Today I thought I would dedicate a post to a wonderful company known as Eagle Games. While many gamers may be familiar with the high quality games produced by this company others will not have had the pleasure of enjoying some of their best efforts. What makes this post somewhat sad is that Eagle Games is no longer with us as it has gone out of business. One can only assume that the high production cost of their product along with the failure of several games resulted in this business going under the table.
But.....none the less......here is to Eagle Games.
Between 2001 and 2006 Eagles games produced 16 board games for consumption by the public. They had planned 4 additional games but these never came to fruition. Of the games that they had planned to make but that were canceled the only one of note (i.e. the one whose loss is lamented by most gamers) was Sid Meier's Pirates!: The Boardgame. Having had mild success with Sid Meier's Civilization - The Boardgame it was hoped that Pirates! would be a step up and a new banner game for the pirate genre. We can only hope that this game will eventually be produced by another game company.
Of the games they did produce my personal favorites are Age of Mythology (A family favorite), Attack!(but only with the expansion) and Conquest of the Empire (a reproduction of the 1984 game with both the original rules and a new set of rules included). The games which were generally thought of as best by the majority of the boardgaming public were Railroad Tycoon and Struggle of Empires. If you are interested in a game with great components but weaker game play you could also have a look at the beautifully made War! Age of Imperialism.
When I look back at Eagle Games I think of a company who really tried to put the fun back in boardgaming. They strove to create boards and pieces that would capture the imagination of their costumers while contributing to a fun boardgaming experience. Although it is true that they often seemed to forget that the key to all games lay in basic playability they were always trying to produce something special. When one looks at their games a whole it becomes clear that they had some successes, some failures and some games that were somewhere in between. The truth is that for a company that invested large amounts of money into production their ratio of success to failure just wasn't good enough.
I do want to mention that the website for this company is still operational and can be found at eaglegames.net. It is my understanding that the site is still maintained by Phoenix Lab Games as a former employee of Eagle games named Keith Blume is now the head of Phoenix. I have recently sent an e-mail through the Eagle Games website in order to inquire about some game pieces and I will let you know if I have any success in this venture.
Until next time,
Canadian Gamer
