by Michael Eckenfels, 23 May 2024
The 1980s wasn’t just synth-pop and big hair metal; it was also a time of great upheaval, of the lamentation of wargamers to a hobby dearth of sorts, of a relatively flat hobby that hadn’t grown nor really put its CRT hooks into a new, budding generation of gamers.
No, the 1980s saw something of a rebirth, a spark if you will, that lit off a keg of potential that would influence not just wargames but the board gaming hobby as a whole, arguably: the Milton Bradley Gamemaster Series. Released by Milton Bradley in the 1980s, this steady stream of big box, cool bits games that didn’t really call itself wargames but didn’t quite fall too short of considering itself non-strategy, played a significant role in revitalizing a hobby that had grown relatively stale.
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Larry Harris had developed the first three in the series, though surprisingly, they were not developed in house by Milton Bradley. Instead, they had been published by smaller publishers in the early 1980s before MB acquired rights to them. Conquest of the Empire, Broadsides and Boarding Parties, and the lich-like Axis & Allies (which itself spawned numerous other popular versions in later decades), were all Larry’s doing, while the remaining two, Fortress America and Shogun, were designed by Mike Gray.
Was wargaming truly fading in the mid-1980s, though? A debatable point, worthy of a longer article. The rise of video games, especially home consoles, as well as role-playing games, certainly took their share of the market. Many wargames at the time had complex rules that arguably only lawyers could love. The simple, straightforward, and relatively clean designs of the Gamemaster series suddenly made what seemed to be a niche market, accessible to everyone. They even helped serve as gateways to actual hex-and-counter wargaming, not to mention sparked the imagination of many future board game designers. One might even see how the cool bits and big boxes of these Gamemaster series games greatly influenced modern board games, with a plethora of miniatures and other tactile joys.
Axis & Allies was something of a ‘granddaddy’ of wargaming, released by MB in 1984 and subsequently taken in by enthusiasts worldwide. Played voraciously (I was one of them; I can vouch for this personally, at least on my account) by a growing audience, finding each subsequent Gamemaster release on a toy store or game shop shelf made it like an early Christmas.
Are these truly wargames, though? Let’s not go there; we’ll be here for hours, as any peruser of forums or social media will find. Yet, there’s no denying that in many ways, the Gamemaster Series saved wargaming…perhaps even being responsible for its consequent growth and explosion.
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