The Responses Are In
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
President, Avalanche Press
September 2008

It had been over five years since the last time we did a poll of potential game topics for our standard line, so last week we opened a new set of fun for your voting pleasure. Thirty-three topics were placed on the list, with voting choices ranging from "would rather eat a bug" to "must have."

The 2003 poll also featured 33 choices, and before weighing the 2008 results it might be enlightening to see how those choices have fared. Several went over very badly and have not been heard from since; the very last-place contender was tied to a game license we no longer hold. A few others were rejected nearly as forcefully.

Top vote-getter in 2003 was Panzer Grenadier: Road to Berlin, which we published in 2006 along with the second-place finisher, Second World War at Sea: Bismarck. Other games from the initial 33 to have been published since are Napoleonic Battles: Austerlitz, Alamein, Red God of War, Panzer Grenadier: Beyond Normandy, Second World War at Sea: Leyte Gulf and Tiger of Malaya. One more, Infantry Attacks: Empires End, is in pre-order status now. A few others are in the design stage and will eventually see cardboard existence. But after five years, nine of 33 are on game tables or on their way there. At least one, Leyte Gulf, certainly would not exist without the poll, as this exercise confirmed something we didn't really believe, that gamers would pay $199.99 for a gigantic naval wargame.

So who will move on from the 2008 poll?

Trafalgar at Last

The raw numbers don't really tell the story. Study of voting patterns proves one thing: Our series fans love their series. And some of them hate the others, or perhaps they feel that every naval game published keeps a Panzer Grenadier title off the shelf. At any rate, there are many individual voters who placed a 5 next to Road to Stalingrad and a 1 next to Plan Orange, and just as many who voted the other way 'round.

The top vote getter among fans is also the staff favorite, Age of Sail: The Trafalgar Campaign. We've wanted to get into this era for a very long time, and so the new series should launch in 2009 as one of the first new projects undertaken after the current set of games in pre-order are finished. There won't be a formal announcement until it's very close to publication.

Right on its heels is Panzer Grenadier: Road to Stalingrad, with Panzer Grenadier: Across the Rhine very close to it. I am reasonably sure we could sell Panzer Grenadier: The Potato War if we made it a good game, and the loyalty of the series fans must be rewarded with more boxed games in 2009. Because we want to do supplements set in the Far East, the Philippines game gets added impetus for publication since it will contain proper terrain, even though it came in behind the other two in the poll.

Second World War at Sea has its own dedicated fans, and its games finished almost in a statistical dead heat with Panzer Grenadier. Aleutian Seas comes in first, with Plan Orange and Z-Plan in a near-tie right behind it. They'll all appear eventually, along with at least one more SWWAS title.

An offshoot proposal, Second World War in the Air: Targeting the Reich, came in third among all 33 pieces of vaporware and that makes it a pretty sure thing that SWWAS will get a sister series at some point in the future. This is one we're definitely looking forward to, and I'm sure many players will want the oversized aircraft pieces for use with their Second World War at Sea games. We'll definitely do our best to keep the ratings and layout of the pieces the same across both series.

Many proposals were for our $19.99 line, something we want to expand in these times of economic uncertainty. Overall they did less well than the larger games proposed, but that was expected since a much higher ration of these games are sold in stores than direct to customers. And those direct customers (that would be you) form the base of our poll voters.

Dinant Bridgehead, a game from an outside designer, was the highest-ranked game proposal of those outside the series/system "comfort zone" of SWWAS/Panzer Grenadier and their relatives. That doesn't guarantee that it will get made, as it has not yet been fully evaluated and if it fails at that stage, it meets the Shredder of Doom no matter how many fans wanted it to not suck. But the designer's an old pro so it's likely to be a good one.

Goodbye, Blackbirds

And then there are the losers. Like NASCAR races and Cretan bull-leaping, marketplace failure holds a certain fascination for a segment of the audience who'll want to know where the hating landed.

As in the 2003 poll, there were a few proposals added with the expectation that they would fail to thrive. But dead last in 2008, and this despite no record of any votes cast in Croatia, was a game that actually exists, at least in kit form, Day of the Blackbirds. There's no more love for Tsar Lazar's knights than in 1389, and so it seems their memory must perish from this earth.

There's a drop in negativity before three candidates are clustered closely together. I expected that the Potato War might not do too well, but it's a Holy Grail project so hoping against hope, it went on the list. Now it will disappear from it forever more.

Much more surprising was the near-identical score racked up by Red Heroes: The Defense of Volokolamsk, 1941. It's an Eastern Front game, it has a popular game system, and it has heroic acts. And it failed pretty miserably.

The third game in the cluster, Constantine: The Campaign for Rome 312, is one from an outside designer. I won't know how good the game is until I have the developer's evaluation, but at least now we know that it has an uphill marketing climb among the hard core if we decide to give it the green light.

The next one on the poorly-received list was another shock to the personal Holy Grail list, Soldier Empress. Soldier Kings has been a very popular game and is based on a conflict only slightly better-known than the War of the Austrian Succession. Because of the Soldier Kings connection — and the fact that it's already been designed — it might survive anyway, but only as a member of the revised, no-credit-card-down successor to the Classic Wargames program. It's probably a little large to make it a Gold Club free print-and-play game, or that would be an option as well.

The 33 proposals were in no way a list of everything we're working on or looking at; others not listed include a fine game on the War of the Roses, more Rome at War volumes, and additions to the upcoming Infantry Attacks line. And we'll continue to publish an extensive line of book supplements, with several more due out this year.

See the massive masterpiece that the last great poll wrought:
Order Leyte Gulf today!