I remember, played and owned many of the old historical recreation games. I was brought into the hobby in middle school by dropping by a hobby store owned in-part by John Hill (a designer of Squad Leader later on). I've gotten back into board gaming and even war gaming. Really enjoying many of your videos!
Thanks for the memories! I, like another poster, wanted to order them all. But sweeping floors one day each week at an auto parts store while in high school didn’t generate enough revenue. Subscription to THE GENERAL was non-negotiable, though, from the time I bought my first game, Midway, at a drug store. I completely forgot that I had Go for the Green. I was on the golf team in high school and we played it in our hotel on road trips. Great game! (As 5th man, it was the only way I could beat my teammates.) Honestly don’t know what happened to it over the years, but remember the box size and what a pain it was to lug around. Ordering spare parts was huge for play-by-mail, especially ordering unmounted map sheets. A second set of counters in counter magnets with a map sheet mounted on sheet metal made PBM a breeze. With the help of THE GENERAL’s Opponents Wanted section, I was able to play a lot of Midway - and later Statis-Pro Baseball and Flattop - by mail. Had a pretty fair AREA rating, too. Ah, those were the days!
Yep, got that. Followed along as you read through. I think I'm going to hunt down that Crete game. You pronounce Africa Corps the same way as we did in the 70s. Afreeka Corps.
This is so well done! I remember pouring over catalogs like this in the 70s. Wanted every war game I saw. I can still remember the night I asked my Dad to sit down and teach me how to play Richtofen‘s War using the actual rules, instead of a game I made up to just push the counters around. And I can still remember the exasperated look he had trying to figure out the rules. It would be the same look I would have years later when I bought Flat Top! But I stuck with it and struck Gold when I bought B 17 Queen of the Skies in 1990. Nowadays, if I’m interested in the game I turn to TH-cam to channels like this to watch unboxings, play throughs, and final thoughts. My only regret, is not being able to go back to that night with my dad. Would be invaluable, even if the game was played incorrectly!
I had this catalog when it came out, I was 11 years old. My paper route money paid for their games and a subscription to The General. Paydirt, I had many many different years of team charts, as well as Bowl Bound, the college version of Paydirt. The Avalon Hill mail order form: "If the postman can't read it, you won't get it." Oh my goodness how I used to hope and pray the mailman could read my mailing address!😄 Their war games, oh I had so many of them! Good memories!
Yes, I remember it seemed to take *forever* before the games you ordered arrived - no overnight delivery! But the waiting was part of the process, and the anticipation was fun!
Growing up, we had that 3M Oh Wah Ree and Jumpin hidden away on our living room book shelf. I liked the covers and design so much, and would stare at them, and play with the pieces, more than I liked playing the actual games. They were so cool!
@@LegendaryTactics it was a pretty cool object and felt mysterious and fancy (to a little kid who didn’t expect to come across games on their parent’s bookshelf), like an archeological discovery, BUT, your Avalon Hill catalog is one of the coolest pieces of Board Game Ephemera I’ve ever seen! Thanks for showcasing it on your channel! 👍🤜🤛
This catalog in my first purchase hooked me for good as I learned quickly WHY I had such a hard time learning/playing Panzer Leader, on my own at the age of 7 :) ... War At Sea was my next purchase and was hooked for good... I got my subscription to their magazine soon after...
Excellent video. Those AH catalogs were super inspiring to me as a young player, most of my paper route money went for games at a hobby shop in biking distance. Learning history interactively was very exciting to me. The blue AH catalogs, game covers, and General articles fired my imagination and sold many games. Some research still needs to be done on “the rest of the story.” So many unpunched copies are available today. D&D in 1974 boosted sales of Wilderness Survival but moved on by 1980. Etc.
My first was Gettysburg ('58), and bought 2 more Gettysburgs from AH. Then Chancellorsville, Tactics II, Waterloo, Le Mans, Stalingrad, Panzer Leader, 1914, Jutland, Dune, Afrika Korps, D-Day, Tobruk, Battle of the Bulge, Blitzkrieg, Diplomacy, Midway, Kingmaker, Source of the Nile, Russian Campaign, Conquistador, Anzio, Wooden Ships & Iron Men, Civilization, Magic Realm, Football Strategy, Baseball Strategy, Squad Leader, Cross of Iron, Rail Baron, Shakespeare, Facts in Five, Class Struggle, Richtofen's War, Outdoor Struggle, Down with the King, Title Bout, 1776, Gladiator, Gunslinger, Wizard's Quest, and a bunch of 3-M games that AH marketed. The color choices on some of these were terrible, Chancellorsville & Waterloo for example. Le Mans was fun - I made my own cars including a VW & a tow truck with special rules.
Oh yeah 7:35 I played Outdoor Survival a lot when I was a kid. My friend owned that one. I bought 19:47 Starship Troopers about the same time I read the book. We played it a couple of times but I think we were too young for it. It was more complicated than OS. Unfortunately, I no longer have it. Would be neat to play it again. Overall, I've played five or six of these games, but I recognize about 70% of them from TV commercials and what not.
I have fond memories of playing Point of Law and Business Strategy with my brothers. We even got our parents to play Point of Law. The 70s were a good time.
@@LegendaryTactics Business Strategy is still sitting on my shelf after all the decades. I was a bit surprised when I thought about it that I owned almost every game in video at one time.
My first Avalon HIll game was The Mystic Wood, which I don't remember much except for the magazine-sized full color catalog that had all these amazing-sounding games. I read the colorful descriptions so many times, I was hooked.
enjoyed have and have played Waterloo, Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, Panser Leader,1776,tactics II,Kriespeil,1914,Bismark,Jutland, Napoleon at Bay,Starship Troopers,Dune,Afrika Corp,Alexander,Battle of the Bulge, Longest Day, Circus Maximus Caesar Alesia, Blitzkrieg,Diplomacy,D-Day,Civilization,France 1940.Midway,Kingmaker,Guns of August,Fury in the West,Origins,3rd Reich,Struggle of Nations,Storm over Arnhem,Squad Leader,Richthofen War,Twixt,Rail Baron,Class Struggle,BaseBall Strategy,Speed Circut,Statis Pro Football,USAC auto racing, and more.
If I am not mistaken, Boxcars was re-named and issued as Rail Barron. There has been a recent reprint of the game which reverts to the old Boxcars title, but is essentially the same game
I wonder if U-Boat eventually became or was renamed Submarine? That was a fun game my brother and I used to play. Unfortunately, it got lost in one of my moves. I still have several AH games though.
It's my understanding that they were different games, although Submarine likely borrowed some elements from U-boat. And, of course, Submarine was more complex
Really enjoyed listening and remembering some of these AH games, first game I ever played came in a magazine, it was the anniversary of the ACW and first AH game was Blitzkrieg, so you brought back a lot of memories
You could do a video on AH’s “Do A Friend A Favor” postcard in each game asking for referrals of people with the Basic Brainpower to Comprehend the games. And the first of the entry fields: Name Of Bright Friend. Some marketing psychology in a compact space. That is also a self-reinforcement to the reader too. As I remember it we pre-teens in the 1960s wanted to be or at least seem more mature and smart. Probably in a catalog I remember seeing the recommendation that you give AH games as a subtle compliment. Again due to having enough brain power. PS Bank Americard evolved into Visa. Easier to guess how Mastercharge became Mastercard.
I scanned everything in as JPEGs, but I could scan it in as a PDF. Email us at legendarytactics2020@gmail.com and remind me - I will get to it sometime this week.
@@LegendaryTactics My first 2 AH games were Blitzkreig and Wooden Shipa and Iron me. Loved those two. But then Panzer Leader and Panzer Blitz took over and we would play 4 player scenarios using both games at once. Of course for the easy "beer and pretzels" time, it was Gunslinger or Circus Maximus.
I still have a couple copies of that catalog floating around in my AH game collection. I started with Afrika Korps at age eight in 1975 and rapidly developed a severe addiction to wargames that has been life long. I own or owned all the wargames shown except Stalingrad and Chancellorsville. I noticed that they did not mention a lot of other current wargame titles like Third Reich for instance. I guess they were trying to distance themselves from their sobriquet of The Wargame Company and get their other products out front. I remember many of their non-wargame titles, but I never played them. They were always just something I saw in passing on my way to the wargames catalog section or store display. When you got to the tournament games, I was surprised to hear PanzerBlitz, Panzer Leader, and Tobruk described as monster games. Most of the counters are not in play all at once with only a couple dozen usually used for each side. I think of Third Reich as an AH monster of that time not those games. Those games are short and sweet in a relative sense while 3R is a pleasant oddesey.
Thanks for this. Well done. I must say ... I knew none of those games. Uhm ... not totally true though but I don't think it really counts. I watched your other videos on the history of AH this week (Dec. 2022). If I had one wish, I would have liked to hear about Squad Leader or ASL in my 20s, at about the time I joined the Canadian Armed Forces. I know I would have been one of those who could have spent hours with it. Having said this, I am really thinking about starting that journey ... in my 50s. Thanks again for your great work.
Interesting. I know Outdoor Survival did really well, but the research I'm currently doing on Avalon Hill seems to show that the wargame titles did quite well also. I'll have to look into it further
I understood that Outdoor Survival did really well because Dungeons & Dragons suggested it’s use for wilderness adventures. Or at least until Bob and I started Judges Guild in 1976 with over a dozen Wilderlands of High Fantasy maps. :)
Interesting that many of their games were part of the 3M Bookshelf Series of games in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. I’m guessing that 3M got out of the game business and began to focus more on office supplies. Bank Americard became Visa.
Whats interesting is if you google Avalon Hill adress you find what looks like a old abonden building , sad as from someone who used to live in what was the great city of Baltimore
If it seems "chatty and verbose", that's because of the times. Catalogues of all types relied much more on words than images the further you look back in time. Look at Sears catalogues from the early 20th century. As people became more reliant on images, due to the development of television, the internet, film, etc., catalogues and all advertising became less word-heavy. This booklet would not have seemed verbose in 1977 at the advent of personal computers, and more than 15 years before the internet became widely available to the general public. By the way, I also had Bismark and this same catalogue. I still have many of these games. I enjoyed your video.
@@LegendaryTactics I remember my parents having a BankAmericard when I was a kid and seeing commercials for it on TV. I think it was phased out by the late 70's and has been Visa ever since.
the title I think refers to a self help book from maybe the 70's or 60's called "everything you wanted to know about sex but where afraid to ask" not those T shirts. I treasured those catalogs in middle school but never got the joke on the cover until I found the book buried somewhere in the house and was like "ohhhhhhh"
Perhaps yo0u recognized the card's colour scheme though; from Wikipedia: "Visa was founded in 1958 by Bank of America (BofA) as the BankAmericard credit card program.[6] In response to competitor Master Charge (now Mastercard), BofA began to license the BankAmericard program to other financial institutions in 1966."
@@LegendaryTactics Easier for me - I simply *remembered* it. In the Carnaby Street kiosk of an Amsterdam department store, in 1969, I took at least an hour to decide between Stalingrad and Waterloo. Eventually chose the latter, and haven't looked back since. A friend the next year bought 1914, and we staggered through a couple of games of that before moving on to Blitzkrieg and Afrika Korps.
You note that AH's promotional materials were "defensive", but you don't discuss why. Remember, this was hard on the heels of the Vietnam War and all that entails: our first military defeat, lingering resentment over the draft, a decayed military culture that had too many instances of drug use and racial divisiveness; in short, a company that made games that focused on military topics was out of sync with the culture. Soldiers were more likely to be spat upon or be called "baby killers" by the liberal left then to have someone thank them for their service; their depiction in TV and movies usually played up the stereotype of the crazy Vietnam vet. Branching out into non-military games like "Facts in Five" was probably seen as a wise business move. Thankfully, there were still enough history enthusiasts to keep the hobby alive for five years until the Reagan era finally banished the Vietnam syndrome.
Thank you for your insights - I didn't expand on the reasons why because I lack the perspective that you have brought to the table. It is interesting to see that in the 80s, AH began to release some titles concerning the conflict in Vietnam.
@@aleks1939 I don't remember AH doing that, but by the early to mid 80's public perception of the military in general had become much more positive, so some Viet Nam games did come out around that time. I had a wargame from some company, not AH, called "Operation Pegasus", about the battle to relieve Khe Sanh. A really fun game with American Air Assault troops attacking the NVA who hoped to ambush a relief column they thought would come up the highway. That game would have been made around 1982. Also around that time, SPI put out a commando focused game called "Raid", which had a scenario where helicopter troops attempted to liberate POWs in North Vietnam. Historically it was wildly successful except that the North Vietnamese had moved the prisoners to a different camp a short time before. I also remember a strategic level Vietnam game that simulated the whole war put out around that time; but I don't remember the name or much else about it.
@@davidfinch7407 Thank you David for your comprehensive reply. I did some research after I posted my comment and the game I was thinking of is Victory Games Vietnam 1965-1975 which came out around 1982-1984. You probably already know this, but Victory Games was a subsidiary of AH. I still have their game Sixth Fleet which was a lot of fun. I also found a pic someone posted of an AH game based on the movie Platoon that looks like its on the same concept of Squad Leader. But I don't think this game was ever released. The game may have been a concept AH was working on but ended up abandoning.
I wasn't sure if you knew that name of this catalog is a take off of the book from 1969, "Everything You Wanted to Know Sbout Sex* but were afraid to ask." Woody Allen turned it into a movie in the early seventies.
No think it was from a different co. The one that had the game WWIII that was a game that had sea lanes to keep open and had all kinds of possibilty, but the winner of the game was who didnt launch the 1st nucluer strike , they might even had a arab - isreal war game .. geeze cant remebember the name of this co. That rode the coattails of A.H. success
Oddly, my first game (1972 @10yo) was "Afrika Korps" & I too pronounced it "a-FREE-ka": to this day I have no idea why. Surely substituting K for C doesn't actually affect the vowel--anyone else make this faux pas?
Well, this was not a telling of their history - more of a snapshot of where they were in 1977. Here is part one of my retelling of the story of Avalon Hill:. th-cam.com/video/7-l83XaTLgw/w-d-xo.html
I remember, played and owned many of the old historical recreation games. I was brought into the hobby in middle school by dropping by a hobby store owned in-part by John Hill (a designer of Squad Leader later on). I've gotten back into board gaming and even war gaming. Really enjoying many of your videos!
Thank you so much for watching and commenting!
Amazing how many of these are still played, an even in print in one form or another today.
A great game is a great game - we're hoping that new people to the hobby will also start checking these games out!
I own many of these games, and played even more. It was a great time for games.
Yes, it was quite an era, especially since there was no alternative in video games that could give you anywhere near the experience.
Thanks for the memories!
I, like another poster, wanted to order them all. But sweeping floors one day each week at an auto parts store while in high school didn’t generate enough revenue. Subscription to THE GENERAL was non-negotiable, though, from the time I bought my first game, Midway, at a drug store.
I completely forgot that I had Go for the Green. I was on the golf team in high school and we played it in our hotel on road trips. Great game! (As 5th man, it was the only way I could beat my teammates.) Honestly don’t know what happened to it over the years, but remember the box size and what a pain it was to lug around.
Ordering spare parts was huge for play-by-mail, especially ordering unmounted map sheets. A second set of counters in counter magnets with a map sheet mounted on sheet metal made PBM a breeze. With the help of THE GENERAL’s Opponents Wanted section, I was able to play a lot of Midway - and later Statis-Pro Baseball and Flattop - by mail. Had a pretty fair AREA rating, too.
Ah, those were the days!
Those are some great memories!!
Yep, got that. Followed along as you read through. I think I'm going to hunt down that Crete game. You pronounce Africa Corps the same way as we did in the 70s. Afreeka Corps.
It should be the official pronunciation, if I have anything to say about it. Glad you agree!
Had that .. as i recall it was 2 games in 1 Malta was on the other side
My first war games were from Avalon Hill. Played them with my brother. Definitely kept us together :-)
That's awesome! So glad to hear of relationships built and maintained over board games!
This is so well done! I remember pouring over catalogs like this in the 70s. Wanted every war game I saw. I can still remember the night I asked my Dad to sit down and teach me how to play Richtofen‘s War using the actual rules, instead of a game I made up to just push the counters around. And I can still remember the exasperated look he had trying to figure out the rules. It would be the same look I would have years later when I bought Flat Top! But I stuck with it and struck Gold when I bought B 17 Queen of the Skies in 1990. Nowadays, if I’m interested in the game I turn to TH-cam to channels like this to watch unboxings, play throughs, and final thoughts. My only regret, is not being able to go back to that night with my dad. Would be invaluable, even if the game was played incorrectly!
So glad you have great memories like that! I tortured my Dad with Bismarck '79 , even though he has never been a gamer in the least!
I had this catalog when it came out, I was 11 years old. My paper route money paid for their games and a subscription to The General. Paydirt, I had many many different years of team charts, as well as Bowl Bound, the college version of Paydirt. The Avalon Hill mail order form: "If the postman can't read it, you won't get it." Oh my goodness how I used to hope and pray the mailman could read my mailing address!😄 Their war games, oh I had so many of them! Good memories!
Yes, I remember it seemed to take *forever* before the games you ordered arrived - no overnight delivery! But the waiting was part of the process, and the anticipation was fun!
Growing up, we had that 3M Oh Wah Ree and Jumpin hidden away on our living room book shelf. I liked the covers and design so much, and would stare at them, and play with the pieces, more than I liked playing the actual games. They were so cool!
That's neat! I didn't know anyone who had heard of Oh-Wah-Ree, let alone owned it!
@@LegendaryTactics it was a pretty cool object and felt mysterious and fancy (to a little kid who didn’t expect to come across games on their parent’s bookshelf), like an archeological discovery, BUT, your Avalon Hill catalog is one of the coolest pieces of Board Game Ephemera I’ve ever seen! Thanks for showcasing it on your channel! 👍🤜🤛
This catalog in my first purchase hooked me for good as I learned quickly WHY I had such a hard time learning/playing Panzer Leader, on my own at the age of 7 :) ... War At Sea was my next purchase and was hooked for good... I got my subscription to their magazine soon after...
I never had a subscription, but I ordered a lot of back issues!
Excellent video. Those AH catalogs were super inspiring to me as a young player, most of my paper route money went for games at a hobby shop in biking distance. Learning history interactively was very exciting to me. The blue AH catalogs, game covers, and General articles fired my imagination and sold many games. Some research still needs to be done on “the rest of the story.” So many unpunched copies are available today. D&D in 1974 boosted sales of Wilderness Survival but moved on by 1980. Etc.
My first was Gettysburg ('58), and bought 2 more Gettysburgs from AH. Then Chancellorsville, Tactics II, Waterloo, Le Mans, Stalingrad, Panzer Leader, 1914, Jutland, Dune, Afrika Korps, D-Day, Tobruk, Battle of the Bulge, Blitzkrieg, Diplomacy, Midway, Kingmaker, Source of the Nile, Russian Campaign, Conquistador, Anzio, Wooden Ships & Iron Men, Civilization, Magic Realm, Football Strategy, Baseball Strategy, Squad Leader, Cross of Iron, Rail Baron, Shakespeare, Facts in Five, Class Struggle, Richtofen's War, Outdoor Struggle, Down with the King, Title Bout, 1776, Gladiator, Gunslinger, Wizard's Quest, and a bunch of 3-M games that AH marketed. The color choices on some of these were terrible, Chancellorsville & Waterloo for example. Le Mans was fun - I made my own cars including a VW & a tow truck with special rules.
Wow! That is pretty much the company's entire output! LOL
@@LegendaryTactics I'm just old! I am listed in Vol 1 No. 1 of The General. Very low-tech!
Ha ha, nice!
Oh yeah 7:35 I played Outdoor Survival a lot when I was a kid. My friend owned that one. I bought 19:47 Starship Troopers about the same time I read the book. We played it a couple of times but I think we were too young for it. It was more complicated than OS. Unfortunately, I no longer have it. Would be neat to play it again. Overall, I've played five or six of these games, but I recognize about 70% of them from TV commercials and what not.
Nice! A lot of the games have aged pretty well, actually
I have fond memories of playing Point of Law and Business Strategy with my brothers. We even got our parents to play Point of Law. The 70s were a good time.
It's great! You don't hear much about Point of Law these days, but occasionally Business Strategy is mentioned.
@@LegendaryTactics Business Strategy is still sitting on my shelf after all the decades. I was a bit surprised when I thought about it that I owned almost every game in video at one time.
My first Avalon HIll game was The Mystic Wood, which I don't remember much except for the magazine-sized full color catalog that had all these amazing-sounding games. I read the colorful descriptions so many times, I was hooked.
Yes, their marketing people were masters of the written word!
Fantastic look back and great job! Thank you for feeling young again.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching!
Terrific video - I too still have my copy of that amazing little book.
I have such great memories of reading through this book time and again - that's why I did a video on it!
enjoyed have and have played Waterloo, Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, Panser Leader,1776,tactics II,Kriespeil,1914,Bismark,Jutland, Napoleon at Bay,Starship Troopers,Dune,Afrika Corp,Alexander,Battle of the Bulge, Longest Day, Circus Maximus Caesar Alesia, Blitzkrieg,Diplomacy,D-Day,Civilization,France 1940.Midway,Kingmaker,Guns of August,Fury in the West,Origins,3rd Reich,Struggle of Nations,Storm over Arnhem,Squad Leader,Richthofen War,Twixt,Rail Baron,Class Struggle,BaseBall Strategy,Speed Circut,Statis Pro Football,USAC auto racing, and more.
That's almost all of them, isn't it?
If I am not mistaken, Boxcars was re-named and issued as Rail Barron. There has been a recent reprint of the game which reverts to the old Boxcars title, but is essentially the same game
I'll have to look into that - there were a few games where that happened ex. Management became Business Strategy years later
This is so fascinating!
Thank you for saying so and for watching!
I wonder if U-Boat eventually became or was renamed Submarine? That was a fun game my brother and I used to play. Unfortunately, it got lost in one of my moves. I still have several AH games though.
It's my understanding that they were different games, although Submarine likely borrowed some elements from U-boat. And, of course, Submarine was more complex
"Available at Hobby Shops..." 2022 person: "What's a 'Hobby Shop?'"
Sad, but true.
Really enjoyed listening and remembering some of these AH games, first game I ever played came in a magazine, it was the anniversary of the ACW and first AH game was Blitzkrieg, so you brought back a lot of memories
Happy to help! Thanks for watching!
You could do a video on AH’s “Do A Friend A Favor” postcard in each game asking for referrals of people with the Basic Brainpower to Comprehend the games. And the first of the entry fields: Name Of Bright Friend. Some marketing psychology in a compact space. That is also a self-reinforcement to the reader too.
As I remember it we pre-teens in the 1960s wanted to be or at least seem more mature and smart.
Probably in a catalog I remember seeing the recommendation that you give AH games as a subtle compliment. Again due to having enough brain power.
PS Bank Americard evolved into Visa. Easier to guess how Mastercharge became Mastercard.
Ha ha, that's an interesting idea for a short video. And bright people like yourself are welcome to watch, like, and subscribe! :)
Love the channel! I am a collector of AH games. I have most mentioned but lacking on many of the war games.
Awesome! Thanks for watching & commenting!
Great video! I love this stuff.
Glad you enjoy it! Thank you for watching!
Surprisingly few people know/remember the Avalon hill acquiring of the 3M games was late 70s and not earlier as they had 60s publishing dates.
There were lots of games being bought and sold around that time - even with Sports Illustrated!
Very nicely done!
Thank you so much! Thank you for watching!
Kids today with X-box have no clue what they missed out on.
It's true! There are some of us trying to educate these kids on how great some of these games are. It's a tough battle, but will never surrender!
"An idiot can doit It in an hour, it should take you about 60 minutes" 😆
Those Avalon Hill guys with their wacky sense of humor! LOL
Back in the day I had several AH games. What memories. Is it possible to get that catalog as a pdf download?
I scanned everything in as JPEGs, but I could scan it in as a PDF. Email us at legendarytactics2020@gmail.com and remind me - I will get to it sometime this week.
That is awesome, I will.
@@LegendaryTactics My first 2 AH games were Blitzkreig and Wooden Shipa and Iron me. Loved those two. But then Panzer Leader and Panzer Blitz took over and we would play 4 player scenarios using both games at once. Of course for the easy "beer and pretzels" time, it was Gunslinger or Circus Maximus.
I still have a couple copies of that catalog floating around in my AH game collection. I started with Afrika Korps at age eight in 1975 and rapidly developed a severe addiction to wargames that has been life long. I own or owned all the wargames shown except Stalingrad and Chancellorsville. I noticed that they did not mention a lot of other current wargame titles like Third Reich for instance. I guess they were trying to distance themselves from their sobriquet of The Wargame Company and get their other products out front. I remember many of their non-wargame titles, but I never played them. They were always just something I saw in passing on my way to the wargames catalog section or store display.
When you got to the tournament games, I was surprised to hear PanzerBlitz, Panzer Leader, and Tobruk described as monster games. Most of the counters are not in play all at once with only a couple dozen usually used for each side. I think of Third Reich as an AH monster of that time not those games. Those games are short and sweet in a relative sense while 3R is a pleasant oddesey.
Thanks for this. Well done. I must say ... I knew none of those games. Uhm ... not totally true though but I don't think it really counts. I watched your other videos on the history of AH this week (Dec. 2022). If I had one wish, I would have liked to hear about Squad Leader or ASL in my 20s, at about the time I joined the Canadian Armed Forces. I know I would have been one of those who could have spent hours with it. Having said this, I am really thinking about starting that journey ... in my 50s. Thanks again for your great work.
Hey, no shame in getting started now - you still have 30-40 years of gaming time ahead of you! Time to make the most of it!
from what I understand, AH's leisure and sports games always outsold the historical games for which they were most well known.
Interesting. I know Outdoor Survival did really well, but the research I'm currently doing on Avalon Hill seems to show that the wargame titles did quite well also. I'll have to look into it further
I understood that Outdoor Survival did really well because Dungeons & Dragons suggested it’s use for wilderness adventures. Or at least until Bob and I started Judges Guild in 1976 with over a dozen Wilderlands of High Fantasy maps. :)
Interesting that many of their games were part of the 3M Bookshelf Series of games in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. I’m guessing that 3M got out of the game business and began to focus more on office supplies. Bank Americard became Visa.
Yep! 3M and Sports Illustrated got out of board games to specialize on that they did best, and Avalon Hill also benefitted from their lineup!
Whats interesting is if you google Avalon Hill adress you find what looks like a old abonden building , sad as from someone who used to live in what was the great city of Baltimore
If it seems "chatty and verbose", that's because of the times. Catalogues of all types relied much more on words than images the further you look back in time. Look at Sears catalogues from the early 20th century. As people became more reliant on images, due to the development of television, the internet, film, etc., catalogues and all advertising became less word-heavy. This booklet would not have seemed verbose in 1977 at the advent of personal computers, and more than 15 years before the internet became widely available to the general public. By the way, I also had Bismark and this same catalogue. I still have many of these games. I enjoyed your video.
Awesome! Thank you!
If I'm not mistaken BankAmericard is what we now know as Visa.
Yes, I believe you're right! I just never heard it mentioned that way in movies or whatever.
@@LegendaryTactics I remember my parents having a BankAmericard when I was a kid and seeing commercials for it on TV. I think it was phased out by the late 70's and has been Visa ever since.
the title I think refers to a self help book from maybe the 70's or 60's called "everything you wanted to know about sex but where afraid to ask" not those T shirts. I treasured those catalogs in middle school but never got the joke on the cover until I found the book buried somewhere in the house and was like "ohhhhhhh"
Perhaps yo0u recognized the card's colour scheme though; from Wikipedia:
"Visa was founded in 1958 by Bank of America (BofA) as the BankAmericard credit card program.[6] In response to competitor Master Charge (now Mastercard), BofA began to license the BankAmericard program to other financial institutions in 1966."
Ah, interesting! Thanks for that - I probably could have researched it a little bit more, just didn't get to it
@@LegendaryTactics Easier for me - I simply *remembered* it.
In the Carnaby Street kiosk of an Amsterdam department store, in 1969, I took at least an hour to decide between Stalingrad and Waterloo. Eventually chose the latter, and haven't looked back since. A friend the next year bought 1914, and we staggered through a couple of games of that before moving on to Blitzkrieg and Afrika Korps.
You note that AH's promotional materials were "defensive", but you don't discuss why. Remember, this was hard on the heels of the Vietnam War and all that entails: our first military defeat, lingering resentment over the draft, a decayed military culture that had too many instances of drug use and racial divisiveness; in short, a company that made games that focused on military topics was out of sync with the culture. Soldiers were more likely to be spat upon or be called "baby killers" by the liberal left then to have someone thank them for their service; their depiction in TV and movies usually played up the stereotype of the crazy Vietnam vet. Branching out into non-military games like "Facts in Five" was probably seen as a wise business move. Thankfully, there were still enough history enthusiasts to keep the hobby alive for five years until the Reagan era finally banished the Vietnam syndrome.
Thank you for your insights - I didn't expand on the reasons why because I lack the perspective that you have brought to the table. It is interesting to see that in the 80s, AH began to release some titles concerning the conflict in Vietnam.
Great insight. If I recall correctly, didn't AH finally release a Vietnam game in the mid to late 80s? Or am I imagining that?
@@aleks1939 I don't remember AH doing that, but by the early to mid 80's public perception of the military in general had become much more positive, so some Viet Nam games did come out around that time. I had a wargame from some company, not AH, called "Operation Pegasus", about the battle to relieve Khe Sanh. A really fun game with American Air Assault troops attacking the NVA who hoped to ambush a relief column they thought would come up the highway. That game would have been made around 1982. Also around that time, SPI put out a commando focused game called "Raid", which had a scenario where helicopter troops attempted to liberate POWs in North Vietnam. Historically it was wildly successful except that the North Vietnamese had moved the prisoners to a different camp a short time before. I also remember a strategic level Vietnam game that simulated the whole war put out around that time; but I don't remember the name or much else about it.
@@davidfinch7407 Thank you David for your comprehensive reply. I did some research after I posted my comment and the game I was thinking of is Victory Games Vietnam 1965-1975 which came out around 1982-1984. You probably already know this, but Victory Games was a subsidiary of AH. I still have their game Sixth Fleet which was a lot of fun. I also found a pic someone posted of an AH game based on the movie Platoon that looks like its on the same concept of Squad Leader. But I don't think this game was ever released. The game may have been a concept AH was working on but ended up abandoning.
King Maker…classic
A lot of good memories with that one?
I wasn't sure if you knew that name of this catalog is a take off of the book from 1969, "Everything You Wanted to Know Sbout Sex* but were afraid to ask." Woody Allen turned it into a movie in the early seventies.
Yes, I knew about that - I think I have even seen part of that film at one point years ago. I think there was a string of jokes along that line
The Vietmaneis used hidden movement , kind of like the Japenese did in Guadacanal
Which game is that one? "Vietnam 1965-1975" ?
No think it was from a different co. The one that had the game WWIII that was a game that had sea lanes to keep open and had all kinds of possibilty, but the winner of the game was who didnt launch the 1st nucluer strike , they might even had a arab - isreal war game .. geeze cant remebember the name of this co. That rode the coattails of A.H. success
@@LegendaryTactics cool just watched a vidieo from you naming the other co. It is S.P.I. !!! THANKS
Oddly, my first game (1972 @10yo) was "Afrika Korps" & I too pronounced it "a-FREE-ka": to this day I have no idea why. Surely substituting K for C doesn't actually affect the vowel--anyone else make this faux pas?
I'm so glad to meet someone who did the same thing! There is no reason for that pronunciation as far as I know!
Okay, got bored by 12mins!! Avalon hill deserves a much better retelling of its history.
Well, this was not a telling of their history - more of a snapshot of where they were in 1977. Here is part one of my retelling of the story of Avalon Hill:. th-cam.com/video/7-l83XaTLgw/w-d-xo.html