The top Avalon Hill boardgames...

[MerricB]

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!

 

[MerricB]

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

Cheers!

 

[mattcolville]

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.

 

[mattcolville]

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!

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.

 

[MerricB]

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.

 

[MerricB]

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!

 

[Crothian]

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.

 

[Gulla]

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.

 

[Jhaelen]

#2: Go
#4: Civilization
#5: Dune
#11: Britannia
#13: Diplomacy
#17: Titan
#22: Age of Renaissance

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.

 

[MerricB]

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!