1. Subscribers will note that on the mailing address label, we've extended the subscription period for several months, thus allowing for the down time in late '96 that the REVIEW didn't come out. 2. The July, October, and November issues of '96 are lost causes we'll never make them up. All other monthly issues for '96 have been mailed. 3. The last issue of the REVIEW, February '97, contained an article by a PW member, John Shirey, written in WRG/DBM-ese, a little known and very obscure dialect of the wargaming world. I read and re-read the article several times, making absolutely no sense of it, and asked several bystanders if they could interpret the goings-on. No use. I finally asked John about it. John looked at it and his main comment was: "Oh, yeah, I shoulda..." In fact, John had a lot of "I shoulda's" in his comments. This, of course, did not in any way shed light on the already published article, in which his Kn(X) advanced, his Cv(O) charged, and his Reg Ax(l) marched around the field in the RGo, plying their respective trades. 3. Another of our PW members, Sam Hepford, offers in this current issue, a description of a Napoleonic-type campaign he's hosting at PW meetings, in which the French are trying to suppress a Haitian slave revolt. Sam's rules and his first article on the campaign were published in the February REVIEW. Sam's two articles remind me of a couple of articles published in the REVIEW long, long ago, each containing an historical summary of a battle, but never accounting for the particular rules ploys used to achieve a particular effect. For example, in the current article, Sam states that during a Haitian attack on the French, the Haitians turned the French flanks, and "the French were driven from the field." Was this the result of a good old-fashioned multi-dice melee, or merely the result of one lousy dice throw? In another instance, one of the French commanders, the good Colonel Patek, "was seen to note with admiration the manly courage displayed by his opponents" as they were fired upon by the French. Again, it appears that this was caused by some good morale dice throwing by the Haitian battalions, but we'll never know. Indeed, the size of the battalions isn't mentioned... how many figures? How many in an artillery crew? Most of the PW REVIEW subscribers are "rules hogs", and want to be informed of the nitty-gritty behind what goes on on the table-top. Merely to tell them to "read the rules" brings frowns to their usually happy, rosy-cheeked faces. To keep the subscribership in the happy mode , therefore, he who submits an article to the REVIEW should try to describe, not only the battle itself, but also how the rules procedures themselves affected the outcome. For example, after the battle described in the February issue was completed, I noted that at Sam's table, there was lots of discussion concerning the results of canister... evidently, the implementation of canister fire during the battle didn't meet with unanimous accord. I have problems with implementing canister fire myself... and there are probably others out there... Back to PW Review March 1997 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 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