Is anyone alive at Avalon Hill?

@LT04:

I guess the D&D game went into overtime their site still has AA50 as upcoming.   :|

Pretty stunning isn’t it? I almost wonder how anyone knew when it would come out considering the publisher doesn’t seem to care.

As a former US Army NCO I would like to award Avalon hill with the Army’s coveted Failure to Achieve Medal for not only failing to meet the Avalon Hill / WOTC standard but also the low standards they set for them selves.  :evil:

LT

Congrats to Avalon Hill.  ONE MONTH after releasing the game, it has been removed from the “Upcoming” section of the website.  AA Anniversary Edition now officially exists.

you gotta be kidding. They didn’t update the site at all. They removed AA50 completely! Its not upcoming nor new, nor any direct link to the game from the main site.

Its worse than before!

Maybe their marketing budget was all wrapped up in mortgage backed securities and Bernard Madoff investments. :D

Seriously though, Avalon Hill’s marketing of this game has been a total joke. They should have given half the money to us, since no one at AH seems to be very interested in promoting their product. Or maybe they don’t even have a marketing budget, just a distribution one.

Yawn

@Black_Elk:

Or maybe they don’t even have a marketing budget, just a distribution one.

Yawn

Why do they need a marketing budget when there or sites like this to promote the game for them.They new that people that play the game would tell thier friends and they would tell thier friends ands so on.And when there are say 500 hundred people from all over the world reading the fourms at a&a.org the word will spread.

just my 2 cents.

More like over 10K unique visitors over each month.

AH needs to support products. $100 games don’t sell themselves in a troubled economy.

Its takes us and us alone to safeguard its success, we need to bitch and complain until something respectful is done to properly accommodate the products in a favorable and proper marketing effort. If they don’t do it we have to do what we can to succeed or our hobby will die. At Board game geek rate it a 10 just to give it exposure so people will buy and keep these games coming.

But to do nothing is a great shame. To say “it will take care of itself” is a disservice to why we are here posting and engaging our ideas.

You must care.

@General:

I’m curious if they will release any new titles for 2009 in addition to the miniatures.

The Battle of Stalingrad would be great, or Operation: Market Garden, or a revised, enhanced AA: Europe with Italy and a more competitive Battle of the Atlantic.

Any other ideas?

I think Stalingrad had the most possibilities.  Urban combat, Russian reinforcements getting strafed by Stukas as they cross the Volga, weather could affect game play, the German attempts to reinforce Paulus, Russians creating the Kessel, etc etc.

Yeah, I think an A&A Europe with Italy added to the mix would be fun!

Urgh… honestly I feel like A&A:Europe and A&A:Pacific came out yesterday.  I know it’s been almost a decade, but does a board game need to have so many revisions to it?  It’s not a computer game; there shouldn’t be patches.  Those games should already have those features built in from the start.  Board game classics like Scrabble and Monopoly are timeless for a reason. :|

A&A MB edition is timeless  :cry:

@tin_snips:

A&A MB edition is timeless  :cry:

I agree.  I played it for the first time in a long time this week.  It just seemed so easy to get things done in that game not having a dozen spaces between capitals.

It will always hold a place in my heart.

LT

I wish Avalon Hill had just stuck with Axis and Allies: 1984 and Axis and Allies: Anniversary and that’s it.  The more I look at Revised, the more it reminds me of a bastard child.  It’s an unfair statement because Revised did come out by Anniversary, but Anniversary ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISHED what Revised had set out to do.  Which is disappointing because Revised came out 4 years before Anniversary.  If you’re talking about board games, 4 years is not a long time.  Not when you compare it to the 24 year gap separating the original and anniversary.

If I shelled out money ($$40-50?) to own Revised, I would be peeved off to buy AGAIN the game I thought I was buying 4 years ago.  Which isn’t fair to the consumer.

In short, to every potential gamer out there: “Don’t even waste your time with Revised.”

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/apwire/4c173ce8d3d84170a78048fd4fca1f3a.htm

This would help explain the poor quality in some of the AA50 sets… broken or missing pieces…workers rioting in China!

@TG:

I wish Avalon Hill had just stuck with Axis and Allies: 1984 and Axis and Allies: Anniversary and that’s it.  The more I look at Revised, the more it reminds me of a bastard child.  It’s an unfair statement because Revised did come out by Anniversary, but Anniversary ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISHED what Revised had set out to do.  Which is disappointing because Revised came out 4 years before Anniversary.  If you’re talking about board games, 4 years is not a long time.  Not when you compare it to the 24 year gap separating the original and anniversary.

If I shelled out money ($$40-50?) to own Revised, I would be peeved off to buy AGAIN the game I thought I was buying 4 years ago.  Which isn’t fair to the consumer.

In short, to every potential gamer out there: “Don’t even waste your time with Revised.”

I have to disagree.
This is not fair for Revised. With all its limitation and problems Revised is a great improvement over Classic that has far greaters problems and limitation than Revised has.
With my playgroup when we bought Revised we stopped to play Classic. Also on line gaming is made with Revised more than with Classic.
Anniversary is an improvement in respect to Revised but Revised had been an improvement over Classic.
Anniversary is superseding Revised, not Classic that has been already superseded by Revised.

Revised is better than Classic, but Anniversary is better than Revised in every conceivable way.  When Revised first came out, it was billed as not just a bigger, better version of classic, but a balanced, historical game.  It was half-baked attempt at that, which is why I never bothered with the game.

Classic still serves a purpose of teaching new players the fundamentals of the game.  They are less unit types and IPCs, the map is smaller, the game is quicker, and there aren’t as many special rules to keep track of.  So yes, Classic still serves a purpose.

Now that Anniversary is out, does Revised serve a purpose?  If you already know how to play Axis and Allies, then you’re wasting your time with Revised.

Worst of all Revised had terrible aesthetics, a smaller board, and tawdry components (even more so for a Avalon Hill game).

Revised miniatures on average are better than Anniversary miniatures. I have seen several boxes open (in my playgroup we have three Anniversary boxes overall) and read reports on the net.

I have personally compared the miniatures. As an example Anniversary T-34 is worst than Revised T-34: it is smaller, narrower, lack the details, and its turret is also asymmetric. Ships structures are a mess.
The only Anniversary miniature largely better then the Revised one is the Panther, which is a miniature taken from A&A Battle of the Bulge not specifically made for Anniversary. I already used Panther from Battle of the Bulge in Revised before Anniversary was released.

From a gaming point of view Revised is more balanced than Classic and presents more challenging in planning.

The Revised rules, in my playgroup we use the LHTR, are more clearly written than Classic. We use LHTR also in Pacific and in Europe. Anniversary rules are based on LHTR not on Classic rules.

Teaching A&A with Classic is a waste of time imho. There are few rules that are the same. The remaining rules are completely different. Learning A&A with Classic require a lot of effort for learning Anniversary. Learning A&A with Revised requires only few rules clarification (or complication in case of China) for being ready to play Anniversary.

Revised has been sold as a balanced historical games? I do not trust advertising.
Anniversary Adverstising said that the new nations will have new unique sculpts … and other amenity that are not true, as the release date.

Revised is still a solid light wargame, cheap and quite challenging. I own all the games of A&A series and Classic is less played than Revised. We play Classic only when we feel nostalgic.