The Boardgame Players Association is a non-profit corporation established to support the shared interests of board game players. The BPA is best known for hosting the World Boardgaming Championships.
A board game is a tabletop game that involves counters or pieces moved or placed on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Some games are based on pure strategy, but many contain an element of chance; and some are purely chance, with no element of skill.
The World Boardgaming Championships is a convention held yearly since 1999 by the Boardgame Players Association. It was previously held in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but it moved to the Seven Springs Mountain Resort in 2016. It is next scheduled for July 20-28, 2019 at Seven Springs Mountain Resort near Pittsburgh, PA. This convention replaced Avaloncon, which had been run from 1991 to 1998 by Avalon Hill.
In addition to its flagship event, the BPA also sponsors or co-sponsors the following annual events:
Timonium is a census-designated place (CDP) in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 9,926. Prior to 2010 the area was part of the Lutherville-Timonium CDP. The Maryland State Fair is held in Timonium each year near Labor Day on the grounds of the former Timonium Race Course, which is an important site along with Pimlico Race Course in northwest Baltimore and Laurel Park in Prince George's County, along with other former tracks at Bowie and Rosecroft in Maryland thoroughbred horse racing traditions.
Age of Renaissance is a board game designed by Don Greenwood and Jared Scarborough and published by Avalon Hill in 1996. The game is for 3-6 players and the box claims that the game should take 2-6 hours to play, though as with any serious multiplayer strategy game, this can entirely depend on the players. Age of Renaissance is set in the European Renaissance historical era and is somewhat of a sequel to Civilization. In 1997, Age of Renaissance won the Origins Award for Best Pre-20th Century Board Game of 1996.
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European powers formed into various coalitions, financed and usually led by the United Kingdom. The wars stemmed from the unresolved disputes associated with the French Revolution and its resultant conflict. The wars are often categorised into five conflicts, each termed after the coalition that fought Napoleon: the Third Coalition (1805), the Fourth (1806–07), the Fifth (1809), the Sixth (1813), and the Seventh (1815).
The BPA also Play-By-eMail Tournaments for selected games, including:
Paths of Glory: The First World War, 1914–1918 is a strategy board wargame, designed in 1999 by the six-time Charles S. Roberts Awards winner Ted Raicer and published by GMT Games. It covers World War I from its outbreak to the 1918 Armistice, or based on the progress of the game a hypothetical later ending of the war in early 1919, possibly due to exhaustion of Europe. The game is played on a map of Europe and the Middle East as the game board.
The Russian Campaign is an award winning strategic board wargame set in the Eastern Front during World War II, during the period 1941-45. The unit scale is German Corps and Soviet Armies and roughly covers the Berlin to Gorki region and Archangelsk to Grozny. A full campaign game covers the June 1941 to June 1945 period but numerous shorter scenarios are commonly played.
War at Sea is a strategic board wargame depicting the naval war in the Atlantic during World War II, published by Jedko Games in 1975, and subsequently republished by Avalon Hill in 1976 and more recently by L2 Design Group in 2007.
The BPA formerly sponsored the following annual events:
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Games Workshop Group PLC is a British miniature wargaming manufacturing company based in Nottingham, England. Games Workshop is best known as developer and publisher of the tabletop wargames Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Warhammer 40,000,The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game and The Hobbit Strategy Battle Game. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
Origins Game Fair is an annual gaming convention that was first held in 1975. Since 1996, it has been held in Columbus, Ohio at the Greater Columbus Convention Center.
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is a yearly conference for video game developers.
This page lists board and card games, wargames, miniature games, and tabletop role-playing games published in 2004. For video games, see 2004 in video gaming.
Hunt Valley is an unincorporated community in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. Its traditional name was based on being just east of Maryland's traditional Horse Country, and the site of the venerable Maryland Hunt Cup championship of steeplechase horse racing and jumping established 1894. It lies just north of the city of Baltimore, along the York Road which is now Maryland Route 45 off Interstate 83. The Loch Raven Reservoir nearby is an important drinking water resource and with its surrounding forested watershed is one of three reservoirs established for the City of Baltimore and its surrounding metropolitan areas in Baltimore County since the 1880s and expanded in the 1910s. Located at a latitude of 39.5° North and longitude 76.7° West.
Tokyo Game Show, commonly known as TGS, is a video game expo / convention held annually in September in the Makuhari Messe, in Chiba, Japan. It is presented by the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association (CESA) and Nikkei Business Publications, Inc. The main focus of the show is on Japanese games, but some international video game developers use it to showcase upcoming releases/related hardware. The duration of the event is four days. The first two days of Tokyo Game Show are open only to industry attendees (business) and the general public can attend during the final two days.
The Charles S. Roberts Awards was an annual award for excellence in the historical wargaming hobby. It was named in honor of Charles S. Roberts the "Father of Wargaming" who founded Avalon Hill. The award was informally called a "Charlie" and officially called a "Charles S. Roberts Award". The Wargamer magazine called it "very prestigious".
A gaming convention is a gathering centered on role-playing games, collectible card games, miniatures wargames, board games, video games, or other types of games. These conventions are typically two or three days long, and often held at either a university or in a convention center hotel.
The Maryland State Fair is the annual state fair for the state of Maryland. It is held at the Maryland State Fairgrounds located near the intersection of York and Timonium roads in Timonium. As of 2006, the fair is an 11-day event customarily beginning in late August and ending around Labor Day.
War on Terror, The Boardgame is a satirical, strategic board game, produced and published in 2006 by TerrorBull Games. War on Terror was originally conceived in 2003 by Andy Tompkins and Andrew Sheerin, two friends based in Cambridge, England. The initial inspiration for the game came from the imminent Invasion of Iraq. of the wider War on Terror. In 2005, Sheerin and Tompkins founded TerrorBull Games and gathered enough financial support from a mixture of friends and acquaintances to put War on Terror into production.
Don Greenwood is a board game designer and was a pioneer editor among commercial board-wargaming magazines. He began his own fanzine, Panzerfaust Magazine, which he oversaw from 1967 until 1972. He then joined The Avalon Hill Game Company in 1972, and took over editorship of that company's "house organ", The General Magazine, which office he held until 1982. He left Avalon Hill and continued to work in the wargame industry, notably for GMT Games. He is the founder of the Origins, Avaloncon, and WBC gaming conventions and remains the WBC convention manager. Greenwood was also president of the Boardgame Players Association. He was inducted into the Origins Award hall of fame in 1991 and the Charles Roberts Awards Hall of Fame in 1994. He was honored as a "famous game designer" by being featured as the king of spades in Flying Buffalo's 2011 Famous Game Designers Playing Card Deck.
Twilight Struggle: The Cold War, 1945–1989 is a card-driven strategy game for two players, with its theme taken from the Cold War. One player plays the United States (US), and the other plays the Soviet Union (USSR). The game takes its title from John F. Kennedy's inaugural address:
Now the trumpet summons us again, not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are – but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle...
A train game or railway game is a board game that represents the construction and operation of railways. Train games tend to be highly involved hobby games that take several hours to play. Like wargames, train games represent a relatively small niche in the games market.
Speed Circuit was an Avalon Hill game, currently (2009) out of print. The 3M edition featured the grand prix circuits of Monaco, Monza and Watkins Glen. and was first published in 1971.
Diplomacy is a strategic board game created by Allan B. Calhamer in 1954 and released commercially in 1959. Its main distinctions from most board wargames are its negotiation phases and the absence of dice and other game elements that produce random effects. Set in Europe in the years leading to the Great War, Diplomacy is played by two to seven players, each controlling the armed forces of a major European power. Each player aims to move his or her few starting units and defeat those of others to win possession of a majority of strategic cities and provinces marked as "supply centers" on the map; these supply centers allow players who control them to produce more units. Following each round of player negotiations, each player can issue attack orders and take control of a neighboring province when the number of provinces adjacent to the attacking province that are given orders to support the attacking province exceeds the number of provinces adjacent to the province under attack that are given orders to support the province under attack.
UK Games Expo is a tabletop gaming expo and Hobby Games Convention held annually at the NEC and the NEC Hilton Metropole Birmingham, during the last weekend of May or first weekend of June. UK Games Expo is the premier event in the UK where all aspects of the gaming hobby are represented. In 2018 the show had 300+ booths manned by 375 exhibitors and co-exhibitors including publishers, retailers, independent designers and artists.
