An End and a Beginning

By S. Craig Taylor, Jr.
January 24, 2004

Here we are in the tail end of January and this is only my second Publisher’s corner this year. My, my, my, where does the time go? I trust that you have taken down your Christmas decorations. I haven’t, so, as usual, I’m early for 2004.

For the last two months, Jeff Billings, our operations ace and BATTLELINES™ designer, has been beside himself, a trick of his that never ceases to amaze and scare the heck out of me. One reason for his dementia has been that we replaced our old press with a new, improved one that will enable us to print our games faster, more efficiently and with better print registration and color fidelity. This has also meant that, with our old press out of commission (its drive mechanism melted and seized up) and our new one not yet installed, we have been temporarily out of stock of some items and could do nothing about it. This sort of thing just makes Jeff crazy. We finally secured the new press after a breakneck drive and a late night contract signing. Jeff had to take a sledge hammer to part of a wall (a job that, if you ask me, he enjoyed far too much) before the new press could finally be installed but now we have it and hip-hip-hooray!

Our lack of a press has prevented the introduction of some new products, which leads us to the other reason that Jeff has been acting even weirder than usual. He has been nervously putting the finishing touches on his Upper Echelon Decks for the Stalingrad campaign but the printing, as previously explained, has hung fire. These decks will represent the completion of the BATTLELINES™ Stalingrad Campaign, the first campaign in the series and, for Jeff, the conclusion of an incredible amount of work and creative effort that started with the first germ of an idea for this game. Good going Jeff; that ends that and here’s your ‘attaboy.’ Now, get in gear and start on the BATTLELINES™: Kursk campaign. Don?t make me remind you again!

These two Upper Echelon Decks will allow players to customize their Unit Decks into Play Decks that are, hopefully, more efficient and match the play patterns of the players doing the customizing. The Upper Echelon Decks also permit players who own all four of the Ready to Play Sets to play “Campaign Games” to better recreate the actual Stalingrad campaign in a connected whole.

Soviet Drive on Stalingrad Campaign Card	Axis Streets of Stalingrad Campaign Card
Soviet General Chuikov Card	Axis General-Feldmarschall von Manstein Card

Originally, we were going to release the Soviet and the Axis Upper Echelon Decks as separate items but, instead, we are releasing the Stalingrad Campaign Upper Echelon Set. The Stalingrad Campaign Upper Echelon Set includes both of the Upper Echelon Decks plus a third deck, and the instructions. The third deck, which we are calling the “Stalingrad Replacements Deck,” contains ‘extra’ cards that we released along the way that some of you may have missed, cards that contain corrections that can be used to replace flawed cards that were printed earlier in the print run, etc. The brief sheet included with this Set instructs where to move various cards and what cards must be replaced, now that the entire campaign is completed. The Upper Echelon Set will retail for $29.95 and should be available sometime next week.