The New Anchor Games

[larry marak]

It looks like after the end of the year Inferno, the new anchor games for the system will be :
Pacific theatre: Saipan
Russian theatre: either Kursk
Western theatre: Elsenborn Ridge
Africa: Army at Dawn.

Welcome to the Phoenix era of PG.

[plloyd1010]

Saw that. The rest of the equation is that all (or very nearly) current books & supplements are going away too. I asked Mike about legacy support, no response yet.

[larry marak]

Sounds like there are so many copies of the old titles in our greedy little hands that letting the supplements slowly dry out won't be a big problem. Here is where PG-HQ is a great resource. You can look up any supplement you're considering and see if you have the requisite base game (s).

I'm curious about possible re-issue of older maps (perhaps with new art) in new titles.

Putting 2 and 2x together, Mike has separately said that White Eagles will eventually return as a boxed game, and that the map sets for I./A parts one and two were intended for future use with games set in Poland and the Ukraine during the second world war. One wonders.

[campsawyer]

Well, this will bring my PG buying to an end. I am not really interested in buying the games over again for new art work or to replace the laser counters. That is just a no value sale for me. For newbies to series it might be enticing, but I hate repurchasing for some reworked scenarios and a few new scenarios. I have done this enough that it is not worth it for me anymore.

[larry marak]

I'm curious to see how AK and DR will be redone down the road. Obviously map panels will be used, and the same actions will need to be modeled. You could get re-worked scenarios (such as we saw in EF Deluxe), different aspects of the same battles, improved orders of battle (or just different), different start and stop points (GDW was great at this in the First Battles treatment of Barbarossa), or tighter geographical focus..i.e., battles of Tobruk, covering both assaults, with the different nationalities involved, and a more detailed mapping of the battle area.

[plloyd1010]

First I look at it like this, with Eastern Front, Road to Berlin, and Battle of the Bulge going away, any book/module that uses maps 1-21 is now unsupported. Guadalcanal, Afrika Korps, Desert Rats, Beyond Normandy and Cassino 1944 further the impact. Airborne is out, no para engineers or fallschirmjäger. Black SS became unsupported when HoSU/RW left, no Luftwaffe troops, this makes that worse. Kokoda Trail? No Japanese or Australians. So it goes on.

The loss to me is more nostalgic than practical. On the other hand a new PG community may emerge, a different community, but a new one none the less. Who knows what sort of cross-over there will be between the two. Since I've always been an outlier, that part doesn't bother too much. On the plus side, so far we don't need to own 3 games to play a compatible expansion. I wonder how long that will last.

[rerathbun]

I was passing through Alabama, so I had the chance to visit Avalanche Press today. I asked Dr. Mike about some of this. It seems (based on sales) that anyone who (1) plays PG and (2) is interested in the eastern front, already owns Eastern Front. Once in a while a copy will sell, but not enough to justify paying for parts storage.

Also, the Panzer Grenadier series has improved greatly (map art and scenario quality) since Eastern Front was released. Updating the game would require new-game-level effort for a retread. He'd like to revisit the early war eastern front eventually, but if he does, it will be a completely new game (or two or three). By that I mean new maps, new counter mix and completely new scenarios. No updates of old scenarios. After all, EF covered only a miniscule percentage of the actions fought on the eastern front in the early years of the war. There are plenty more to fight.

As for supplements, many of them are also reaching the end of their sales lives. Avalanche Press is still a very small operation, and they need to focus their resources on items that will sell. The new standard for supplements is Marianas 1944 or Winter Soldiers, titles that require one or at most two boxed games to play. The older ones that drew pieces and maps from four or five (or more!) games were always a tough sell for everyone but a few hardcore fans.

Things are definitely improving at Avalanche Press. No more releasing updates of old titles just to have something to put in the store (Edelweiss IV anyone?). There are new boxed games and books coming down the pipeline all the time.

[Hugmenot]

Well, this will bring my PG buying to an end. I am not really interested in buying the games over again for new art work or to replace the laser counters. That is just a no value sale for me. For newbies to series it might be enticing, but I hate repurchasing for some reworked scenarios and a few new scenarios. I have done this enough that it is not worth it for me anymore.

I thought AVP stated they will cover operations/years that are yet covered before they produce other box games covering the same period as the old box games.

Is that not correct?

I too are unlikely to repurchase games about topics that were covered before but I suspect there will be a few releases a year on new topics will that will pique my interest enough to me to purchase.

It's not always about me.

[thomaso827]

I'm in that 'in between' thing. Just discovered the series this year and wanting to capture as many parts as possible. I see some of what Mike said as self fulfilling prophecy as the games become unavailable from AP and are only available on Ebay or from second-hand games sources. I've had pretty good luck for some games that I couldn't manage to take advantage of clearances at AP at that moment but certainly wanted, and some were specifically to fill out what was needed for some of the books. Like Casino. I certainly wanted the game anyway, but having bought a few books that need pieces from it made it that much more important to find, and Noble Knight had it unopened at a much lower price than I could find on Ebay at the moment. But I also want the new games. I am giving my wife a Christmas list of a couple of titles to look for from the older games, hoping she will be able to get Road to Berlin before it fades away.

Tom Oxley

[Matt W]

Road to Berlin is pretty darn important to the whole Iron Curtain series, including Red & White which was just issued. I know that Red & White was really just soaking up a lot of the Polish Steel counter inventory but it is indicative of a changing model at AVP. With the clustering of supplements around one or two anchors it makes it easier for customers to get deeply into one or another campaign without having to buy into the whole line.

From a marketing perspective this is a more feasible approach. From a completist standpoint it is terrible