Like you, I always wonder who has how much of the wargame market anyway? Figures are difficult to obtain and those which do find mention (when stripped of all the hyperbole) are both out of context and seemingly doctored.

In an effort to cut through the gloom of misinformation and lack of information, I asked four of our distributors to give me the raw dollar figures of sales for a number of what I would call "wargame companies". These distributors have no ax to grind and are as interested in seeing how their market apportionment compares to other distributors as we are in just seeing the averages. Their help was both gracious and without any sort of reward, except our thanks.

The chosen distributors range across the size spectrum and are located in different sectors of the country. There is one each from the east coast, midwest, west, and west coast. The limitation of sample size and degree of error in the sample are unknown, but the figures and proportions between these distributors (which was asked to be confidential) was consistent to a great degree from one to another. That examination, while I would not bet my statistical life on it, is probably accurate to a great degree. Use the grain of salt you feel is appropriate. For what it's worth, these four represent about 40% of the initial distribution of one of our games-no small chunk!

In looking at these figures (a simple addition of the four distributors), the following are the only "voodoo" corrections made: 80% of the combined Avalon Hill-Victory Games sales figure was considered to be wargames. 20% was dropped as representative of all the "other" things AH puts out. The Victory figure was not available separately from any of the distributors and I am led to believe AH's internal accounts system brings this about. They are, in effect, one and only one entity.

25% of GDW's sales was counted as wargames. The rest is that you-know-what genre.

The following companies had either incomplete reporting from the contacted distributors, or insufficient dollar value to show up on enough of the distributor lists to make meaningful comparisons: ADG, Canadian WG, and Omega Games. Any other firms missed, undoubtedly fall into the same category.

Company Notes

The XTR figure includes Command and the zip lock games. None of the distributors could break the figures down further or give a rule of thumb as to how much was from the games. I won't hazard a guess.

From a couple of the distributors, I was able to determine that roughly 10% of the DG figure is due to Four Battles of the Ancient World. The remainder is due to the magazines. The DG figure here is the total. Apply the 10% multiplier if you want to separate the mags from the game.

The Clash of Arms number contains an unknown amount of Theatre of the Mind, Combined Books, and Prince August volume. (As well as whatever else Ed has been cooking up!) I have no idea of how much of the figure is actually Clash of Arms wargames.

Total Volume for the Four Distributors and Market Share
Company	Dollar Volume	% Share
AH-VG	382,807	47.98
DG	78,771	9.87
3W	76,157	9.55
XTR	53,290	6.68
GDW	51,619	6.47
COA	44,546	5.58
GMT	39,527	4.95
The Gamers	35,389	4.44
GRD	23,587	2.96
Rhino	7,336	0.92
NES	4,796	0.60

Rankings

For the following market share rankings, the above modifications are all used plus I'll make two ballpark wild-assed guesses that Clash of Arms's wargames makeup 75% of the COA figure and that 20% of XTR's number is the zip-locks. Feel free to chuck those estimates and use your own. In any case, I have attempted to separate the magazine industry from the boxed game market for this purpose. If you don't like any of my assumptions or restrictions-feel free to make your own list, the raw data is here as are all my assumptions.

1. Avalon Hill-VG 56.87%
2. 3W 11.31%
3. GDW 7.67%
4. GMT 5.87%
5. The Gamers 5.26%
6. Clash of Arms 4.96%
7. GRD 3.50%
8. XTR 1.58%
9. DG 1.17%
10. Rhino 1.09%
11. New England Sims 0.71 %

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