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From the Editor: New Year, New Writers, New Other Stuff
In the final weeks of 2007, Frank Branham, Alfred Wallace and Larry Levy all mentioned that they needed to switch to “at large” status instead of writing columns on a weekly or biweekly basis. That’s a huge chunk of the BGN columnist pool to replace!
In a search for possible replacements, I checked my bookmarked game sites and quickly discovered that the current writing staff of Gone Gaming would fit perfectly in the open slots on BGN—synchronicity in action.
At their request, I’ve ported many of their Gone Gaming articles into the Boardgame News archives (up through Oct. 2006 as of 1/1), leading to the odd situation of BGN having published Shannon Appelcline prior to Rick Thornquist even starting the site! History is easy to bend and shape online, but this note will serve as record of the change in case future historians ponder this odd situation.
Thus, the new columnist line-up for Boardgame News will be:
- Sunday—Valerie Putman
- Monday—Scott Tepper
- Tuesday—Melissa Rogerson / Fraser McHarg
- Wednesday—Dale Yu
- Thursday—Shannon Appelcline / Aaron Lawn
- Friday—Kris Hall
- Saturday—W. Eric Martin / Matt J. Carlson
I’ve posted the beginnings of the Nuremberg 2008 preview, once again divided into a Publishers A-M section and a Publishers N-Z section. Admittedly the preview is skimpy on its launch date. Other tasks have occupied my time the past few weeks, but I’ll now be able to start plowing through my game notes and get that info posted!
As is the yearly tradition, Gone Cardboard has been scrubbed clean of all titles released in the previous year. I’ve also removed titles that have been hanging around for months with no updates from the publishers, such as those from Café Games, 3am Games and Chessex. (Another false Wiz-War sighting, alas.) I’m still waiting for revised dates from publishers, so don’t be surprised if you run across a few release dates from 2007.
In case you haven’t checked Gone Cardboard recently, the latest titles to be released include BattleLore: Scottish Wars (Days of Wonder), Hamburgum (Rio Grande Games), Age of Gods (Asmodée Edition), Rattlesnake (Fantasy Flight Games), and MidEvil 3 and Zombies!!! 6.66 (Twilight Creations). You can find all of the 2007 releases in the Gone Cardboard Archive: 2007
At the start of 2007, I announced plans for a few features that have yet to appear on BGN. While I still have a long list of additions and changes that I plan to make, I’ve learned that they often take more time and work than I anticipate, so news about future site improvements shall wait until they are present site improvements.
In my Dec. 25 column, I wrote about the BGN game drive for soldiers and the packages that I mailed out on Saturday, Dec. 22.
Amazingly, one of those packages reached its destination in less than a week—despite traveling over the Christmas holiday. Here’s the note I received:
| Hi Mr. Eric Martin, my name is Harrison Zamudio and I am stationed on the USS Harry S. Truman currently out on deployment in the Middle East.
Today I received the package with the games you sent and I must tell you they really got our whole division happy and excited. People back home usually send out snacks and candy and all the packages are usually about the same, but the one we received from you today was by far one of the best we have received so far. Some of the guys here have played some of those games before and there’s already people playing them right now as we speak. As you can imagine, being out here gets boring real quick due to the fact that there really isn’t much to do. We work about 14 hours a day, then we’re off and we usually stay up for about 2-4 hours trying to entertain ourselves and look for things to do to try and stay sane and relieve some stress but everything gets old real quick. These games should help us enjoy our two hours of game time and they definitely look like fun judging by the way some of our guys are looking right now. We would all like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for remembering us and being nice enough to send us those great games. |
And once again, my thanks to BGN readers and members who donated during the game drive!
Posted by W. Eric Martin on Jan 1, 2008 at 04:00 AM in Notes from the Editor / 1132
Comments:
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Thanks for the welcome, Eric. And what a great thankyou note! It’s good to know that the games are appreciated and are being used. Posted by Melissa Rogerson on Jan 1, 2008 at 08:24 AM | #
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We have Valerie… and now Melissa. It’s great to see the feminine side of boardgames represented so strongly. I think we all look forward to getting this very important perspective on a “doubled” basis… which has previously been erreonously underrepresented in the boardgame community as a whole. Good luck to all the new columnists! Ryan B. Posted by Ryan Bretsch on Jan 1, 2008 at 12:52 PM | #
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It’s sad to be going off of regular status, but it’s great to see that the site will continue to be in good hands. Those who haven’t checked out the Gone Gaming site in the past will be very pleased when they see the quality of the writing. It’s a great move for both groups. Thanks for listing the new lineup, Eric--now I finally know Aaron’s last name! And let’s hear it for Valerie, the last surviving member of the original seven. Whether that makes you the best of us all or just the craziest, future historians will have to decide! Finally, I certainly don’t intend to be a stranger to Boardgame News; I promise to be just as strange as I was in the past! Posted by Larry Levy on Jan 1, 2008 at 01:07 PM | #
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I’m really happy about the new entries ... I’m sad about Larry departure ... was always a pleasure to read his posts! I’m one of the oldest one here now (I was on BGN since from his starting!) and so I’m happy to give a big welcome to all this “new” columnist.
good play to all!
Posted by Andrea Liga Ligabue on Jan 1, 2008 at 04:33 PM | #
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Thanks Ryan, Larry and Liga. Larry, I do hope that you will continue to be just as strange as ever. I would hate to be an enabler for you to stop. Posted by Melissa Rogerson on Jan 1, 2008 at 04:55 PM | #
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