Back in my day (you young whippersnappers), an "AH classic" was a game released prior to 1969. Sometimes the term applied only to several wargames copyrighted in 1965--particu- larly those which shared the "standard d-elim CRT" (Battle of the Bulge was a revolutionary game in '65--and thus arguably not a true classic--because it featured a newfangled CRT = combat results table).

Any AH game released in the 70s still (believe it or not) seems new to me. By the 80s I was no longer tempted to buy every new AH game. By the 90s, I felt AH had pretty much sold out to the mediocre masses, so I bought very few new games then. Consequently, some of the titles in the "classics" list are unfamiliar to me.

For those offended by the "mediocre masses" remark above--well, sorry. That's how my wargaming friends and I perceived it back then. In 1968, when I discovered wargaming, I was sure it'd take over as the intellectual pastime. Chess and bridge had had their day; the day of wargaming was coming. And when SPI got started, that's just what wargaming was: a pastime for the intellectual elite. Who else would have the patience or brainpower for such complicated games, much less an interest in military history or science? Wargaming was a serious study, not just something to do for fun.

Because I expected wargaming to rise to the status and popularity of chess and bridge, I figured the quality of the components would improve also. The days of paper and cardboard would come to an end, and we'd start seeing polished maple mapboards with brass hinges, and ceramic unit-counters. (Lou Zocchi did come out with plastic unit-counters briefly, but that's about as far as it went.) Meanwhile, I looked to miniatures for quality of components.

In the early 70s, I wrote Gary Gygax a letter complaining about the fantasy supplement to his Chainmail miniatures rules. It was ludicrous and made wargaming look childish and silly. Thus, it would never catch on, and it'd be better for him to work on researching actual medieval warfare and making the rules more realistic. Well, as everyone knows, that "fantasy supplement" evolved into Dungeons & Dragons.

With SPI's demise in 1981 (was that the year?), AH declared it a victory for their "game first" philosophy: the notion that a wargame first of all has to be fun & playable--then if it also happens to be educational, that's an incidental bonus. Until I read that, I hadn't realized that SPI had been favoring a "history first" philosophy. But now that I knew it, I really missed SPI. I thought AH's "game first" philosophy was stupid. If games were just for fun, everybody would be playing family games like Monopoly. Who'd ever play a game like Struggle of Nations for fun?

So in the 80s, at first I passed up titles like Civilization and Gunslinger on the grounds that they weren't serious wargames. I did jump on the SL/ASL bandwagon, though. (I later came back and reluctantly tried Civilization and Gunslinger, after reading about how fun & popular they were.)

By the early 90s, I guess I finally realized wargames were never going to supplant chess & bridge as widely popular intellectual pursuits. Simulation fans seemed to be shrinking into a tinier and tinier minority, while most gamers were more than happy with "lightly themed" games like Civilization, Dune, History of the World, and so forth. The Smithsonian games (small, intro-level wargames) were a last-ditch effort to get wargames out not the public consciousness; but to me it was just a slap in the face to serious wargaming--a sellout to the "mediocre masses."

That's my hindsight look at "AH classics." For me it was at first an exciting new wave in gaming--one that would change the world. Little did I know it was a lost cause. Now I'm struggling to catch up on chess, since I'd left it behind for wargaming. (But speaking of "mediocre"--that'd be a charitable word to use for my chess game.)