Tactics is a board wargame published in 1954 by Avalon Hill as the company's first product. Although primitive by modern standards, it and its sequel, Tactics II, signalled the birth of modern board wargaming for the commercial market. Tactics is generally credited as being the first commercially successful board wargame. Publication history Wargames before 1950 were usually just a set of rules — players were expected to provide their own miniature soldiers and create suitable terrain as a battleground. Charles S. Roberts believed there was a market for an entirely self-contained wargame that would include a map and "soldiers" in the form of cardboard counters, as well as rules and a box to hold everything. He designed a game that was similar to other wargames published in England and elsewhere over the previous half-century, albeit not for the mass market. This game became Tactics, which Roberts self-published out of his house in 1952, using the name "The Avalon Game Company", later changed to "Avalon Hill". It eventually became the first commercially successful board wargame, although for the first six years, Roberts sold the game on a mail order basis from his home in Catonsville (outside Baltimore), selling 2,000 copies and barely breaking even. In 1958, Roberts replaced Tactics with a revised game titled Tactics II. The rules were nearly identical, with only slight changes made to the map and counters. Avalon Hill produced an updated edition of Tactics II in 1961, then discontinued production in 1972 due to rising costs. The following year, Tactics II was redesigned with less costly components, and sold as a loss-leader, being a "gateway" game that Avalon Hill hoped would lead new players into the hobby. In 1983, Avalon Hill released a 25th anniversary edition of the original Tactics, although with a new and different map. Description Tactics and Tactics II are 2-player board wargames, pitting the military forces of two imaginary nations, Blue and Red, against each other. Although they have identical armies, the geography of each nation is different. Gameplay Tactics pioneered many game mechanics that have become standard in the board wargame industry, including: the odds-ratio combat results table (CRT) different movement costs for entering squares (later hexes) containing different types of terrain the use of cardboard counters which had been previously introduced in the 1911 "invasion literature" genre game War Tactics or Can Great Britain Be Invaded?. The use of an