December 4, 2024: Wargames, paper maps, hexagons and square cardboard playing pieces with information printed on them. This all started in 1958 down in Baltimore and later showed up in the late 1960s when Simulations Publications Incorporated was founded.

The games started arriving in the 1950s with

Tactics II and Gettysburg (1958)

U-Boat (1959)

Chancellorsville and D-Day (1961)

Stalingrad (1963)

Africa Korps and Midway (1964)

Blitzkrieg and Bulge (1965)

Guadalcanal in 1966

Jutland (1967)

1914 (1968)

1918 (1969)

Anzio Beachhead (1969)

Barbarossa (1969)

Crete (1969)

Deployment (1969)

1914 (1968)

Flying Fortress (1969)

Italy (1969)

Korea (1969)

Leipzig (1969)

Normandy (1969)

Tannenberg (1969)

Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker (1969)

Anzio (1969)

Kriegsspiel (1970)

PanzerBlitz (1970)

Outdoor Survival 1972

Bastogne (1970)

Chicago, Chicago! (1970)

PanzerBlitz (1970)

Grenadier (1971)

Kursk (1971)

Lost Battles (1971)

Origins of World War II (1971)

Strategy I (1971)

USN (1971)

Origins WW II (1971)

France 40 (1972)

American Revolution (1972)

Breakout and Pursuit (1972)

Combat Command (1972)

Flying Circus (1972)

France '40 (1972)

Franco-Prussian War (1972)

Moscow Campaign (1972)

Origins of World War I (1972)

Outdoor Survival (1972)

Red Star/White Star (1972)

Turning Point (1972)

Wilderness Campaign (1972)

Year of the Rat (1972)

Ardennes Offensive (1973)

Battles of Bull Run (1973)

CA (1973)

Desert War (1973)

El Alamein (1973)

Foxbat & Phantom (1973)

Kampfpanzer (1973)

NATO (1973)

Napoleon at Waterloo (1973)

Panzer Armee Afrika (1973)

Scrimmage (1973)

Sinai (1973)

Sniper! (1973)

Solomons Campaign (1973)

Spitfire (1973)

World War Two (1973)

American Civil War (1974)

Combined Arms (1974)

Frigate (1974)

Operation Olympic (1974)

Patrol (1974)

Tank (1974)

The East is Red (1974)

War in the East (1974)

Wolfpack (1974)

Battle for Germany (1975)

Global War (1975)

Invasion America (1975)

Mech War '77 (1975)

Oil War (1975)

Panzer '44 (1975)

Sixth Fleet (1975)

The Fast Carriers (1975)

War in the Pacific (1975)

World War 3 (1975)

World War I (1975)

Wurzburg (1975)

FireFight (1976)

Panzergruppe Guderian (1976)

Plot to Assassinate Hitler (1976)

Revolt in the East (1976)

Russian Civil War (1976)

Strike Force (1976)

War in Europe (1976)

War in the West (1976)

Fulda Gap (1977)

Agincourt (1978)

Brusilov (1978)

Canadian Civil War (1978)

The Next War (1978)

Bulge (1979)

Berlin '85 (1980)

Dallas (1980)

Demons (1980)

Drive on Metz (1980)

Empires of the Middle Ages (1980)

Fifth Corps (1980)

NATO Division Commander (1980)

TimeTripper (1980)

Wreck of the Pandora (1980)

Freedom in the Galaxy 1981

Light Infantry Division (1985)

Tactical Combat Model (1985)

Men-At-Arms (1990)

Hundred Years War (1992)

Victory at Sea (1992)

Jim Dunnigan designed Jutland, which Avalon Hill published in 1967, following it up with 1914 the next year, and PanzerBlitz in 1970, which eventually sold more than 300,000 copies.] Meanwhile, Dunnigan founded his own company, initially known as Poultron Press, and which was soon renamed to Simulations Publications Inc. or SPI.  Dunnigan created SPI to save the magazine Strategy & Tactics, which at that time was published by Chris Wagner.  Dunnigan had been contributing material to the magazine since its second issue in February 1967, and when Wagner was having financial challenges with the magazine, he sold the rights to Dunnigan for $1.  Dunnigan took over a windowless basement in the Lower East Side of New York City where he published his first issue, Strategy & Tactics #18 in September 1969; every issue included a new wargame beginning with that issue.  Dunnigan designed games like Sniper! and Dallas: The Television Role-Playing Game in 1980, which was the first published licensed role-playing game.  In 1980, Dunnigan left SPI to write books, like How To Make war, which became a best seller. Eventually twenty books were published before Dunnigan and Dan Masterson started StrategyPage.com in 1999.

Between 1966 and 1992, Dunnigan designed over one hundred wargames and other conflict simulations, ranging from 1969's Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker about the student takeover at Columbia, which he witnessed as a bystander, to the gigantic War in Europe, to the online Hundred Years War with his long-time partners Albert Nofi and Daniel Masterson.

While SPI was in Manhattan, Avalon Hill games was in Baltimore where in 1971 Avalon Hill was reborn, not so much because of the games they put out. but because of the restructure of the company itself. Heretofore, the company had been under the combined management of two prior creditors with differing notions of how the company should operate. On Nov. 30th, 1971, Monarch Services acquired complete ownership of Avalon Hill and the company commenced what was to slowly become a much more aggressive pursuit of the wargame industry under new President A. Eric Dott. Monarch continued to print the games and Dott founded his own box company for packaging and assembly. Avalon Hill was on the road to controlling its own destiny for the first time with all production facilities under control of one central management. Veteran employee Tom Shaw was made Executive Vice President and became the manager of the company’s day to day affairs.

In 1972 Avalon Hill management realized it could no longer depend on outside sources to design its games and started to rebuild the R&D staff which it had gone without since founder Charles Roberts’ exit. Don Greenwood was hired in May to take over The GENERAL Magazine and Randall Reed came aboard a few months later to become the first full time designer in the history of the company. Heretofore, personnel such as Shaw were either part-time, or had to divide their time among everything from marketing to mail order shipping. It was the start of the long road back to in-house design self-sufficiency.