We're excited and pleased to announce that we have come to an agreement with Kevin Zucker at Operational Studies Group to form a strategic relationship between GMT and OSG! This arrangement will phase in over time, as we at GMT essentially become the marketing, sales, and fulfillment arm for OSG, allowing Kevin to concentrate on designing even more of those outstanding Napoleonic games for which he is well-known in our hobby.

Operations will commence on October 1, 2011, when several OSG titles will become available for sale on the GMT website. Over time, we will add OSG's pre-order games to our P500 list, promote and sell their games alongside our own, stock the OSG inventory in the GMT warehouse, and essentially integrate the OSG game line as another terrific game series that we offer to all of our GMT customers. We're also hopeful that, with Kevin's games getting a broader exposure to the GMT customer base, that we'll be able to help him with game production over time, printing larger print runs and thus being able to decrease the retail prices on all of the OSG games over time.

So what's in this for GMT? Well, obviously, having more products to offer to our customers means potentially more sales, but that's not really the big motivation here. This strategic partnership brings us two big things, from my point of view:

1. At GMT, we are always looking for opportunities to work with talented designers who "fit" with our approach to working in teams, playing well with others, and listening and responding to our customers. Kevin's design talents and encyclopedic knowledge of Napoleonic warfare have brought us many hours of fun with his games over many years. So we're really happy to be working with someone as skilled as Kevin, and also to be working again on a different front with Mark Herman, who is a co-designer with Kevin on one of their game series. And, on a personal note, I consider Kevin to be one of the truly class individuals in this hobby - a genuinely nice guy - so I am thrilled that we have this opportunity to work with him.

2. We're also always interested in "filling holes" in our game line offerings. Until recently, we had very few Napoleonic tactical or operational offerings in our line. We felt, given the large number of our customers who are interested in the Napoleonic era battles, that we needed to make a major effort to address this situation. So, last year we added Richard Borg's Commands & Colors Napoleonic series to the line. Then a few months ago, we announced our first Nappy20 series project, Fading Glory, with VPG. Both of those series' play fast and have excellent replay value, and we are thrilled to be able to work on creating them and bringing them to you. But we still longed for some more traditional, "meatier" games on the era. And now, with OSG's grand tactical and operational games to offer to our customers, we feel like we really have a lot of value to bring you guys who love Napoleonics, across a pretty broad range of battles, systems, and treatments.

And what does it do for OSG? Three things, really, all having to do with freeing up Kevin's time from running an entire business by himself to being able to focus on designing and developing games. Specifically:

1. OSG's Library of Grand Tactical Battles will continue.

This ambitious series of Napoleonic Battles games will examine 70 of the most important battles of the era, in 18 volumes. The series uses a constant scale of 480 meters and 1 hour turns, brigade-level.

2. Kevin will team with master designer Mark Herman - someone with whom we are passingly familiar :-) - to create a new Series of Campaigns-5X to cover every theater of operations in Europe. This Operational Series will use the 5X Campaigns of Napoleon System, at 10-miles per hex, the same scale as Highway to the Kremlin.

3. An increased production schedule for OSG. Kevin's intended publication schedule for the first year "or so" includes four products:

-The Last Success (QuadriGame of 1809)
-Napoleon at Leipzig 5th Edition
-Campaign in France, Part I (Four Battles of 1814)
-Highway to the Kremlin 2nd Edition (1812 Campaign)

So, the GMT/OSG partnership is about to begin. We hope you guys will take a good look at Kevin's OSG line of games, and invite you all to come to the GMT website on and after October 1 and stock up on some very cool games.