Clay and I are extremely excited about 1988, our second year of publication. Having ironed out many of the "wrinkles" in 1987, we feel that this, and the coming issues, will represent some of the finest written material for wargamers interested in the American Civil War. I personally read every letter sent to us over the past few months. Most were congratulatory, while others offered some good advice and ideas. We lost a few people who felt that we did not present enough "history" in 1987's pages, and a few who thought that we had "too many" historical articles (I guess that proves that you really can't satisfy everyone). Through the letters we received, I can safely state that we know what the majority of members want. Simply put, most members want more scenarios, suggestions on tactics and rules alterations, painting tips, flag and uniform information, and "meat and potato" statistics to assist readers in forming their battles using any number of rules sets. I am still incredulous over the fact that the authors and proponents of both ON TO RICHMOND and STARS 'N BARS have yet to submit any kind of article to help gamers who use their rules sets. Paul Koch and Scotty Bowden have repeatedly promised to rectify this, but so far have ignored their constituency among our members. I am pleading with members who use these rules to please submit scenarios and articles. It's a shame that someone would write a rules set and then not support it in the ONLY magazine exclusively devoted to ACW gaming! I might mention that the same has been true for THIS HALLOWED GROUND and BUGLES, BAYONETS, AND BANNERS - both of which advertise in our magazine. If you want people to buy your rules, give some scenarios for them -- it's FREE advertising! On a more positive note, our flag project is coming along slowly. With the tremendous assistance of Mr. Bernard Eble, a director of the Confederate Museum (Confederate Memorial Hall), we have photographed the first group of flags. These photos will be sent to our volunteer illustrators, with renderings to appear later this year. Some of the museum's collection has been covered in other sources, such as THE BATTLE FLAGS OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY OF TENNESSEE, but since that book is now out of print, we will work energetically at redoing many of the illustrations for our reader's use. Some of the flags in that book are incorrectly colored. An example is one of the flags used by the 5th Company Washington Artillery. According to the book, that flag had a dark blue field - WRONG!!! The flag had a sky blue field (I just looked at it in person) that, over the years, has turned somewhat green through age. Bob Trimble will be doing some 15mm flag renderings for those who can no longer find La Legion flags. He will be reproducing the basic battle flags for north and south and has come up with a brilliant idea for your tabletop armies. He will do artillery flags for batteries, with crossed cannon (I assume) and a letter designation for the battery (such as "A" through "M"). This might also be done for cavalry units. While not pretending to be renderings of the actual flags carried, these flags can help you sort out which battery/unit is which on the table. We have also been asked to do uniform illustrations with color guides. Mike Gilbert has volunteered to begin this task, and we hope to have a few examples per issue in the future. Some will come from already published sources, while others will be new to the reader. I would like to take a moment to thank all of our members who chose to contribute extra money to help us out. There were far too many to mention each one personally, but your donations will truly help us keep going. I would also like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Lloyd Eaker, Jr. of Dallas, Texas, who donated the membership cards through his PIP Printing business. Last, but not least, I would like to acknowledge Ryan Toews, Dean West, and other members who wrote articles last year, making THE ZOUAVE that much more interesting! Back to The Zouave Vol II No. 1 Table of Contents Back to The Zouave List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1988 The American Civil War Society 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