6.00 will probably be continued despite the recent increase in postal rates. Dues collection will be a bit more strict this coming year than last, when we waited 'till April for some guys to pay up. In 1982, he who isn't current by February is persona non grata, to be driven from the fold of PW in proper pariah fashion. 3. This month's REVIEW wraps up 1981. We'd like to thank the many contributors to the REVIEW whose inputs have allowed us to "fatten" the magazine to a minimum of 20 pages a month. We now know and understand the problems faced by the old COURIER crew in the days when COURIER was an amateur affair... we also know and understand why they gave up the ghost to eventually emerge as a professionally published effort. This current issue is the second good-sized one this year; the other was the July all-naval issue. The ability to produce an expanded monthly coupled with an occasional larger-than normal output is a direct result of the new readership we've picked up during the past year. And this, in turn, is partly due to the nice words COURIER has published about the REVIEW. Our new members have contributed quite a bit and, to them, a special thanks. 4. The Washington Gamer, the monthly put out by the Washington Gamer's Association (WGA), recently reviewed our REVIEW. Greg Becker, WGA editor, is also a PW member; he comes all the way in from Virginia to attend meetings. We are amassing data on the subject, and, one of these days, we'll review the WGA output. We do note a minor heresy in the Washington Gamer's writeup of the REVIEW, Our name was spelled in small, inconsequential letters, i.e., Review, instead of the fat caps REVIEW we so proudly display. Well, at least Greg didn't call our monthly a "zine", a term which is guaranteed to result in an offer of a fat lip. Nothing makes the bile rise within me as finding out I have been reading a "zine". I will, at first, give all periodicals the benefit of the doubt and term them "magazines"; however, when flipping through the pages and seeing that the editorial staff refers to its own product as a "zine" ', develop a fierce case of the tremblies, and drop the "zine" (ugh!) like a hot potato. Back to PW Review December 1981 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1981 Wally Simon 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