Avalon Hill
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| Subsidiary | |
| Founded | 1954 |
| Headquarters | Renton, Washington, United States |
| Products | Board games |
| Parent |
Wizards of the Coast (Hasbro) |
| Website | avalonhill |
Avalon Hill Games, Inc. is a game company that specializes in wargames and strategic board games. Its logo contains its initials "AH", and the company is often referred to by this abbreviation. It has also published the occasional miniature wargaming rules, role-playing game, and had a popular line of sports simulations. It is now a subsidiary of the game company Wizards of the Coast, which is itself a subsidiary of Hasbro.
Avalon Hill pioneered many of the concepts of modern recreational wargaming. These include elements such as the use of a hexagonal grid (a.k.a. hexgrid) overlaid on a flat folding board, zones of control (ZOC), stacking of multiple units at a location, an odds-based combat results table (CRT), terrain effects on movement, troop strength, morale, and board games based upon historical events. Complex games could and did take days or even weeks, and AH set up a system for people to play games by mail.
Avalon Hill was started in 1954 by Charles S. Roberts under the name of "The Avalon Game Company", a reference to the nearby town of Avalon, Maryland, for the publication of his game Tactics, considered the first of a new type of board game, the wargame. Following the success of Tactics, Roberts changed the name upon incorporation from "The Avalon Game Company" to "Avalon Hill" in 1958 because of an argument with another company. The number of games released per year was erratic until 1964 as the company released anywhere from 1 to 7 games.5-8
The first game published by the company under the name of "Avalon Hill" was the second edition of Tactics, titled Tactics II, published in 1958. AH published two other games that year, Gettysburg and the railroad game Dispatcher.
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