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Avalon Hill

Avalon Hill was a game company that specialized in wargames and strategic board games. It also published the occasional miniature wargaming rules, role-playing game, and had a popular line of sports simulations. more...

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Wargames & Role-Playing

It is now a division of the game company Wizards of the Coast, which is itself a subsidiary of Hasbro.

History

The company was started in 1958 by Charles S. Roberts following the success of his wargame Tactics. With Tactics, Roberts created a new type of board game based on actual war-like scenarios and strategies. This sort of game had previously existed (H. G. Wells had written a set of rules called Little Wars), but they had mainly used miniature figures and modeled 3D terrain (like that found in model railroading).

Avalon Hill pioneered many of the concepts of modern recreational wargaming. These include elements such as the use of a hexagonal grid (aka hexgrid) overlaid on a flat folding board, zones of control (ZOC), stacking of multiple units at a location, an odds-based combat results table (CRT), terrain effects on movement, troop strength, morale, and board games based upon historical events. Complex games could and did take days or even weeks, and AH set up a system for people to play games by mail.

Avalon Hill published Panzerblitz in 1970, designed for the company by a young Jim Dunnigan. The game was a departure from wargames to that point in time by being a tactical-level game with a multiple scenario format and isomorphic mapboards. Dunnigan went on to run what was to become their biggest competitor: Simulations Publications, Inc. Other well-regarded games published around this time were Midway, Afrika Korps, The Battle of the Bulge, and Blitzkrieg. This last game was more of an abstract training game featuring two sides, red and blue and some neutral countries. Many rule variants were created for Blitzkrieg.

While wargames were always what Avalon Hill was best known for, Roberts had founded it as a company for adult (that is, thinking) games. His own favorite game that he designed during his time with the company was Management. Through much of its history, wargames were only about half of the Avalon Hill line. The non-wargame side of the line picked up several good titles such as Acquire and Twixt from the purchase of 3M's line of games in 1976. During the 1970s, Avalon Hill published a number of tabletop sports simulations, culminating in the popular Statis Pro line in 1978 which was based on the names and statistics of actual players. Updated sets of cards were made available every year until 1992, by which time sports computer and video games were drying up the market.

Beyond just the 3M games, Avalon Hill also purchased many games from smaller companies and republished them. Much of Battleline Publications line, including Wooden Ships and Iron Men was republished by Avalon Hill, as well as Jedko Games' The Russian Campaign and War at Sea and Hartland Trefoil's Civilization. 1830 was developed by Avalon Hill, but based on Francis Tresham's 1829.