Avalon hill

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Comparing the Hasboro Avalon Hill to the old Maryland based Avalon Hill is kind of ssacrilage. When Hasboro acquired AH they fired all the people responsible for making all of AH's hits and essentially bought the name and rights to use intellectual properties. Sure they make some good games now, but they are really just a holding company for Hasboro, who incidentally own Wizards of the Coast.

Not that I hate the new company, I just dont think they've done any real amazing stuff. Axis and Allies Dday was ok, but thats about it....

The old Avalon hill is sorely missed.

I'll take it all back if AH will remake Feudal.

[Fellfrosch]

Betrayal at House on the Hill was a great game.

I've heard the "Wizards bought the company and fired everybody" thing several times before, and it's always turned out to be false; in the case of AH I have no hard info, but I assume it's just a rumor. Do you have an article or something you could point me to?

[House of Mustard]

Wasn't History of the World from Avalon Hill?  That's an awesome game.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

The last thing to go up on the Avalon Hill Website was a post that said that their game co had just sold AH to Hasbro and that the design team was fired...
the only link I could find to support it was an article from the stratigist....
http://www.gis.net/~pldr/fah.html

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

The Hasbro team did all the Risk variants that make Risk actually worth playing.

And the old incarnation of avalon hill was responsible for such stinkers as Amoeba War and Spy. I'm sorry, while it may be different, I don't think it's worse.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

blashphemer!!!!!

I was drunk when I typed that...

[Fellfrosch]

Great article, Jeffe, thanks for the link.

All I can really say about the sale of AH is that it's just as well--the last really amazing thing they did was the Gamemaster series, and that's over ten years old. Their recent successes, like History of the World and Acquire, are just reprints of old games. In the short time Hasbro has owned the company they made some wonderful new versions of Risk and Axis & Allies, and now that it's part of WotC they've done a few more updates and come out with cool new games like House on the Hill.

The only real loss is for those who like the "cardboard chit" style games that use hexmaps and insanely complicated rules--and I know a guy who loves that stuff. Just one though. It's like the article said--AH was selling to a market that didn't really exist anymore. The new designers at WotC are going to do some great stuff, I think, because they grew up on games like Axis & Allies and have a fresh excitement to be working in the genre.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

oh I know, Im just fond of sour grapes, still I liked their "bookcase game" format a great deal. and I wish for the sake of peoples sanity they would start making games like that again...

I have a lot of board games and not a single one is a standard size. It makes them a pain to store, and organize. They are also difficult to transpot as their shallow boxes (most of the time) tend to pop open.

Bookcase games were compact, with tight fitting boxes and thus easy to store and transport.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

The gamemaster series (Shogun [now Samurai Swords], Fortress America, and Axis and Allies) were not originally AH games, if I remember correctly. Milton Bradley published them originally. In fact, I don't remember ever seeing AH's logo on the box until Hasbro bought them all.

There were good AH games, don't get me wrong. I still have my Kingmaker game they made and I like it. They did Diplomacy too, I think (but I may be wrong on that) and several others that were pretty good. But half their stuff wasn't very good.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

they did squadleader and diplomacy

Actually heres a list of all of their games up untill they were acquired

http://grognard.com/info/ah.html

[Fellfrosch]

Yeah, bookcase games were great. I thought they were going for a similar idea with box design of Godstorm and House on the Hill, but D-Day is back to a non-standard size.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

on that note: the original D&D Adventure Game was bookshelf sized. The current one is a bulky square and much bigger.

[House of Mustard]

Is Squad Leader still for sale?  They made a video game of it (tactical rpg) that was really fun, but it had serious stability issues.  It's the only CD that I've ever yanked from my computer and snapped in half out of frustration.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

the board game is still for sale, but its hard to find...