Lest you think I'm always a loser ... .

While I got my head handed to me at Piepsk earlier in the day, I was able to make agood showing in TWO games of Acquire that night, coming out on top in both four-player games. I've only played the game a few times before, but I am starting to get a feel for the strategy.

As a side note, there are some odd gaps in my game experience Acquire has been out for decades but I only recently started playing it -- which is too bad because it really is a great classic game.

Both game developed quite differently. The first game saw a large, dominant corporation quickly get safe status and take over half the board while the other corporations did what they could with the rest. One of the seven corporations never made it onto the board at all. I was able to win because I had acquired a good position in that dominating company early on and ended up being the majority shareholder and decent positions in many nof the others. Still, it was a close game and I only won by less than $2 grand.

The second game, in contrast, shown at top. was much more free wheeling with all seven corporations making early appearances. There were even a few times players would have like dto have started new corporations but there were none available. This game was a little more decisive, as I was more than $5,00 ahead of the next player.

I'm still learning this game, but it seems important to keep money flowing and try to be at least a participant in most of the corporations. A couple f the players found themselves cash poor because they were heavily invested in some safe corps and unable to generate funds to take advantage of opportunities as they appeared. Because of this I was able to get majority or minority shareholder bonuses on the cheap by having one of a handful of shares in taken-over corporations for a nice return on the money. In afour-player game having 8 or 9 shares was often enough to control a safe corporation and even a single share might turn a tidy profit when a small chain gets taken over if no one had the money to invest in it. I hope to get this on the table a few more times over the next few months.

One irony of Avalon Hill's "50th" anniversary

Hasbro selected three games for "Anniversary" editions to mark the 50th anniversary of Avalon Hill's founding.

While all three games are worthy classics (Acquire, Axis & Allies, and Diplomacy), none of them are original Avalon Hill games. Acquire was published by 3M and brought into the AH line when it took over the 3M line. Diplomacy, of course, is just as old as AH, but was first published by Gamescience before being bought and published by AH. Axis & Allies was never in the old Baltimore-based Avalon Hill's lineup at all.

It would have been nice to see a real Avalon Hill classic republished, but there are few candidates that might match Hasbro's market. Perhaps the most likely candidate would be an updated edition of Football strategy that reflected the way the NFL is played today.

Among the wargames I think there are few games that could make the transition. Most of the better games are in the hands of MMP or being republished elsewhere. Maybe, just maybe, a heavily revised Midway with plastic Axis & Allies style ships could catch the eye of the modern bit-oriented gamer. Of the classic hex-and-counter games Afrika Korps has probably held up the best, but I don't see it appealing to Wal-Mart shoppers.

No, it's easy to see w hy Acquire, Dip and A&A made the cut.

The first rush of the New Avalon Hill

For more than 40 years the premier adult gaming company was Avalon Hill. While most famous for its wargames, the Baltimore-based AH was always more than that. Perhaps ahead of its time, it always realized that games were not just for kids. Right from its start under Charles Roberts, AH always had a balanced line, with at least as many family and adult games as wargames. This continued throughout the Dott ownership.

When the Dotts finally tired of the game business and sold the Avalon Hill name and line to Hasbro, gamers everywhere lost quite a bit. But change is inevitable, after all, and we all have to just get on with it. Gamers wondered what Hasbro had in mind for AH, and it doesn't appear that Hasbro had any deeply thought-out strategy. Hasbro has been making it a policy to buy up adventure game outfits of late, most notably the Wizards of the Coast, and some, at least, thought it was merely a ploy to win more shelf space.

So it was with considerable interest that gamers watched the relaunch of the Avalon Hill brand by Hasbro in 2000. The first seven games of the new line ran the gamut of genres, titles, and age, but they all had one notable thing in common - not a single one was a "real" Avalon Hill game, in the sense of a game designed and marketed by the Baltimore crowd.

The First Seven were:

Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit -- An original design taking advantage of Hasbro's Star Wars licensing. A light wargame featuring 160 plastic pieces, it's a title that would never have appeared in the old AH line.

Cosmic Encounter -- Previously published by several different companies -- but not AH -- this was a reissue returning the game to its simpler roots with nicer components.

Battle Cry -- An original wargame, although a very stripped down and simple one. I've seen accounts that suggested the old AH was planning to publish the game before it went out of business. I'm not sure what that would have looked like, but I doubt it would have involved plastic figures or wooden blocks.

Stratego Legends -- A fantasy-themed version of the long-time Milton Bradley (also now owned by Hasbro) game Stratego. Obviously this would never have been in the old AH line.

Axis & Allies: Europe -- A refocused version of the Axis & Allies wargame published by Milton Bradley. Obviously not a candidate for the old AH line, it would have been too "light" for their customers.

Diplomacy -- A new, very nice edition of the classic diplomatic game that has been published by many companies, and was a prominent part of the old Avalon Hill line, although designed elsewhere. As a matter of fact, Allan Calhamer and Charles Roberts were working on their games around the same time.

Acquire -- Also a new edition of a timeless classic game, in this case designed by Sid Sackson. Originally a part of the 3M game line, it was bought by AH and a favorite part of their lineup until the end.

So, while the initial offering of the new AH resembled its predecessor with a balance of wargames and non-wargames and even included a few familiar titles, overall it was a much lighter group than the old Avalon Hill line. It did provide a good indication of where Hasbro was going with the Avalon Hill line, however. The rights for real hard-core wargames were mostly transferred to Multi-Man Publishing if AH-owned. Many of the other games, whose designers had retained rights, have reappeared with different publishers.

The more recent AH/Hasbro offerings have resembled the first batch, with most of the wargames also bearing the Axis & Allies brand in addition to AH. Except for Diplomacy and Acquire, which are being reissued again in new versions, the only New AH game that is a re-issue of a prior AH title is Monsters Menace America.

It seems evident that there will be no resurrecting of the hard-core historical Avalon Hill wargame under Hasbro. Only games light enough to merit the Axis & Allies label will show up, although some of those such as the A&A miniatures line and A&A:Bulge are definitely real wargames.

New version of Diplomacy and Acquire planned

It appears that Hasbro will be coming out with new editions of both these classic games this year. This is a good thing, of course, because it's nice to see good games stay available for new players to discover.
And both mew editions seem to be geared to appeal to new players, which has prompted a little grumbling among hobbyists. The new edition of Diplomacy will apparently have cardboard counters instead of the metal tokens of the previous edition. The new edition of Acquire will only be $30, so it seems likely to be a step down from the snazzy 1999 edition. It also returns to the classic "hotel" theme of the earlier editions.
At first blush I reacted a little negatively to the news, because who likes a drop in quality? But quality comes at a price and both of the first Hasbro editions were "deluxe" versions of the respective game. They were nice, but perhaps a little too nice and expensive to draw in new blood.
It looks like the new editions will be cheap enough to appeal to the more casual sort of customer who might buy Monopoly, Scrabble or Clue, rather than "gamers."

I already have two copies each of Acquire and Diplomacy. I have a 3M Acquire and the nice Hasbro version.

I have a wooden-block Avalon Hill copy of Diplomacy as well as the Hasbro metal-token edition. I'm not the target demographic for these editions.

Featured game: Acquire

Acquire is the signature game from the late noted game designer Sid Sackson. Like many classic designs, the premise is simple, the execution elegant, but the gameplay entrancing.
Essentially it's a game about accumulating money through holding stakes in growing and merging companies. Depending on the version the companies are styled "hotel" chains or hi-tech forms, but the business the companies are in isn't important because the game is really about the mergers. When it was first published in 1962 corporate mergers didn't have the high profile they do now in popular culture, but the idea is pretty familiar to folks now.
The key to winning is to be the majority or second-place stockholder in the merging companies, earning various cash or stock bonuses.
Aside from a limited production initial 3M edition the rules to Acquire have been very stable from the bookcase 3M edition through various Avalon Hill editions to the Hasbro/AH edition of 199, which is the most handsome version. One nice touch in the 199 edition is the renaming of one of the companies in the game after Sackson.
One interesting point of variation was a difference in the number of players accommodated by the rules. Multi-player games have to balance two contradictory forces. On the one hand, it's normally better to have more players because it makes the most use of interplayer interaction. On the other hand, with too many players there can be a lot of down time. This can be mitigated somewhat if there is a chance for player interaction during every person's turn, such as in Munchkin or Naval War. Still, having too many players will tend to bog things down.
The 1962 bookcase version seems to think that more is better. The game specifies that it is for 3-8 players. The "sweet spot" seems to max out at 6 however. To accommodate 7 or 8 players the game reduces the amount of money each player starts with. The game board for the 1962 version is only 9 by 12, so crowding 8 players around the board doesn't seem practical and even 5 or 6 is probably too much.
The 1999 AH/Hasbro version uses a much bigger board and specifies that the game is for 2-6 players. When there are just two players than the "market" becomes a kind of dummy player that can can end up being the majority stockholder on occasion.
I haven't had a chance to play Acquire at the extreme ends of the player numbers, so I am not sure how well the adjustments work, but it's interesting to see the problem addressed.