Five for Friday 14: My Favorite Avalon Hill Wargames

This post is a sequel of sorts for my post, Five for Friday 13: Favorite Non-RPG Games.

Chess and Stratego are my favorite two player strategy games. However, I have a deep and abiding affection for the Avalon Hill games that I played as a high school goof before that fateful day I cracked open the Holmes D&D box. Once we started playing Dungeons & Dragons, we never looked back. However, back in the 1970s, Avalon Hill games reigned supreme. Growing up in a rural area and being in high school meant that I didn't have ready access to many opponents. I did have a cousin and two other friends who would occasionally play AH games. Later, the four of us would comprise my first D&D gaming group.

Here, in alphabetical order, were my favorite Avalon Hill games:

• Panzer Leader & PanzerBlitz: These two games utilized very similar mechanics. PanzerBlitz was released first, focusing on the World War 2's Eastern Front. I mainly played Panzer Leader, which was a small unit tactical game that simulated combat and tactics on the Western Front. These two games were innovative in a number of regards, but the big RPG connection is that these two games pioneered the use of isomorphic mapboards that are now staples of dungeon fans everywhere.
• Rise and Decline of the Third Reich: The grand strategy game of World War 2. This game takes into account economies, economic development versus armament production; international logistics, strategic bombing, naval activity, alliances, and, of course, combat. There are a lot of moving parts here but it is a fun, playable game due to the ingenius game design that involves a high level of abstraction and a thoughtful combination of differing game mechanics. I think this game, as different as it is from early editions of D&D, allowed us to quickly grasp the abstract concepts of hit points, armor class, and the Vancian magic system.
• Russian Campaign: I bought this game right after it came out in 1976. It is my favorite wargame, hands down. The rules for "double impulse" allowed for a nice simulation of mass breakthroughs and encirclements that were bread and butter strategies on World War 2's Eastern Front.
• Starship Troopers: I was a science fiction fan before I was a gamer, so I was excited to find out that Avalong Hill had released a game of one of my favorite sci-fi novels. I still think it is the best sci-fi game around and wish I owned it.
• Tobruk: I only had a chance to play this once and I never owned it. I had borrowed the game friend, so it true gamer fashion, had read the rules multiple times. The game was released in 1975 and simulated combat in North Africa, circa 1942. It utilized even small units (infantry platoon and individual vehicles/artillery) than the PanzerBlitz/Panzer Leader (company level) and I often think about this game while playing GURPS. Not that there is similarity in mechanics, but GURPS feels like Tobruk to me for some reason--lots of cool tactics and a simple mechanics to support them.

Avalon Hill produced hundreds of games during the heyday of board-based wargames. When I look at the list of games, there are a number of games I wish I had a chance to play, including: 1776, Afrika Korps, Jutland, and Midway.

Five for Friday 4: Holmes and Nothing But Dungeons (My Early Gaming)

Here is a list of five of my early gaming influences. Back in the 1970s, gaming for me was all about the giant homemade dungeon. Here is why:

1. The Detroit News (one of two daily newspapers in Detroit): There was a big article in the Sunday edition of The Detroit News (probably in the Accent on Living section) that described Dungeons & Dragons. This would have been 1977. 36 years later all I really remember from the article is a description of a giant homemade dungeon where the game took place. It was the dungeon idea that captivated me.
2. Holmes Basic D&D (with the dungeon geomorphs): I’ll get to the Holmes ruleset itself in the last point. The key point I want here were the dungeon geomorphs. We took their presence as a sign that we should be making giant homemade dungeons as the setting for our game.
3. No Modules: My Holmes set did not include a module and we never bought any. We didn't have access to a store that sold modules and so no one in my group even knew about them.To this day, I do not own any of the classic D&D modules. I have not played them nor have I read them. I am a freak, I know, and my eyes glaze over in incomprehension when gamers my age talk about their favorite modules of yore.
4. Rules Mash-Up: Most of my early gaming involved a ruleset mashup of Holmes, the AD&D 1e Monster Manual, the four Original Edition supplements (Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry and Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes), and Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets (which gave us hours of fun with the Buffoon Class). The present retro-clone that comes closest to our early games is Swords & Wizardry Complete, which has a special place for me among the recent reiterations of the game.
5. Other Games: All four of us in my original gaming group had played Avalon Hill war games and Strat-O-Matic sports games. I am not sure we could have deciphered Holmes otherwise. We did not know any other gamers, so we probably would not have tried to play had we not been comfortable decoding Avalon Hill rules.

A couple of years ago, the original four guys in my gaming group reconvened (after a 28 year break) via GameTable and Skype. We started another dungeon-only campaign, using Castles & Crusades, but it fizzled after about 8 or 9 sessions. We were only able to meet online once a month and if we had to cancel, we couldn’t reschedule. Playing once a month and skipping some months altogether did not make for good gaming. I think we were also finding that going back to the dungeon (albeit a different dungeon) was not nearly as satisfying the second time around. There is only so much monster lunch money you can take until the fun wears off.

What (or who) influenced your early gaming? How has your gaming changed from that time?