"GMT is EXTREMELY liberal about CB boxes, and publishes most of the rules online soon after publication, and they are doing VERY well (better than Avalanche, without doubt), a good deal because their customers are as passionate about GMT as the company is about its customers (they're even offering free games this month to those of their customers recently unemployed!!)"
True. I just discovered this and IMMEDIATELY purchased two naval games from GMT (PQ-17 & The Kaiser's Pirates) because they engender that kind of good will. But I think it's all too easy to bash AP here. Although I won't be buying any of their games either, AP is a small business trying to stay afloat in very choppy seas. When it comes to strategic/operational naval games they are the standard. The question for them is will that standard be displaced. What online advocates have yet to show is any sort of business model that sustains them from the here and now to the long term. It's all well and good to say that in the long run they'll make more money but to use that ubiquitous John Maynard Keynes quote: "In the long run we are all dead." If somebody clones the AP products and that clone begins to gain adherants then AP will be forced from their entrenched position. But without being outflanked ( a strange concept for naval gamers, I know) they'd be a little nuts to voluntarily give up their position of advantage. If somebody finds a way to create ship counters in silhouette instead of the birds eye view that exists now, well, that may be the beginning of the end... Who here is going to do the contribute? [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
