1. I've mentioned before that old copies of the REVIEW can be seen on MAGWEB. There are about 8 issues, dating from late 1997 to early 1998, on view. In the last quarter of 1998, MAGWEB sent PW a check for $58, the club's share of the MAGWEB's proceeds for the quarter. The previous quarter, we had received the grand total of $13, since there were only 3 issues on file, and no one was interested in them after a first reading. HISTORICON, in July, was when I gave the MAGWEB people the additional issues and when they posted them for viewing. Of the 50 or so magazines listed in the MAGWEB format, the big quarterly winners are MWAN, the COURIER, and the LONE WARRIOR. Each of these magazines receives, per quarter, an average of almost $200. I asked Mr. MAGWEB, Russ Lockwood, about the method he uses to distribute the quarterly proceeds. Dollar distributions to each of the magazines are proportional to the number of 'hits' they receive, i.e, the number of times someone logs on to the magazine. When you first click on the magazine title, to bring up the list of available issues... that's defined as a hit. And when you select a specific issue in which to browse, that's also defined as a hit. 2. For years, I wondered my most of my British friends never accessed the internet and signed on with a service provider. I finally found out why. (a) First, they must sign on with a provider, costing, perhaps, 25 pounds (over $30) per month (b) Second, when they dial in to the provider, the phone company charges them, since local calls are not free as they are here. (c) Third, once on the net, the provider then charges several pence per minute for every minute they're on-line. This means that the British system is not built for 'browsing'... and time spent in 'surfing the net' may be very costly. 3. In the August '98 REVIEW, I looked at the VOLLEY AND BAYONET rules. I recently played yet another game using the system, and I want to take back all the nasty things I said about the rules. After this last effort, what I'd like to do is substitute another set of even nastier comments about the rules. In short, they are bad! Horrible! Yuch! Pfeh! Ptui! The rules are not clearly written and there are lottsa 'holes' in the presentation, wide gaps, uncovered areas. Every game in which I've participated... over half a dozen... has resulted in a very boring, static, no-movement situation in which units are locked in combat for round after round after round. Perhaps if the chief author, Frank Chadwick, was present to host a game, all would run smoothly and logically... at least on the surface... as he papered over the holes, but without such guidance, it appears to be a losing situation. Unless someone can convince me otherwise, we'll give VOLLEY AND BAYONET a score of minus 3 on a scale of 1 to 10. Back to PW Review October 1998 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 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