Red Russia:
The Liquidating
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D., President, Avalanche Press
July 2011

Over the 17 years of Avalanche Press, we’ve produced a lot of games. Some of them have been wildly successful on every level (Third Reich, Eastern Front, Jutland). Others have been dismal failures (Airlines2). And then there are some I just don’t know how to classify.

Red Russia falls into that category. It’s a very intense multi-player game, with players taking the roles of the Red faction or one of three White factions. Game play is based pretty closely on our very popular Soldier Kings game, and it moves quickly despite its seemingly chaotic nature (as with Soldier Kings, you can play your cards at any time). The history behind it is impeccable; the components are very nice – it has nice big one-inch-square playing pieces, and top-quality playing cards. The rules are about as “clean” as any I can recall; as far as I can remember, there have been very few questions raised about them.

I certainly had high hopes for Red Russia. Soldier Kings had been very successful for us; Soldier Emperor less so but still a very solid product. Soldier Raj did much less well, but that’s mostly attributable to the theme – it’s a beautiful game, it’s just about India.

Red Russia had a lot going for it: a solid theme, a very good team of designer and developer, and a solid game engine behind it. It suffered in execution, though: I originally asked designer William Sariego to create it to take advantage of the fantastic art skills of Terry Strickland, who’d done the illustrations for Soldier Emperor and Soldier Raj. Then Terry had an art breakthrough, selling several pieces at a single show for very large sums. She had to move on and pursue what had always been her dream. Beth Donahue took over and produced a unique look.

I’m not sure where we went wrong with Red Russia. It didn’t lose money, but neither did it make nearly as much as we could have with a Panzer Grenadier or naval series game published in its stead. The game play is quite good, and while the artwork is unconventional it is a coherent whole and the different look by itself doesn’t explain the game’s weak sales compared to Soldier Kings.

We didn’t market Red Russia as well as we should have, and it launched with very little buzz. I’m at a loss to explain the lack of excitement. The other games we released around the same time did well (Island of Death and Bitter Victory), but we were already seeing a trend where games outside our core series showed a considerable drop-off after release (namely, Austerlitz and Alamein). Had we put out a game from one of our core series instead, I think we’d be much happier with the result – Elsenborn Ridge, released not long after Red Russia, sold phenomenally well.

I expected greater things from Red Russia than Elsenborn Ridge, and placed the print orders accordingly – it was printed in North China, which meant there was no realistic option to hedge the print order with a smaller number and then come back for more were it successful. So we made a lot of them. A whole lot. And now we have way too many of them.

We’ve downsized our warehouse space, and we’re cramped in the storage department. So to ease that, we’re going to dispose of the Red Russia stockpile. I really hate doing it, because this game should have been a top-drawer seller. But it’s not, and with space at a premium it can’t justify the huge amount of space it occupies. Chrys Jones, whose company moved our games last week, stopped by the visit yesterday and pointed out that he could have had his crew dispose of Red Russia (and Austerlitz) at the same time they moved everything else. And if I’d had time to plan the move better, that’s exactlty what I would have done.

But I didn’t, so I didn’t, and so we’re going to give Red Russia the Viking Funeral treatment: they’ll be on sale for just $14.99 (regular price $49.99) for a short time, and then we’ll dispose of them. Most of the supply is deep inside the new warehouse, so after the first couple dozen shipping of them may be delayed slightly.

Get it while you can: order Red Russia right now!