I've been absolutely swamped with well over 60 suggestions (Themes of 2011) for just six issues of Ancient Warfare in 2011. I've decided to pick one (V.1: Gaius Marius at War), as I have to start solliciting proposals for that issue. The theme for the Special has been set as well, though not with complete certainty. Next year is the 2500th anniversary (yes, next year, there's no year 0) of the Battle of Marathon, so that's almost a given. That leaves the themes of five regular issues for you to vote on:

On behalf of Dr.Mike Bishop, we're polling interest in a (re-)launch of the academic Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies (JRMES).

It's that time of year again where I ask the readership for suggestions for themes of next year. This method seems to work well even though, as I said last year, some make me "go bald with worry about appropriate photography..."

If you're a regular listener to 'a certain general gaming podcast' The D6 Generation, you'll have noticed that though they discuss mostly non-historical games, they are not averse to history. Craig Gallant especially has expressed his love for Romans on more than one occasion.

Ross Cowan added some of his own thoughts on Murray Dahm's article in issue IV.2. Read Ross's blog here.

By David L.Reinke

"A victory? What have we won? We've won a rock in the middle of a wasteland, on the shores of a poisoned sea."

– Flavius Silva in the 1981 mini-series Masada

I vaguely remember watching at least part of Masada when it was first broadcast in 1981.  A direct result of the record-breaking success enjoyed by Roots, Masada was part of that Golden Age of the Television Mini-Series when the viewing public had an insatiable appetite for long form epic dramas of historic events.  So long as it was “Based Upon A True Story” the audience would seemingly buy anything, and lots of it.

In addition to the podcast with issue IV.1, Ross Cowan posted some self-confessed rambling (yet interesting) notes on the Roman phalanx before the introduction of the maniple on his personal blog.

We're planning some changes in our production procedure. In preparation I'm moving editorial deadlines up. From now on the deadline for proposals always is always the 20th of every even month for the issue-after-the-next-issue. That's probably confusing, so I'll give an example. February 20th is the proposal deadline for issue IV.3 (IV.1+2), April 20th is the deadline for IV.4, June 20th for IV.5...

Ancient Warfare is now on the shelves of Barnes and Noble, Borders, Books-a-Million and Chapters throughout America. Hurray! It's just that we can only know anything about the success (or let's hope not: failure!) of this new venture through our distributor. Every time an issue goes to print, we get a print-order from the distributor, print that many copies and ship them off. Once a month we get a nicely printed statement with numbers and percentages. But we'd just love to get a feel for it. This represents a huge increase in our circulation, after all, and it's very exciting for us to imagine our 'baby' suddenly sit next to long established military history mags!

The British charity I CAN helps kids with communication difficulties cope and improve their skills. They run adopt-a-word, which allows you to 'adopt' an English-language word (GBP 20 each) of your choice for a year. You get a nice pdf certificate to certify you did so, and the money goes to the charity. I thought this a quite fun idea, so I went and adopted 'legionary'. I'm sure various Ancient Warfare themed words are still available.