Howdy again, everyone! It's now closing in on a year that I've been at the reins of this here brand. In that time we have designed and released the Pine Box edition, "Shootout at High Noon", "Mouth of Hell" (sold out), and "Reaping of Souls" (almost sold out as I write this) sets, and you'll shortly be seeing the Revelations" set on the streets. That's 565 new cards since the last Rolling Thunder" release, including the new Improvement card type. We've also held numerous storyline tournaments, including the Madman's Secret tournament (see Rob's story on page 17) and, soon, the Kingdom Come tournament. I hope you plan to participate. At Gen Con, we had our own little Doomtown bar, Doomtown branded-leather coasters, free Shootout decks with demos, and our new Most Wanted World Champ chip case award with three hundred custom "Most Wanted 1999" poker chips courtesy of Norm Fraley at Doorntown.com. The Quickdraw League TM started up and quickly became the hottest thing in Doomtown since Sweetrock ousted Black Jack. The league is thriving across North America and will soon spread overseas. The fan clubs are back on track, with redemptions processed in 24 to 48 hours, new embroidered denim shirts, and other cool stuff coming. Better yet, we got out another couple of issues of this here newsletter, with one more due by the year's end. Heck, we rebranded the game as the Doomtown trading card game. Everyone called it that anyways, so why not? Hardly anyone knew it was actually the Deadland trading card game and "Doomtown" was the name of the Rolling Thunder episodes. So our esteemed designer Blake Beasley gave us the cool new Doomtown logo that graces the front cover. Last but by no means least, the Doomtown game is getting critical recognition it deserves. InQuest magazine gave it the Game of the Year award, and at Origins this summer GAMA gave it the awards for Best TCG and Best Graphic Presentation of a TCG. I think we done good. My deepest thanks to Dave Williams, Rob Vaux, and all of the artists and playtesters for a job well done. Which leads us to this issue, and this deaditorial that I write after hearing that Hasbro is buying Wizards of the Coast (see www.hasbro.com/corporate/index.html and click on "Press Releases" for details). This does not affect the Five Rings Publishing Group end of Wizards of the Coast. The plans for the Doomtown game have not changed; we're still doing everything we planned on. Boot Hill edition will come next year, to kick off the next story arc with the aftereffects of the Kingdom Come tournament. Ghost Town is the first expansion, and it looks to be a doozy. It's a time of change, but for those of you who've worked in the game industry, every day is a time of change. I guess I don't have a heck of a lot else to say right now. The summer cons are over, and my exhaustion has caught up with me. The October surprises are still on the horizon as I write this, so you'll see more next issue on that. The big one's in y'all's hands anyway. Until then, keep your pistol loosened. Back to The DoomTown Epitath Issue 3 Table of Contents Back to The DoomTown Epitath List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Alderac Entertainment Group 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