ORIGINAL: YankeeAirRat
The problem there is that Hasbro spun off the A&A brand name into two different entities. You have the boardgame versions (Pick your flavor:
Original,
Europe,
Pacific,
D-Day,
1942,
Battle of the Bulge,
Guadalcanal.) or via Hasbro's owned and not controlled Wizards of the Coast entity the A&A Minis with three different versions of these games out (
Air,
Land and
Sea) everything else of the AH line they tried to have computer games as well as the board games. The Computer games stunk and in turn for a new generation of gamers who might have played the board games they think the original boardgames are a pain the in arse. Add in that Hasbro has also diluted the quintessential wargame "Risk" with just as many versions (I think my last time in a game store this month I saw every possible pop fad from Mechwarrior style theme to Game of Thrones and Battle Star Galatica) as they have of A&A. Hasbro and Parker Brothers are the "Beer and Preztels" of game makers. Everyone else that I know from Decision Games to GMT Games strive for everything in between in their catalogs.
Many people in the industry were scratching their heads when Hasbro bought AH. The sort of games AH produced were a mega hit if they sold 10,000 copies over their lifetime. Hasbro considered a game a flop if it failed to sell 100,000 copies a year. Very different scales.
What Hasbro wanted more than anything else was the rights to Diplomacy which they thought could become the next online gaming wonder and AH's parent, Monarch Publishing, needed to unload the gaming wing quickly to settle the law suit. In the end Hasbro didn't do much of anything with Diplomacy. If they released a computer game of it, I didn't notice.
I see ads for AH in a history magazine I subscribe to and my stomach kind of does a flip every time I see the ads. It's like seeing a great actress like Meryl Streep do an Ed Wood quality movie because she's sunk so low.
As for myself I have gotten back into board and minis gaming because it just been fun to sit there with some friends in person. Trash talking or chit-chatting as the dice are rolled and trade shots of a bunch of PT boats and ADBA Destroyers attempt to defend some vital waterway from the Tokoyo Express or wonder if by zigging instead of Zagging in tactics that some of the more infamous events like Op Oboe could have gone a from being a marginal or minor victory to being the brillant victory they were expected to be. Also it is easier to factor in RL into a table game then it is a computer game recently
I don't have anybody in the real world even remotely interested in these sorts of games. I'd love to just get some people together to play AH's Civilization, which isn't really a "wargame", but can't get any takers. My schedule is too erratic right now to play a real person anything that takes more than a day anyway.
Bill
