A (Very) Brief History of Avalon Hill

Avalon Hill, now owned by Hasbro and operating as a division of Wizards of the Coast, was a tabletop game company specializing in war games and strategic boardgames. They were not only responsible for pioneered many of the key concepts of modern tabletop wargaming, such as the hex grid and zones of control, but were also responsible for publishing some of the most recognizable titles in the board game industry such as Civilization, Axis and Allies, Runequest, and Dune.

In 1958, Charles Roberts founded Avalon Hill in order to capitalize on the success of his game Tactics. Self-published in 1952, Tactics was particularly noteworthy because it was based on actual war tactics and scenarios. As such, Tactics is considered to be the first modern tabletop war game. Shortly after the company was founded, it released Tactics II, the sequel to Roberts’ original game. The game, which was an improvement on the original design, featured a series of concepts that have long since become ubiquitous in modern tabletop war games. One might argue that many of these concepts have become pivotal mechanics in many other types of tabletop games beyond the wargamming genre. Chief among these newly introduced mechanics was the Combat Results Table (CRT), a tool to determine in-game combat success or failure. Shortly after the release of Tactics II, Avalon Hill published Gettysburg, which is widely considered to be the first tabletop wargame based upon an actual historical battle.

By the end of 1962, Avalon Hill had fallen on difficult economic times. Roberts was forced to sell the company to Monarch Printing, Avalon Hill’s printer, as a way of paying back his debt to them. Upon the sale of Avalon Hill, Roberts left the company and founded Barnard, Roberts, and Co, a small press publisher. Monarch Printing, who changed their name to Monarch Avalon after they acquired the company, continued to run Avalon Hill as a subsidiary for 36 years until its sale to Hasbro in 1998.

Throughout the 1970s, Avalon Hill continued to publish tabletop war games, including such noteworthy titles as Midway, Afrika Korps, The Battle of the Bulge, and Blitzkrieg. However, in addition to its tabletop wargame products, Avalon Hill continued to publish tabletop games in other genres, a strategy pioneered by Charles Roberts before he was forced to sell the company to Monarch Printing. Among these games were Acquire, an economic game of acquisitions and mergers, and Twixt, an abstract strategy game, the rights to both of which had been acquired by Avalon Hill when they purchased the products from 3M’s Bookshelf Game series.

During this period, Avalon not only published original titles, but they also purchased the rights to re-publish games that had been previously published by smaller companies. Included in these re-published games was Battleline Publications’ Wooden Ships and Iron Men, Jedko Games’ The Russian Campaign and War at Sea, and Hartland Trefoil’s Civilization. In response to the enormous popularity TSR was experiencing with Dungeons & Dragons, Avalon Hill also published several traditional pen & paper roleplaying games, including Lords of Creation and Powers and Perils. Through a complicated agreement with the publisher Chaosium, Avalon Hill was about to secure the rights to release the RuneCraft, an RPG which had established itself as the second most popular fantasy role-playing game after Dungeons & Dragons.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Avalon Hill began developing numerous computer games based on their various boardgames. Platforms for these new computer games included the VIC 20, Commodore 64, and Apple II. Unfortunately, Avalon Hill saw little success with their computer games.

Avalon Hill enjoyed moderate growth through the 1980s and early 1990s. However, during the mid 1990s, the boardgame industry as a whole began suffering a downturn in sales. Not only had overall sales of their board games decreased, but the company had also lost the rights to two of their most popular games, Civilization and 1830, in a legal battle with the computer game publisher Microprose. In 1997 and 1998 Avalon Hill lost significant money in both its computer division and its boardgame division. In the summer of 1998, Eric Dott, president of Monarch Avalon, Inc. (the parent company of Avalon Hill), sold the rights to all Avalon Hill titles, all back stock, and the name company itself to Hasbro, Inc. Hasbro continued to publish games under the Avalon Hill name. In addition, they sold the rights to several games, such as Advanced Squad Leader, to other publishers. In late 1999, Avalon Hill was made a division of Wizards of the Coast, who had been purchased by Hasbro earlier that year. Wizards of the Coast continues to release games under the Avalon Hill name, including Axis & Allies, Betrayal at House on the Hill, RoboRally, and Risk 2210 A.D.