We are extremely proud of the impressive array of individuals who have agreed to serve on the various International Gamers Awards committees.  All are extremely qualified, knowledgeable and respected within the gaming hobby.  Each and everyone have extensive experience in the playing, reviewing and critiquing of games.  

The members of the Historical Simulations committee are charged with the task of recognizing outstanding Historical Simulation games, which are commonly referred to as "war games".

JOHN BURTT

John D. Burtt is the current editor of Paper Wars magazine.  The 55-year old father of four (and one grandchild!) is a former U.S. Marine sergeant and a Vietnam veteran.  He holds advanced degrees in nuclear engineering (his day job) and military history.   He's been active in board wargaming since accidentally finding Avalon Hill's Midway game back in the mid 1970's.  Over the years, he's written game reviews for Campaign Magazine, Wargamer, Fire & Movement and Berg's Review of Games.  He's also contributed military history articles for Strategy & Tactics, Command and the Wargamer.  He's designed two games - 3W's Battle Cry (man to man scenarios in the Pacific) and S&T's Nicaragua (jointly with S&T's current editor Joe Miranda)  He has been president and editor for the Avalon Hill Intercontinental Kriegspiel Society, edited Pacific Rim's magazine CounterAttack, and written chapters for Greenhill's Book's four alternate history books, Rising Sun Victorious, Third Reich Victorious, Cold War Hot, and Dixie Victorious.  Prior to joining Paper Wars, he directed the Charles S. Roberts Awards each year and is currently the Awards chairman for the Strategic Gaming Society.

JON COMPTON

Jon Compton is currently editor of Fire & Movement and former editor and publisher of GameFix magazine. He cut his wargaming teeth in fifth grade on the likes of PanzerBlitz and Richthofen's War, and over the course of his wargame career has designed or developed well over fifty games.  When not wargaming he likes to cook, watch Adult Swim, and read books about mathematics, physics, economics, politics, conflict, and Jeeves and Wooster. Although his views are considered controversial by some, he particularly wants to see wargaming explore modern conflict and broaden its scope by using more experimental systems that incorporate asymmetric decision cycles and socio-politcal and economic influences, consequences, and outcomes. He is also an advocate of what he terms the "holistic design approach," which describes a design methodology in which system design stems from a particular topic perspective that models the unique features of a conflict from a known perspective, rather than simple application of existing designs broadly across topics, genres, and eras. In real life Jon is a political scientist and is currently finishing his PhD at Claremont Graduate University. He is an expert in non-state actor violence and international conflict and has developed several models of violent non-state actors using systems of differential equations as well as agent based models using Netlogo ABM tools to model emergence of fourth generation warfare and use of weapons of mass destruction. He has done extensive research on the roots of terrorism and the characteristics of various terror group types. He has also worked as a consultant for various defense contracting firms and is assistant editor of International Interactions Journal.

DOUG EDWARDS

Doug Edwards' interest in military history goes back as far as he can remember.  His father and uncles all participated in the Second World War and he grew up absorbing their stories.  So his initial interest was WWII.  He played my first wargame around 1971 ? but he cannot recall whether it was AH?s Waterloo or D-Day!  He gravitated to SPI & GDW, but played everything he could get a hold of and find opponents for.  His high school chess club sponsor was a wargame fan and ?chess club? was a thinly veiled cover for wargaming.  He spent several hours after school playing wargames every day during his last two years of high school.  College cut into his gaming time, but opened his mind to historical periods that held no prior interest.  24 credits of his undergraduate degree are in history, and he was a science major.  Weekend ftf gaming binges at Penn State were Saturday affairs that started in the afternoon and often lasted into Sunday morning.    A few years after graduating and getting a job, marriage intervened, but his wife was understanding about his wanting time to play games ftf & solo.  He had some good ftf sessions in the mid-80?s, but it was hard to work out mutually agreeable schedules.  His wife was also very understanding about visiting Europe four years in a row and spending a lot of time stomping around castles and museums.  The Edwards' began a family in 1991 and, consequently, his gaming activity declined.  He managed a trip to the local game store every few months just to see what was out there (never coming home empty handed), but only soloed a game or two a year for nearly 10 years.  His reading over the years (he discovered that you can feed an infant and read at the same time) continued to fuel my historical curiosity.      Doug stumbled upon Grognard a few years ago, and that re-kindled his interest.  A map of a yet-unpublished Bulge game there in the winter of 2001 really grabbed his attention and he was pointed to ConsimWorld, where he has become a regular contributor.  His posts are always insightful, informative and well-thought out.  Doug has attempted to make up for lost time and has acquired about 80 games in the last year.  About 1/3 of that number was released in 2002 and his plan is to spend all free game time with those games.

BEN HULL

CHRIS MILNE

Like many of his age in the UK, Chris was introduced to the world of fantasy gaming by the Fighting Fantasy books published in the early 1980s. It didn't take long for that introduction to become a pre-adolescent fling with Games Workshop, and an interest in WW2 and military modelling eventually led him to computer wargames and his first board wargame: Avalon Hill's B-17, Queen of the Skies. More solitaire games followed, but an advert in The General for West of Alamein, featuring a Matilda, hooked him on ASL. Chris occasionally considers designing a game, but the drive to put anything on paper has thus far lost out to the desire to play other people's designs. His gaming interests are eclectic, frequently driven by whatever history he is currently reading, but operational WW2 games always generate some interest. He has a love/hate relationship with the monster game, but it is rare that he can devote enough time to appreciate them fully.   Outside gaming and history, Chris has a keen interest in sports, is blessed with a wife that not only encourages him to play games, but plays them herself, and pays for his hobbies by counting beans.

KEVIN MOODY

Kevin Moody began playing board wargames in his early teens, under the tutelage of his cousin (the infamous "family member/Strategy & Tactics subscriber").  The bug bit pretty hard, but several years later the demands of college and the enormous errata faced without a Moves or General subscription convinced him the proper thing to do was to donate his collection to the Salvation Army.  So in 1981, some lucky underprivledged youngin' was happily chewing on the pieces to SPI's Campaign for North Africa.  In 2001, one of several nostalgia searches on eBay was for "SPI" and was amazed that so many old games were available from so many non-estate sales.  A seller tipped him off to ConsimWorld, and the rest, as they say, is history.  Or maybe that's what we should call his bank balance.  He's now semi-retired, so life's demands aren't what they were 25 years ago, but nature cursed him with an intense dislike for solitaire play.  He likes historical games from nearly any period and scale as long as the demands of the rules and playtime are met with tense, thoughtful game play and give the players the illusion of authenticity."

WALT O'HARA

Walter "Walt" O'Hara grew up a classic military brat (Navy), thus became intrigued by toy soldiers and military stuff in general.  Being the second son of a rather bookish officer who likes to read history, and at one time a wargamer, the influences were there from early on.  Walt's dad was an original SPI subscriber.  This did not lead to an early acquaintance with CA, Destruction of Army Group Center, and the like.  However, Walt still has memories of his father explaining the difference between infantry and cavalry symbols in a game of Napoleon at Waterloo (SPI) in the first of several attempts to breed his own wargaming partner.  There's not much else to do in the Winter season on Adak, Alaska (except play basketball, which Walt loathes to this day). Walt re-discovered some of the classic boardgames in his teens; Squad Leader was above the roleplaying racks.  It looked intriguing and more importantly, a LOT of game for the money.  Panzer Leader followed, then more SL gamettes, then various Avalon Hill/SPI games like Starship Troopers and Swords and Sorcery.  Like a lot of guys, fantasy/science fiction is a natural doorway into "harder" games, and Walt bought up a lot of the early microgames (Metagaming, Steve Jackson) and larger boxed games, Science Fiction being his literature of choice.  Historical boardgames followed as a natural consequence; Walt's collection now boasts more than 600 titles of various genres, periods and formats. Now that he has attained that lofty status of "adulthood" according to society's lights, Walt works as a Systems Analyst for a large Beltway Bandit firm with three initials in the Washington DC area.   Happily married with two children, Walt has sadly had to reach the conclusion that work is neccesary to support two bad habits-- staying fed and living indoors.  Isn't it funny how your family levies some expectations on you in that regard?  This doesn't leave a lot of time for face-to-face boardgaming pursuits.  Still, Walt remains active in the hobby, designing some (Itty Bitty Battles, currently, Sable and Scarlet), playing some, running the Play By Email Emporium (http://pbem.brainiac.com), writing some reviews and variants (Paper Wars, the Gaming Outpost, RPG-NET, Vindicator), and generally, shooting off his opinions to anyone who will listen and many who won't.  Walt is a big proponent of Play By Email gaming; he considers the Internet Revolution (and Email, and Boardgaming utilities like Aide De Camp and Cyberboard) to be the best thing to happen to wargaming since Jolt Cola and aerosal cheese.  Walt's other passions are card games (NOT with regular playing cards) such as Illuminati, NUTS!, Tank Commande, Dixie, Eagles, Groo and the Three Stooges.  Walt is also a passionate fan of small format or "Micro"-wargaming of various genres; his favorite games are the kind that can be played through quickly and to a decisive conclusion in a short time period.

PETER PERLA

Peter Perla has been involved with wargaming, both hobby and professional, for over thirty years, an involvement sparked by a lifelong interest in military history and games of strategy. A frequent player of commercial wargames in his misspent youth, he had already published two articles in the hobby press by the time he was a mathematics student at Duquesne University. After earning a Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon University, where his thesis dealt with a mathematical combat model, he joined the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) in 1977 as a naval operations research analyst. By the early 1980s Dr. Perla had worked on several navy campaign studies, designed a naval game, documented existed navy wargames, and led a study to define the principal uses of wargaming and identify some of its fundamental principles. Over the next several years, he participated in nearly a dozen major navy and Marine Corps wargames, including the Global War Game, and served as an analyst and then as chief analyst for the POM wargame series. His published articles include "What Wargaming Is and Is Not," coauthored by Raymond T. Barrett, which won second prize in the Naval War College Review's annual Hugh Nott Awards and has been reprinted several times by the War College as part of a pregame package for players participating in Newport games. Based on his hobby and navy wargaming experience, Dr. Perla authored the book The Art of Wargaming, published by the Naval Institute Press in 1990. This book has been used as a textbook at the Naval War College, West Point, and Air University, and is considered one of the standard references in the field. Dr. Perla is regarded as one of the navy's leading experts on wargaming and its uses in defense research and training. Since the publication of his book, Dr. Perla has branched out into business gaming, codesigning (with Kathleen Robertson) a major game on the shipbuilding industry in the United States, as well as one dealing with the business aspects of navy program management. As Director for Interactive Research Products at CNA, he manages a group of analysts and media designers involved in the design and use of interactive multimedia as well as wargames. Through the years, he has continued to write for the hobby press and has served as a contributing editor to several major wargaming magazines, including Fire and Movement and C3i. He has been a playtester and rules editor for a number of published games, was the developer of Unconditional Surrender (published in The Wargamer in 1984) and Bodyguard Overlord, and the designer of Bloodiest Day and They Met at Gettysburg (all for Spearhead games) , as well as the campaign game of the Risorgimento trilogy, published by GMT.

ELIAS NORDLING

Elias Nordling lives in Stockholm, Sweden, works as a technical reporter, and is 31 years old. He might be one of the earliest examples of being introduced to the wargaming hobby via the computer. The perpetuator was Eastern Front 1941, possibly the first computer wargame ever, that came with his 1982 Christmas gift, an Atari 400. He was instantly hooked.  Somewhere around the same time, he accompanied his father to a SF-convention, where he discovered the joys of hexagons via the space combat game Starfire.  From there, it didn't take long for the enterprising young man to track down the combination of the two and find out about historical boardgames. Since then, his game collection has grown to over 750+ games, but he's a player, not a collector. He's just behind on the playing. Despite this unhealthily large collection of hexagon paper and 1/2" cardboard, he keeps his geekiness well spread out, with an equally unhealthily large record collection and a deep interest in astronomy, birdwatching and travelling to cold places.

ERIC PASS

Eric Pass is an avid war gamer and an experienced playtester and reviewer.  He has penned reviews for such publications as Games, Games, Games, The Boardgamer and the Strategist.  He is the co-maintainer of the Web Grognard, the premier historical board gaming site on the ?net.  He also founded the PBEM and Squad Leader Games Directories and is Editing Assistant for TheWargamers Reference Guide. Eric has been actively gaming since the mid 70s when his father first purchased Avalon Hill's War at Sea for the family.  With his first teenage jobs, he earned enough cash to purchase many SPI games by mail-order.  He had a bout with RPGs from about 1978 to the mid-80s but seriously rejoined the wargaming fold from about 1992 on. Eric is 40 years old, married with two children and lives in Canada.  A biologist by education, Eric works mostly in research (government and private industry) and as a university lab instructor.  He currently works part-time in order to be home with his children.

ALAN POULTER

Alan Poulter is well known as one of the main forces behind Web Grognards, perhaps the best war gaming archive and site on the web. He is also a prolific writer on the subject of Historical Simulation Board Games, penning regular columns for AHIKS newsletters. Alan's earliest gaming memories are playing Waddington's family games.  He began wargaming back in the 60's, using Airfix miniatures and rules from Donald Featherstone's books. The hook was firmly set upon subscribing to 'Strategy and Tactics' magazine, which included a game in each issue. His first subscription issue contained 'PanzerArmee Afrika'. There was no turning back! At university he continued playing 'real' games, in spite of being side tracked into the then new RPG craze centred on D&D. After university life and work slowly encroached upon gaming. The impetus for change came with his discovery of the Internet and the joys of PBEM. From then on, he has remained a constant in the gaming community. Web-Grognards recently celebrated its tenth birthday and is still going strong.

ALLAN ROTHBERG

Allan Rothberg started his long encounter with historical gaming at the age of 9 when he spied an intriguing box at the top of my father's closet with the title D-Day. Also up there was another of what are now called the classics, Midway. As his father was an avid naval miniaturist (and a co-author of the rules Victory at Sea), Allan had plenty of encouragement and support for this new hobby. He eagerly bought every new release that hit the market ...  not many considering there were only a few companies publishing back then. When his father brought home an issue of Strategy & Tactics (issue 24, I think), that clinched it for Allan. Since then Allan has continued to purchase and play many games from the myriad companies that have come and, alas, gone. His collection was in the thousands when he stopped counting years ago.  He was a regular attender at the Origins convention,   but now time restricts him to local cons (PointCon, PicAFight, etc.)  Allan games weekly with a group of friends and tries to play the odd PBEM game or two. The internet has greatly expanded his gaming contacts and may be the best thing to ever happen to the hobby.  He considers desk top publishing as the next best thing as it allows anybody who is willing to put in the effort to research, design and publish a wargame, without mortgaging the house to do so.   Allan doesn?t focus on a particular era or aspect of wargaming, but is willing to try and enjoy anything that appears interesting. While this means he doesn't specialize in anything in particular, it does mean that he gets a vast exposure to many eras of history as well as many design approaches. Allan finds wargaming rewarding in so many ways. He considers it educational and a mental challenge, but most of all he finds it  enjoyable. The day it stops becoming fun is the day he vows to stop gaming.   Allan has playtested many games and even had a hand in developing a few, as well as having a few self designed titles.   Aside from historical wargaming,  Allan spends his days working for an Actuarial Consulting firm.  He is married (1 dog, no kids). He enjoys reading good science fiction, history (naturally) and mysteries.

ELLIS SIMPSON

Ellis Simpson is a 45 year old lawyer, living and working in Glasgow, Scotland.  He was born and bred there, though he spent a year in Australia and a few months on an exchange programme in Germany. Ellis is married, with two teenage daughters and, as a result, a well-developed appreciation of a wide range of loud music. He was already a keen modeller as a child when a history teacher introduced him to miniatures gaming. Suddenly there was a whole new way of getting enjoyment out of the many Airfix plastic soldiers I owned.  Then, his life changed when he saw an advert in Airfix magazine for SPI?s Napoleon at Waterloo and their Strategy & Tactics magazine with a game in each issue.  He begged, borrowed or stole the money for a subscription and his addiction started with issue #38 and the game CA.  He was hooked. From that point on, the bimonthly arrival of the latest Strategy & Tactics was the event around which he built large chunks of his life.  Often S&T?s arrival meant a day at home in gaming heaven instead of a day of lectures and tutorials. He remained with SPI as a loyal subscriber until the TSR takeover when he switched to buying single issues. To him, the quality just was not the same.  However, he didn't restrict himself to SPI alone.  He gladly devoured wargames from all the game companies; a collecting habit that has continued, unabated, till today.  He has had occasional clearouts because of pressures of space, but he still realizes that he owns too many games!  Further, this doesn't include his interest in non-wargames like sports games and Euro games.  He has also been involved in the play-by-mail hobby, running his own zine and soccer management game.  A few years back he also designed, developed and published Fastcard Soccer, a boardgame about (real!) football.   Ellis considers himself lucky to have had regular opponents for most of the time and he has played many of the games he mosts desires to play. But there are one or two projects that he has saved for his retirement. Operation Crusader (from GDW) and DAK (from the Gamers) seem to him like they would be an excellent way of passing the summer months. He also realizes he may have to choose whether to run a combined OCS monster or use GMT?s East Front Series for the long winter nights.   As part of spreading the word about gaming, the gaming group Ellis has helped build ran a convention in Glasgow in 2002 and plans on doing the same in subsequent years.  Because it is an outreach programme, the focus is on Euro gaming, but he hopes to increase the wargames content.  Check the site out at www.dicecon.com.   Ellis has derived a great deal of pleasure and entertainment from gaming.  Plus, he has learned and been inspired to learn more than any formal schooling has managed.  Maybe that?s why the hobby still gives him as much now as it did all those years ago.  He still gets a good feeling opening a new game -- but, best of all, he loves to play!

ADAM STARKWEATHER

Adam Starkweater began playing in 1971 when he and a physisist friend returned from NYU one night after class and he suggested breaking out a game of Stalingrad from Avalon Hill.  Adam was just nine at the time, but he was instantly hooked.  He doesn't recall how he managed to locate them, but SPI was just 15 blocks uptown from where he lived, so he promptly dropped Stalingrad for the variety of SPI.  Subscriptions to S&T and 800 games later found him going off to college and starting a brief fling with acting. A cting and gaming never mixed too well so gaming went to the back burner - acting and girls went up front.     Off to get his masters at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Adam found another gamer by chance in 1982.   He received the rather crushing blow that SPI was no more, but he managed to find other games to keep him happy.  He played until graduation in 1985, but lost his opponent, gained kids and a job, which forced gaming to take another hiatus.  This situation lasted until moving back up north in 1998.  Of course, as happened before, a giant in the hobby went the way of the buffalo: Avalon Hill was no more.  It was not the blow that SPI's demise was, but he began to wonder if he was bad luck to gaming companies!  This time, GMT, MMP, Clash of Arms, OSG and Decision Games filled the void and his gaming continues unabated.

JIM WERBANETH

Jim Werbaneth is the editor and publisher of Line of Departure, a self-published war gaming magazine that carries articles, scenarios, player's aids, news and commentary.  He has written for just about all major wargaming publications, including the General and the premier issue of Command.  He designed his first game for the ninth issue of the magazine, Inchon, which was co-winner of the Charles S. Roberts Award for the best post-World War II game of 1991.  His second game is Britain Stands Alone, published by GMT in 1994.  Covering the  abortive German invasion of the United Kingdom in 1940, it was the first hypothetical game to bear the GMT imprint. Jim Werbaneth was born in 1961, and his wargaming career was born in 1972 when his unsuspecting grandparents bought him a copy of Avalon Hill's 1914.  From that point on he consumed a steady stream of Avalon Hill and SPI games.  Soon after receiving his MA in political science from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Jim began writing for The General in 1985.  His first article was an analysis of landbased aircraft in Flat Top.  He moved into other subjects as diverse as The Russian Campaign, Merchant of Venus and 2nd Fleet.  But most notable, he wrote a series of articles for Firepower, combining history and analysis of current conflicts with new scenarios.  His article on the Nicaraguan Contras won The General's Editor's Choice award for the best free-lance article in the magazine in 1987. Since 1991, Jim's main creative outlet in wargaming has been his self-published magazine, Line of Departure, published not just quarterly, but on a consistent schedule.  It is now supported by the OnLine of Departure web site, at members.aol.com/jwerbaneth/lod/lod.html.  Among other features, it provides computer game scenarios, free to all.  In 1999, Line of Departure was invited to join the premier gaming web site, The Gamers Net (www.thegamers.net).  When not playing computer and board wargamers, or writing about them, Jim works in the banking industry in job that, on a really good day, is not nearly as fun as a bad day of gaming.