# The top Avalon Hill boardgames...



## MerricB (Apr 11, 2011)

I recently made a list of the Top 25 Avalon Hill games with a few notes on what each of them was plus some personal musings if I'd ever actually encountered the game.

The ranking was based on what boardgamegeek thought of them; it's not all that dissimilar to my own thoughts. There are a few classic games that don't appear on the list - such as Kingmaker - but as I find Kingmaker a dreadfully flawed game (great midgame, but absolutely dreadful endgame), I'm not unhappy to leave them off the list.

As I was listing games that AH had published rather than designed, I ended up with their #2 boardgame being Go! (And I actually own their edition of the game). In fact, only 13 of the 26 games I ended up listing (26 because Go really didn't count) were originally published by AH, but most of the games saw their widest distribution by AH.

A brief version of the list is as follows:
#1: Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage
#2: Go
#3: Advanced Squad Leader
#4: Civilization
#5: Dune
#6: Up Front
#7: Acquire
#8: 1830: Railways and Robber Barons
#9: The Republic of Rome
#10: Squad Leader
#11: Britannia
#12: History of the World
#13: Diplomacy
#14: Breakout: Normandy
#15: We the People
#16: Merchant of Venus
#17: Titan
#18: Empires in Arms
#19: For the People
#20: Titan: the Arena
#21: Kremlin
#22: Age of Renaissance
#23: The Russian Campaign
#24: Napoleon, the Waterloo Campaign, 1815
#25: Magic Realm
#26: Wooden Ships and Iron Men

All these games are from the pre-Hasbro incarnation of Avalon Hill!

So... are you familiar with any of the games? 

Cheers!


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## MerricB (Apr 11, 2011)

I own 10 and have played 14, for the record. 

Cheers!


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## mattcolville (Apr 11, 2011)

Gosh, let's see.

DUNE is my all-time favorite board game, been playing it regularly for 25 years. We play with one house rule; you may only ally with one other player, and together you must control 4 strongholds to win. We use all the optional rules except the one that requires you to pay spice for your mans to fight at full strength because we feel it grossly favors the factions with steady income, and they don't need any help.

We still discover amazing new facets to it even now. Couple of weeks ago, a friend playing the Fremen was in the middle of a Battle and, before he revealed, he played a Karama Card. Summoned a Worm there, and rode it to another stronghold. It was brilliant. Never seen anyone do that before, totally legal as far as we could tell. Made a HUGE difference in the game.

At some point a few years ago, teaching it to my co-workers, the Atreides player who'd never played before, started auctioning off the information about what card we were bidding on during the Treachery phase. Brilliant. Totally legal. Never seen anyone do it, no idea why we never thought of it.

Eventually we saw people trading information for information. I'll tell you what this card is, if you tell me which of my Leaders are safe in battle. We saw people paying people to fight. I'll pay you 10 spice if you beam a least 5 dudes down here and fight that dude. Amazing.

Took us YEARS to figure out how the Bene Gesserit and Guild work. Both have the power to basically force a battle or prevent a battle. Thereby controlling who gets to fight when. Ridiculously complex, frankly, but amazing when someone pulls it off.

I now believe there's no way the original designers knew how their game would be played by us. The fact that, in the original, you can have an alliance of 5 players against a 6th and just instantly win meant the game was considered unplayable by a lot of people Back In The Day. I know this because I ran my own Dune Tournament at the local con here for several years.


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## mattcolville (Apr 11, 2011)

MerricB said:


> A brief version of the list is as follows:
> #1: Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage
> #2: Go
> #3: Advanced Squad Leader
> ...




Republic of Rome is a game I played a lot, but I'm not sure we ever finished a game and I don't ever remember having fun playing. I think every time we played it, it was purely for the challenge. 

History of the World I found a terrible game. Way too random, too easy for nothing that happens before the last turn to matter. I much prefer Smallworld, which is very like History of the World, but much less random. Every game of Smallworld I've played has come down to an 80+ point game that was won by a single point and the spread between 1st and last place was very small. In other words, everyone's in it, the entire game, you can't count anyone out until the very end. I consider that good design.

Diplomacy, obviously, one of the greatest board games of all time. Not a game you necessarily want to play with your friends. 

Merchant of Venus is one of my favorite games. In fact, we played it last week, $2,000 game, which I won...with exactly $2,000. I believe everyone else had about $1900 when I won, extremely close game.

Titan I have never finished. I find it a terrible game to play at Game Night because it's the kind of game where someone gets eliminated every round. Great for a convention, not so good for social gaming. But in the context of a Con Game, it would be awesome.

I remember liking Titan: The Arena quite a lot, but after the first few games, we never played it again.


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## MerricB (Apr 11, 2011)

mattcolville said:


> Gosh, let's see.
> 
> DUNE is my all-time favorite board game, been playing it regularly for 25 years. We play with one house rule; you may only ally with one other player, and together you must control 4 strongholds to win. We use all the optional rules except the one that requires you to pay spice for your mans to fight at full strength because we feel it grossly favors the factions with steady income, and they don't need any help.




Yeah, Dune is really one of the greats. When I first played it, the group I played it with didn't allow alliances at all. We had one very memorable game which I won as the Guild by stopping everyone from winning - I detonated a Lasgun/Shield combo in the key installation to make sure no-one could win!

These days, we use the rule you do: only 2 players per alliance, and requires an extra stronghold. Works very well and makes for a great game.


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## MerricB (Apr 11, 2011)

mattcolville said:


> Republic of Rome is a game I played a lot, but I'm not sure we ever finished a game and I don't ever remember having fun playing. I think every time we played it, it was purely for the challenge.




I've enjoyed playing the reprinted version of RoR. You need 5 players, time, and playing only the Early Republic might allow you to finish. We've actually finished a game or two successfully... need to play it more though.



> History of the World I found a terrible game. Way too random, too easy for nothing that happens before the last turn to matter. I much prefer Smallworld, which is very like History of the World, but much less random. Every game of Smallworld I've played has come down to an 80+ point game that was won by a single point and the spread between 1st and last place was very small. In other words, everyone's in it, the entire game, you can't count anyone out until the very end. I consider that good design.




Yes, Small World (a retheme of Vinci) is very enjoyable. I've never been attracted to History of the World at all. It got revised to "A Brief History of the World"... and still takes 3+ hours to play, the same as the original.



> Diplomacy, obviously, one of the greatest board games of all time. Not a game you necessarily want to play with your friends.




Not if you wanted to keep them, at least!



> Merchant of Venus is one of my favorite games. In fact, we played it last week, $2,000 game, which I won...with exactly $2,000. I believe everyone else had about $1900 when I won, extremely close game.




That is close! Sadly, I don't think I've ever seen a copy.



> Titan I have never finished. I find it a terrible game to play at Game Night because it's the kind of game where someone gets eliminated every round. Great for a convention, not so good for social gaming. But in the context of a Con Game, it would be awesome.




Indeed. I've played a lot using the computer AI version, Colossus, so I know how it goes. I've played a little with friends... but it's a long way from my favourite game, so I chose not to get the reprint.



> I remember liking Titan: The Arena quite a lot, but after the first few games, we never played it again.




It got reprinted as Colossal Arena and is available cheaply from FFG. Good game, but it's one of a lot of good games so it doesn't come out much.

Cheers!


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## Crothian (Apr 11, 2011)

Some of them I've played a few decades ago and don't have many memories of.  Of those only *History of the World* is a game that I currently play and I really like it.


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## Gulla (Apr 11, 2011)

I've played 16 of them and seen all (having hoarding board game geek friends help a lot). 1830 and Britannia are two of my all time favourites and I have played both several hundred times. 1830 is a bit dated now since the formula works so much better in 1870.

Republic of Rome is probably the worst game I have ever played. I have played it a couple of dozen times, trying to like it, but whatever you do it seems to come down to either 5-6-7 hours of game play decided on one or two dice-rolls, or the game winning. Maybe I have too many cut-throat friends, but around here most player thinks letting the game win is far superior to letting someone else win.

I'm curretly teching my son ASL, refreshing my own knowledge along the way. The new introductory games are nice.

All over I really miss the Avalon Hill type games (multiplayer games taking more than 4 hours with a high focus on skill). It just isn't the same with the newer games lasting max 2 hours. And I have yet to see any game the last 10-15 years being still enjoyable and not completly understood/analysed after 200 play-throughs. These days I play much less board-games but feel that most modern games are "used up" after 20 play-throughs.


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## Jhaelen (Apr 11, 2011)

MerricB said:


> #2: Go
> #4: Civilization
> #5: Dune
> #11: Britannia
> ...



That's the ones I know.

Though, after reading the comments here I'm wondering if the Dune game I know isn't a different one.

The order almost reflects my preferences, except for Diplomacy which is definitely more fun than Britannia and maybe even as good as Civilization.

Titan and Age of Renaissance have not been games I'd play again.


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## MerricB (Apr 11, 2011)

Jhaelen said:


> That's the ones I know.
> 
> Though, after reading the comments here I'm wondering if the Dune game I know isn't a different one.




The Avalon Hill Dune uses one of these covers:












There is another not particularly good Parker Brother Dune game:





Cheers!


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## Jhaelen (Apr 11, 2011)

MerricB said:


> There is another not particularly good Parker Brother Dune game:



Ah, I see. That's indeed the one I've been thinking of, thanks!

Now I'm really interested in the Avalon Hill version of the game - I don't suppose it's still in print, or is it?


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## MerricB (Apr 11, 2011)

Jhaelen said:


> Ah, I see. That's indeed the one I've been thinking of, thanks!
> 
> Now I'm really interested in the Avalon Hill version of the game - I don't suppose it's still in print, or is it?




Sadly, it isn't. And the game rights to Dune are *particularly* hard to acquire and keep. (Matt could actually probably tell us more, since he was doing lots of Dune CCG support back in the day). After LUG got acquired by Wizards and the Kevin J Anderson/Brian Herbert novels started coming out, the RPG/boardgame license disappeared and we haven't seen it since.

Fantasy Flight Games is - as I recall - planning to do a new Dune-like game: same mechanics, different universe. Unfortunately, it isn't Dune!

There are files on boardgamegeek which would probably allow you to construct your own copy, but otherwise you're looking at a 2nd hand copy. (And it's something of a grail game - very hard to fnd and quite expensive).

Cheers,
Merric


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## Jan van Leyden (Apr 11, 2011)

Funny: I own or have played exactly 13 of your 26-position-list, plus maybe 10-12 more AH games.

I find it interesting that a lot of the titles I know were published under license and are no original AH designs. Especially if you're not looking at the wargames.


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## Wik (Apr 11, 2011)

Diplomacy is the best game ever made.  What makes it awesome is not so much the game, but the atmosphere the game creates.

I have hired spies (read as:  people in the house you're in who are bored and not playing the game).  I have fed people misinformation (leave notes in the bathroom, ostensibly for one player, and then let slip that you are doing this to another player, who  then picks up your information and assumes it to be true).  I have deliberately made miscues.

Unfortunately, I tend to assume my opponents play the same way, which gets me paralyzed by inaction - I see Russia moving his troops forward to attack me, and I assume it's actually a bluff to force England into attacking France early.  And then I'm suprised when Russia attacks me the next turn.


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## Croesus (Apr 12, 2011)

MerricB said:


> #4: Civilization
> #5: Dune
> #6: Up Front
> #10: Squad Leader
> ...




Like Crothian, it has been some time since I played many AH games, so a lot of this is from memory.

First, I'm rather surprised that I've only played eight from your list. I notice that Third Reich isn't on the list, nor is Rail Baron, Victory in the Pacific, and several others we played constantly. Different tastes and all that...

Civilization was fun, though it took several games to learn how to transition from the the the early game to mid game to end game. I don't remember any of us really mastering this one.

Dune - chalk me up as another fan boy of this one. We played this one even more cutthroat than Diplomacy, and as MC has said, there's always something new to discover. I really wish someone would print a few thousand additional copies so the rest of us could get one (we played a friend's copy, so I don't have my own).

Up Front - We enjoyed this one, but preferred Naval War.

Squad Leader - We never played the Advanced version. The original was good, but suffered from all of AH's tactical games - determining line of sight could be a real pain at times. Also very subject to getting hot/cold dice - bad luck on a few morale rolls and you're toast. I still remember when we learned how to use smoke to infiltrate buildings (the German player was not amused... )

Diplomacy - I disagree with the earlier comments. This game is much more fun with friends than strangers. Just be sure everyone knows going in that stabbing someone in the back is a normal part of the game (but not required). And have something else available for people to do as they are wiped out.

Titan - I remember two things about this one. We loved the game. And we never, never, never finished a game. Finally stopped playing when we realized we'd be old and gray before a game actually came to an end.

Russian Campaign - Very flawed, abstract game. Loads of fun, we used to play this with three players (two German, one in the North, one in the South). We very rarely saw the Germans defeated. I still remember the one game where, as the German player, I suddenly realized I no longer had enough units to keep attacking and moved onto the defensive. The shift literally occurred in one turn, the change of initiative happening that quickly. In a typical game, if the German can simply keep from losing many units while attitioning the Russian, the game is usually over by late 1942.

Wooden Ships and Iron Men - Potentially a fun game with a very clunky system for playing. I understand why we used written orders and such, but very tedious. This is clearly a game that would play much better on a computer than on a board. I just always felt this was a game with 15 minutes of fun for roughly every hour spent playing.


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## MerricB (Apr 12, 2011)

Croesus said:


> First, I'm rather surprised that I've only played eight from your list. I notice that Third Reich isn't on the list, nor is Rail Baron, Victory in the Pacific, and several others we played constantly. Different tastes and all that...




Victory in the Pacific would have been the next game in the list (#27, ranked #521 on BGG), Third Reich is #39 (#752), and Rail Baron is #50 (#1009 on BGG).

Some of the games haven't aged that well and have been replaced by newer designs; others are just too "monster" for some. 

Rail Baron is the biggest casualty of this: there are a lot of train games on the market at present: Age of Steam, Railways of the World, Steam, Ticket to Ride, the 18XX series, Chicago Express, the Empire Builder series. Pretty much all of them appeal to the train-lovers and play quicker than Rail Baron. 

Cheers!


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## Mark CMG (Apr 12, 2011)

I love that original version of Civilization.  Have you tried Kingmaker, Merric?


Kingmaker | Board Game | BoardGameGeek


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## MerricB (Apr 12, 2011)

Mark CMG said:


> I love that original version of Civilization.  Have you tried Kingmaker, Merric?




Yes, I have. It's got this great early and middle game, and an erratic endgame where you probably end up turtleing because to attack is normally to lose. (I've written a session report for it that you can find here).

Interesting design, although seems somewhat creaky today. 

Cheers!


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## Mark CMG (Apr 12, 2011)

MerricB said:


> Yes, I have. It's got this great early and middle game, and an erratic endgame where you probably end up turtleing because to attack is normally to lose. (I've written a session report for it that you can find here).
> 
> Interesting design, although seems somewhat creaky today.
> 
> Cheers!





I think you rather missed some of the strategies that make Kingmaker far more manageable and intriguing, if I may use that word.    First, you definitely want to avoid relying on nobles (or nobles with particular offices) that have obligations that can call them away.  Second, once you have a top heir (or the highest left), no doubt you want to avoid battles where you can lose him (or her) and where nobles can get killed and greatly weaken your position.  Third, and this isn't really something you could have done much about at the time, you want to play this game with lots of people, five, six, seven, or even more if you can do so.

The obligations are something you go into with eyes open, but the temptation of using such nobels/offices because of their strengths, which many have, can lure inexperienced players into over relying on them.  That's not really a flaw of the game.  The unpredicatability of the battle outcomes, particularly in regard to noble deaths, makes it very clear early on in for new players, that battling is not a clear, if even the best, path toward victory.  It's possible but very risky.  The key is often in securing an heir and making sure none of the others makes it to the end of the game.  Plus, be sure to understand that a shared victory is probably much more likely and certainly more frequent from my experience than a single player victory.

I'd recommend gaving the game another try, while letting all players know the risks up front, and do try to play with six or seven players.  I think you'll find it a very different endgame while still enjoying the early and middle games, too.


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## MerricB (Apr 12, 2011)

I daresay we did. Alas, I don't own a copy, so I'll have to rely on Neil bringing it in again (and me having the time and not having 10 other boardgames to play).

Oh, heck with it! I've just ordered a copy from e-bay for a reasonable price. We'll likely play it again in a few weeks time. 

Cheers!


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## Mark CMG (Apr 12, 2011)

Whenever I read your gaming reports it makes me wish we lived in the same area. 


I'm hoping to get a game of (the old) Britannia going some time this Summer.


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## billd91 (Apr 12, 2011)

I own 7, have played 10.

EDIT:
The ones I own from that list:
#3: Advanced Squad Leader
#4: Civilization (Advanced Civ)
#9: The Republic of Rome
#10: Squad Leader
#15: We the People
#16: Merchant of Venus
#22: Age of Renaissance

I also have Kingmaker, Panzer Blitz, and probably a couple of others. Of all of these, I've played Civ/Advanced Civ more than the others. I'd like to see the new version of Republic of Rome. I like a game in which the game itself kicks your ass if you don't cooperate at least a little bit.


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