You Gotta Know...these ancient Avalon Hill games

fizzball · Post by **fizzball** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 9:24 am

Was there actually a Magic Realm question at ICT? That's just crazy. It's been out of print for at least eight years, and hasn't been on the Gen Con or World Boardgaming Championships in recent years, as far as I can tell. There is no reason to expect even top-level undergrads or grads to answer a question on Magic Realm in any format.

Despite the old Avalon Hill's history and reputation, these are the only pre-bankruptcy AH games which I think one could reasonably expect to come up in a QB event -- or rather, the only ones writers should expect anyone other than eBay hounds to know anything about. Keep in mind I understand the fringiness of these games, even when using words like "classic" or "popular":

Tactics/Tactics II - The company's first efforts

Squad Leader and expansions (Cross of Iron, Crescendo of Doom, GI: Anvil of Victory)

Advanced Squad Leader - Licensed to Multi Man Publishing, which is owned by a certain MLB pitcher.

Acquire - Sid Sackson hotel/corporate merger/game; in Games Magazine Hall of Fame; one of only three to get reissued by WotC/Hasbro after the acquisition.

Diplomacy - Classic negotiation/backstabbing game; Games HoF

Statis Pro - AH's version of Strat-O-Matic

Facts in Five - Before Trivial Pursuit, this was the big-deal trivia boardgame.

Rail Baron - precursor to the popular "crayon games;" still popular at conventions.

1830 - stock-manipulation/track-laying game, still played heavily at cons; many homebrew game kits using 18xx game system

Adel Verpflichtet - an early Klaus Teuber game and Spiel des Jahres winner, now published as "Hoity Toity" by Uberplay

Civilization & Advanced Civ. - Inspirations for Sid Meier's computer franchise, but I'd expect any question on it to go "Quack quack quack inspired Sid Meier."

STPickrell · Post by **STPickrell** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 10:37 am

Do you think Panzerblitz (forerunner of Panzer Leader and Arab-Israeli Wars) might be worth adding to the list, or it is one of those "known and important to board-game players, unknown to everyone else" deals?

Diplomacy and maybe Squad Leader seem to be the best-known. Some of these seem more like the hard 10 of a bonus question, though.

Captain Sinico · Post by **Captain Sinico** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 12:04 pm

StPickrell wrote:...is one of those "known and important to board-game players, unknown to everyone else" deals?

The thing is, these are almost all that. If you're talking tossup answers, I'd expect all of these to go dead at the mean academic tournament except Diplomacy and Civilization (which, as was noted, would fail to go dead because an actually popular game was based on it.) I understand that board gaming is a niche that a lot of people are passionate about, but it's really just not objectively important or well known enough to justify multiple questions at an academic tournament.

MaS

STPickrell · Post by **STPickrell** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 12:32 pm

ImmaculateDeception wrote:
StPickrell wrote:...is one of those "known and important to board-game players, unknown to everyone else" deals?
The thing is, these are almost all that. If you're talking tossup answers, I'd expect all of these to go dead at the mean academic tournament except Diplomacy and Civilization (which, as was noted, would fail to go dead because an actually popular game was based on it.) I understand that board gaming is a niche that a lot of people are passionate about, but it's really just not objectively important or well known enough to justify multiple questions at an academic tournament.

MaS

You're right -- I was thinking more as to their usage to fill the "Other" category of a trash tournament. My apologies for any confusion. I'm not sure if Greg was thinking as to their potential usage in a regular tournament or a trash tournament.

For example, how answerable would a question on Haifa Wehbe be at a trash tournament, despite her filling a niche roughly parallel to Britney Spears in the Arab world?

As for high school questions the only one of these I'd even think about using/allowing would be Diplomacy, and I'd give that a 5 or 6 in difficulty (out of 7).

Mainstream board games, such as Life, Sorry!, Monopoly, etc., would certainly be more askable; if a regular academic tournament had more than 2-3 questions on board games, that's probably too much.

Captain Sinico · Post by **Captain Sinico** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:08 pm

I guess regarding trash I don't know; neither I nor any of the other people on my team who play trash know any board games.

MaS

fizzball · Post by **fizzball** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 4:24 pm

ImmaculateDeception wrote:If you're talking tossup answers, I'd expect all of these to go dead at the mean academic tournament except Diplomacy and Civilization

As tossup answers: I agree, with the possible addition of Advanced Squad Leader due to the Curt Schilling connection. The others could be worthwhile in trash as bonus parts or knowledge stems leading to other boardgame points; e.g., knowing early games by Klaus Teuber, such as Adel, can get you points before a "Settlers of Catan" buzzer race.

To Shawn: Yeah, I mulled PanzerBlitz, but figured it got eclipsed in its own lifetime by Squad Leader. YMMV.

And now, You Gotta Know: these oldschool SPI Games:

.

Rothlover · Post by **Rothlover** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:06 pm

As someone who used to play a lot of board games, but is my no stretch a "hound," I would think "Statis Pro"and "Acquire" would be acceptable hard parts to properly themed bonuses.

creed_of_hubris · Post by **creed_of_hubris** » Mon May 08, 2006 12:38 am

I came up to R immediately after the round where Magic Realm showed up and said something to the effect of, "look, I know you wrote that tossup. I think I'm the only person in this tourney who had a shot at that one, and I couldn't pull it. What were you thinking?"

--Fred, who's won his last four games of Advanced Civ ;-)