Welcome to the newly minted IAAPA Herald, our newly updated version of the former "Havoc". We hope you will take the time to surf through the pages, and hopefully see another side of Axis and Allies, and the membership and community that make this Club unique. This publication will be released four times a year i.e. quarterly.

I am Pelle (my alias in IAAPA is pelleplutt), I am 33 years old and am pleased to be your new Chief Editor. I live with my family in the city of Stockholm, Sweden. I used to play A&A on TheZone. When they closed down A&A at TheZone I was greatly disappointed and saddenned. I started to look around on the net for some other possibility to play A&A online (a heads-up live game online took 4-5 hours to play, allowing only 3 minute for each turn), but it was nowhere to be found. My Google-search-engine finally found something interesting, the IAAPA. What can this be? Oh, they are playing by e-mail. Can that really work?  

My first thought was, this is going to be a lot of moving and explaining...and also, how the heck does their dice-server/roller work? To my big surprise the Association promised a mentor to all newcomers. Great; but, will there be someone on the other side of the internet? I pressed the "send" button, on the web and declared my interest to join the club. Amazing! "Someone" did answer my email. A member with the name LEOTHELOP answered my email. This arrangement was incredible! I had millions of stupid questions but this was no problem as I now had someone to ask! It took him only one game to explain and make me understand the rules, in a very easy-to-understand manner. Thanks again Leo!  

Eight months later I was asked to run our Association's e-zine and who can say no to that? Is there any better thing than to join a gaming club full of nice people with the same interests? My vision of this e-magazine is to create a communication portal between the club and our members, and improve the sense of community.

This will involve 'highlighting' events, information, results and curiosities. On this site you will find information about our ever ongoing tournaments. You will find strategic discussions and also a new interesting member being interviewed in each issue. We will also take a look at the rankings of members and see who is on their way up the ranks (or those on a losing streak!). And of course, submissions on anything of interest to the community from our members. If you have any funny rolls, interesting maps, questions or stunning battles you want to talk about, please send me an email and make a contribution to our ezine. My e-mail address is: herald AT axisandallies.net (separated to prevent the robots from emailing me). At the end of this periodical, you will find a list of the people who run this club, and their e-mail adresses in case you need some answers or help with anything.          

IAAPA is now growing steadily. The club at present has 165 members and just recently the 14,000th game was started!!! (pelleplutt vs explosive). As Chief Editor, I think I speak for us all when I now welcome all new and returning players to our club (many years ago according to IAAPA's resident Curmudgeon, micwil, this was called boots and salutes). Since June this year the following members have passed the Final Hurdle:

Welcome to our new members (aka Fresh Meat; just kidding guys) !
Buckskinn88
coz3001
ffff
Gregory Pyle
Hierophant
Komp (returning member)
Legal Ease
PilotsDream
Red_Baron (returning member)
RussianBB
siberian_fox

spoons
SyrKai
Thijssen
Visionary
wolfblitzer 

I hope you all will enjoy your time and games here at IAAPA as much as I do. And yes, there will be frustration after your opponents’ inevitable occasionaly extremely lucky rolls, but that is just a part of the game. The next battle might go in your favour. Remember that the luck-factor is also what keeps this game so interesting. The better player will not always win against his opponent.

However, if it feels like the dice always favors your opponent, game after game, the chances are that you are playing better opponents and that it is you who need to learn more about the game. If you want to become a better player, visit the strategic section in our main site under IAAPA BBS, read the Heralds Strategic Corner and challenge better players! And most importantly, please avoid the mistake of blaming the "dice" and leaving our club due to frustration with the 'dice gods'.

Cheers
Pelle (Pelleplutt)
IAAPA Herald

The next issue will be released in February 2007.
The tournament information will be updated on a regular basis.