Charles S. Roberts, Inventor of the Wargame, Dies at 80 (founder of Avalon Hill)

State of Play: The Gaming Blog ^ | Thomas L. McDonald

[Sanjuro68]

Charles S. Roberts, the founder of Avalon Hill and the inventor of the modern wargame, passed away last week.

[SJSAMPLE]

Blitzkrieg!!!

[Wolfie]

Avalon Hill...that brings back some memories.

RIP Mr. Roberts.

[Snake65]

Tactics II, Wooden Ships and Iron Men, Squad Leader, Third Reich. . .

Good times with cardboard, charts, and dice.

[ClearCase_guy]

I was more of an SPI guy, but I did do a fair amount of Panzerblitz.

RIP

[PzLdr]

My two favorites were “Midway” and “Stalingrad”.

[ronnyquest]

Wow, I thought he’d live forever. Blitzkrieg!

[04-Bravo]

My first Avalon Hill game was Tactics II.

[2banana]

That’s a shame, because wargames are history you can hold. When you game a particular battle, you understand it far better than you could by simply reading about it. It’s almost like role-playing, as you try to make the decisions faced by the great battlefield commanders, and see how they may have turned out differently. Wargames require time, thought, and study: things that seem in short supply these days.

They were great learning tools

[Ev Reeman]

My favorite wargames to play were DIPLOMACY, D-DAY and NUCLEAR WAR.

Avalon Hill games required strategic thought in order to play them effectively.

[Puppage]

Game over ping

[17th Miss Regt]

Mine was Guadalcanal.

[KarlInOhio]

My favorite wargames to play were DIPLOMACY, D-DAY and NUCLEAR WAR.

Diplomacy: only play with either good friends who won't mind being stabbed in the back or people you will never see again.

Nuclear War: Do you have change for 20 million people?

I got into the hobby after Avalon Hill and SPI were on the decline, but I still have quite a few of AH's games.

[1rudeboy]

My mom bought me Panzerblitz when I was in 7th grade.

[Rockingham]

Avalon Hill accounted for much of my teen years — the innocent parts at least.

[SJSAMPLE]

I had the computer version (Commodore 64) of “Midway”.
Very basic game, but I was a first-year programming student and went into the Basic code and gave the US ships “radar”.

I thought I was so smart back then.

[warchild9]

and here i spent a happy four hours this weekend hurting the feelings of two noobies playing Red Barricades...

[fieldmarshaldj]

RIP.

[justa-hairyape]

Played a few of his games when I was a young kid. Great stuff. RIP. Was interesting watching the gaming industry convert turn based board games over the years to computer based simulations. Always preferred the turn based simulations over the real time battle simulations, but the new graphics and fast CPU’s really enhance the real time simulations. Have had some amazing real time battles over the past few years.

[autocad]

Wow, I wanted to meet him, bur alas, shall not be,

Avalon Hill Afrika Korps....THE GAME!!!!!