Axis & Allies, Diplomacy, Robo Rally, and Squad Leader will be moving from Avalon Hill to Renegade Game Studios, which will also be developing “new versions of Risk themed around fan-favorite Hasbro brands G.I. JOE, Transformers, and Power Rangers.” In addition, “fans will also see new printings of staples for the line as well as the return of some long out-of-print editions.”

In a survey of U.S. adults who have ever played board games, four times as many had played Risk as had played Axis & Allies (42% to 11%). Surprisingly Axis & Allies was in a statistical tie—given the expected error range—with Catan (10%). While Axis & Allies has been around much longer than Catan (1981 vs. 1995), I had expected Catan to outpace it, given it was a flagship of the U.S. awakening to Euro games and given Catan’s broader demographic appeal (only 5% of U.S. women who have played boardgames have played Axis & Allies, compared to 16% of men).

Given the larger past experience with Risk, it’s not a surprise that the planned new Risk themes have much greater appeal than Axis & Allies re-issues. Here are the top ten answers to “Which, if any, of the following board games and potential board games would you like to purchase?”

  1. Risk: G.I. Joe
  2. Risk: Transformers
  3. Risk: Power Rangers
  4. Diplomacy
  5. Axis & Allies: WWI 1914 [update 2023-02-04: the first A&A game that Renegade announces!]
  6. Squad Leader
  7. Axis & Allies Europe 1940
  8. Axis & Allies: D-Day
  9. Axis & Allies: Battle of the Bulge
  10. Squad Leader: Cross of Iron

These are the top 10 from 26 titles tested (with old titles drawn mainly from BoardGameGeek).

While I thought there might be a desire for faster games, board gamers expected these games to take a median of 4 hours to play overall (5 hours for Axis & Allies). (However, a quarter of players expect these games to take 10 or more hours to play.)

These results are from a newsmaker survey fielded online from October 7 to 10, 2022, by Researchscape International. Of the 2,216 respondents to the survey, 68% had ever played a board game (n=1,498). Results were weighted to be representative of the overall U.S. population by nine demographic dimensions (age, gender, Census division, etc.). Finally, all those trademarks are owned by others, and I make no claim to them. This survey was not affiliated with any tabletop game publisher.

Photo by Dave Photoz on Unsplash.