1. In September, Fred Haub and I spent a weekend at Dave Waxtel's home, across the river, in New Jersey, from New York City. This issue contains descriptions of two battles in which we engaged at the Waxtel residence. Dave is a publisher... he owns a fimn called Quantum Printing. And Quantum Printing has published a series of exceptionally successful wargame rules sets: TACTICA Ancients era by Arty Conliffe ARMATI Ancients era by Arty Conliffe SPEAR HEAD WW II by Arty Conliffe FIRE & FURY American Civil War by Rich Hasenaeur The latest Quantum Printing effort is CROSS FIRE, also by Arty Conliffe. Going on the basis of his past publishing record, it would appear that Dave has another winner in CROSS FIRE, which sets out an extremely unique approach to WW II squad-level gaming. During our visit, we tried an impromptu application of the CROSS FIRE procedures to a Crimean War game in 25mm. The basic distinction between the two setups is that CROSS FIRE applies to the actions of single stands, each representing a squad, whereas our adaptation had to cope with multi-stand units, i.e., battalions. Don't be surprised if Quantum Printing follows up CROSS FIRE with a multi-unit game. This is the technique used by the WRG organization... first, you hit 'em with WRG Ancients, 1st Edition. Then you follow it up with 2nd Edition... then 3rd Edition... and you go all the way up to the 6th Edition. Then you start out with DBA, a new concept. Then you publish HORDES OF THE THINGS, the same game, but "different". Follow that up with DBM... the same game, but "different". Then it's DBR, the same game, but "different". And so on. Reminds me of all the rules I've developed over the years... the same game, in essence, but "different". 2. The PW September flea-market was a complete bust. It's a good thing our rent is paid for the rest of the year. It's beginning to appear that the only way PW will survive is for all of us to write a letter to Jane Fonda, asking her to ask her hubby to donate a million, more or less, to PW for the good of the hobby. This seems to be the year of 'giving'... Bill Gates gave Apple around $150 million, Ted Turner gave the UN a billion or so. Perhaps it's PW's turn. Back to PW Review September 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