It has certainly been an interesting summer! So many things to talk about, it's hard to know where to start. First of all, I was surprised to learn that Medieval Warfare had won the ORIGINS award for Best New Historical Miniatures Rules for 1998. This is a singular honor, as I was completely unaware that I had even been nominated for the award. This, for a rules set that has a circulation of under 300 copies, to me is amazing. Once the Foundry edition is out, with a 2,000 copy initial print run, the rules will be much more readily available. As it is, they can only be ordered directly through me, although several game shops and hobby stores carry them, but there is no 'national' distributor, such as Brookhurst or Wargames, which handles them.

Next up, we now have two new services that have been added for SAGA readers and MW/AW players. The first is a gamer list. Once you subscribe to the list, you will receive via email all of the various 'letters' which have been going back and forth among the playtest groups, journal editors and list researchers. There has been some pretty interesting things written the last few weeks (some of which is included in this issue). If you wish to subscribe to the list, simply type in your browser http://www.GoreAMwar@onelist.com. This will connect you to the subscriber service. Type in the message box "Subscribe" and you are in. Thanks to Jevon Garrett for setting this up.

We also now have a rules discussion "Chat Room". Dave Armer set this one up. To log on, go to http://wargamer.com/chat/

We are presently using the 'room' at around 10:30 p.m. EDT until 11:30 or so. Feel free to join in!

An article on wargaming is on the most recent (Sept. 1999) issue of the Smithsonian magazine featuring long-time gamer Doug Mudd. Very nice to see our hobby getting such prestigious and wide-spread coverage.

Just this last week, I finished a course that I've written for WebED, a new on-line educational service for professional educators (www.WebED.com). The course, ten lessons of an hour each, covers military leadership and warfare during the Middle Ages, relying heavily on my book, articles and Internet links. This was a lot of fun and it is certainly different getting back into academics after all these years. This was the same course that I planned on teaching at SUNY Brockport until the funding fell through. Now it's on the web! If anyone is interested in putting together a course offering for WebEd, email me for the particulars. It's a lot of work, but very rewarding.

Our MW tournament at Fall In is slowly getting organized. We have six or seven 25mm players so far and four 15mm. Plenty of room for more. We still have over a month, so let me know if you want to play. Remember, this is a fun, low-intensity game. We even had one player at Historicon who hadn't even read the rules before playing! Jeff, Bruce and I are also going to have a couple of tables set up with pre-set terrain and troops for anyone who wanders by to sit down and play a quick game. We'll be there to guide them through the rules. One of the games will be an AW Rome vrs. Carthage contest. Looking forward to seeing you all at Gettysburg!