Dear AVALONCON enthusiast; You are receiving this survey because you have indicated an interest in the continuation of the Avalon Hill gaming conference. If you object to receiving such material, respond with a "remove" subject to be deleted from my mailing list. However, if you do take an active interest in AVALONCON, I urge you to take the time to respond to this survey in full. Not only will the questions posed determine the future course of the convention, the % returned will act as a gauge of support for its continuation. As promised, I have petitioned Hasbro regarding its intentions for the continuation of AVALONCON in the wake of the sale of Avalon Hill to Hasbro. During my recent visit to their Beverly, MA campus I stressed the need for immediate action if we were to preserve our facility at the Hunt Valley Inn for 1999. To their credit, they have responded in a timely fashion - thus resulting in this poll. Allow me to inject at this point that Avalon Hill fans should be thankful for the Hasbro buyout. The acquiring company usually is painted as the heavy in such takeovers, but from my perspective Hasbro is very much the white knight in this story. The infusion of their resources and marketing savvy promises to save many of the classic titles that were otherwise headed for oblivion. My understanding is that not only will they convert many of the AH games to the computer, but that they will continue to produce the best of the boardgames. And more importantly, they will be reissued with state of the art graphics and components that could only be described as "lavish" by AH standards. I am extremely pleased that some of my favorite games will not only survive, but be made available to a far greater audience in an improved format. When I was fired by Avalon Hill, I was sitting on no less than eight fully developed games that languished with no hope of publication due to lack of proper graphic support. Those restrictions are now gone. Far from being the end of wargaming as we know it, I believe our hobby stands on the threshold of a new golden age where quality will again reign supreme. That said, I regret to report that Hasbro has decided not to continue AVALONCON and will not sell me the trademark so that I may do so. Their decision is not unexpected and makes perfect business sense. They do not want to detract from the prominence of GENCON by sponsoring a competing conference. It is their preference that AVALONCON enthusiasts be encouraged to attend GENCON instead. While I am disappointed by their decision, I respect it and applaud them for resolving the matter in a timely fashion. I certainly understand the corporate preference for a dominant trade show, and while I would argue that AVALONCON is not a trade show, the difference is not something I would expect them to appreciate. Certainly the size and grandeur of GENCON surpasses anything that we could hope to emulate with AVALONCON. Nevertheless, I do not share their enthusiasm for the larger trade shows which strike me as being more about corporate sales than true gaming - at least from the viewpoint of the competitive boardgamer - whose activities take a back seat to the marketing of new products. Having not experienced the comradery of an AVALONCON or the sense of achievement in winning a national event against a large field of players, I'm sure AVALONCON came off as the small potatoes it is in a corporate sense. Fortunately, Hasbro has not requested that we cease doing our own thing provided we do not refer to it as AVALONCON or the Avalon Hill National Championships. And that, dear reader, is why you need to take the time to answer the following survey ... so we can judge whether to proceed along that course and how to do so, given these events. -ed note: The survey is available if desired, but I thought the most important thing was the view of the former Avalon Hill employee and Hasbro's willingness to let the show survive. Back to The Gauntlet No. 14 Table of Contents Back to The Gauntlet List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Craig Martelle Publications This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com