Spi game parts

I continue to add new resources all the time. Looking for official errata SPI printed for various games? Wish you had additional scenarios SPI published for the game? Profiles Need access to articles and notes on the game? Just check it, ok? Ads Old SPI advertisements were text-heavy reviews of their games! I have many of these delightful in depth mini-articles on tap here!

Formats Tracking the formats for SPI games! Lots of data here, including lists of which games appeared in boxes and flat packs! The links will take you to Archive. Catalogues Would you like to see an old SPI catalogue? Introductions and overviews to many classics SPI games on this list. Think of it as a curated list of videos worth watching to learn about these great games. New ones added all the time. I am trying to get to a set of pages for every SPI game - like these:. Terrible Swift Sword Wellington's Victory.

I would enjoy discussions of the games, with tactics you've tried and results you achieved. But there is much more to be done! However, this is my Christmas present to all of you. Explore the site, and let me know what you think. By the way - I'd appreciate any feedback you'd like to offer. Click here. Much nicer than my originals! Foxbat Phantom Map Not perfect, but you should be able to see the setups and speeds info now! Watch this short video, and you can start playing the game!

Can the Syrians change the outcome? Can the IDF repeat their stunning vistory? Special thanks, George! Replay: Mukden Mr. Nap provides yet another great replay from The Modern Battles Quad. This time it is Mukden, a hypothetical battle that occurs when the Soviets invade China! This time it is Modern Battles, and the name of the place is the Wurzburg. There is some amazing insights here, and well worth the read.

Berlin '85 Map and Counters. Rules for Bloody April. Right click here and choose 'Save Target As'. Maps combined Right click here and choose 'Save Target As'. Complete Bloody April Rosters. Counters - Union 1 Front. Counters - Union 2 Front. Rules for CA. Rules for C hariot Exclusive Rules and Scenarios. The PDF of the teaching guide below was kindly shared by Herschel! Rules for DeathMaze.

Rules for Deployment - Test Series Game. Rules for Destruction of Army Group Center. Rules for El Alamein. Rules for E mpires of the Middle Ages. Cards Right click here, and choose 'Save Target As'. Rules for Franco-Prussian War. Rules for Gondor. Rules for Italy - Test Series Game. Rules for John Carter, Warlord of Mars. Rules for Korea. Rules for Kursk Eric Goldberg Edition. Setup Right click here, and choose 'Save Target As'.

Rules for Legion Exclusive Rules and Scenarios. Rules for Leipzig - TSG. Rules for Leipzig. Rules for Leyte - Island War Quad. Rules for Marne, The. Rules for Moscow Campaign, The. Complete Right click here, and choose 'Save Target As'.

Map mp Right click here and choose 'Save Target As'. Rules for Ney vs. Rules for Normandy. Rules for Okinawa - Island War Quad. Rules for O mega War, The.

Rules for Patrol. SPI's first games had been published with black-and-white maps, printed on paper. The counters for its games were printed on colored paper; buyers had to glue the paper to shirt cardboard, then cut the counters apart with an X-acto knife.

Rules were printed on "bedsheets," large sheets of paper folded down to normal letter size, saving the cost of cutting, collating, and binding. And there had been neither box nor counter tray. But as SPI grew, it began to add better components, bit by bit. Counters were mounted and die-cut; later, most were printed on both sides, and full color became the norm.

Maps went to two color, then eventually to full color reproduction. Rules were printed in stapled books. Boxes became the norm -- first awkward, folded cardboard ones, then the plastic "black box" of lates fame, then the same cardboard "telescoping" boxes used by Avalon Hill and virtually all game companies today. Additional components were added, most importantly the plastic counter storage trays which became ubiquitous in the field. Although SPI experimented with mounted maps, they never became the norm, because mounting is and remains enormously expensive.

It was publishing forty or more games every year. As it appeared at the time, SPI, and wargaming as a whole, was on an upward trend. The mid and late 70s were the heyday of the field. The most successful and enduring was Game Designers Workshop, founded by a group of game enthusiasts who met at the University of Illinois's Champaign campus. From the very first, GDW's games were innovative, well-designed and of the highest quality. They tended, however, to deal with more obscure topics than SPI's, and often had fairly opaque rules; in general, GDW appealed more to the hardcore hobbyist.

And game designers, beginning to believe that their vocation could become a permanent occupation, a developing art form, an industry capable of supporting its artists in at least modest comfort, banded together to form the Game Designers' Guild. Wargaming, everyone seemed to believe, had achieved a permanent presence in American life, if a tiny one by comparison to fields like film or publishing.

That, alas, was the high water mark. From onward, SPI's sales declined, mainly because of mismanagement. But these were, of course, the years of double-digit inflation, so that SPI's income, in real terms, was declining year by year.

In , an internal struggle began at SPI, as many staff members strove to replace Jim Dunnigan as the company's manager. The name of Dunnigan had been virtually synonymous with SPI since its foundation; his personality, vigor, and intelligence had made it a success. Yet, like many entrepreneurs, he proved incapable of managing it as an ongoing business. One problem was an inattention to marketing. SPI had, in the person of Howie Barasch, a capable marketing manager, but when he left SPI in the late 70s, he was never replaced, with Dunnigan ostensibly assuming his duties.

But Dunnigan was overstretched himself, laboring sixty hour weeks keeping the place together and designing a big chunk of SPI's games. Nobody had bothered to contact them for years. Another failing was inadequate attention to financial details. The Capsule games had sold very well -- and SPI lost money on every one it sold. Alas, Dunnigan's ouster came too late. The country was in the throes of a recession, further depressing SPI's sales; the company's cash position continued to deteriorate.

TSR indicated initial interest, and SPI, desperate for cash, asked for the loan of a few thousand dollars to meet its payroll. Soon, however, they realized the extent of SPI's liabilities; and, horrified, "clarified" their own initial announcement, claiming that, instead, they had assumed SPI's assets but not its debts. Now, while TSR had been a secured creditor, it was a tiny one. SPI's printers and the venture capital investors were owed far more money.

Legally, TSR's position gave them first crack at SPI's assets, but hardly entitled them to take over the company, lock, stock, and barrel, without assuming any liabilities. However, no one in SPI's management was going to sue over the ownership of a bankrupt company, and TSR's takeover seemed the only shot at keeping the company together.

And TSR quickly paid off the major creditors, at some cents on the dollar, to avoid the possibility that anyone else would challenge the transaction. And then And then, TSR shot wargaming in the head. In , SPI was the largest wargame publisher in the world, not only in terms of number of titles produced, but in terms of dollar volume as well.

Oh, Avalon Hill was a larger company, but much of Avalon Hill's sales came from sports games and its 'general interest' line. They were the hard core, the fundament upon which the whole wargame industry was built. The first thing it did was say to the best customers of its new subsidiary, "Go take a hike; we don't want your custom; your concerns mean nothing to us.

The subscription money came in long ago, and has been spent, and that liability remains. Magazines continue, and make money, because they sell advertising, and expect their subscribers to resubscribe. Over a thousand were life-time subscribers, owed issues in perpetuity in exchange for no further income. TSR didn't want the liability. So, TSR decided, it would not honor any subscriptions. Guess what happened? Few wanted to send more money to the company that had just ripped them off.

And few of them ever bought any of the wargames TSR began to publish. And TSR never could figure out why their wargames never sold. Who killed wargaming? You tell me. The industry's best customers, the most avid wargamers in the world, were collectively told to piss off. How many never bought a wargame again? In the s, as I have argued, the shift in the nation's mood meant America should have been more receptive than ever to wargames.