Mayfair Games
Encyclopedia
Mayfair Games is a publisher of board
, card
, and roleplaying games. They also license
German-style board game
s and publish them in English throughout the world. They license the worldwide English-language rights to publish the The Settlers of Catan
series from Catan
GmbH.
board games was started by Mayfair's publication in 1982 of Empire Builder
.
Mayfair Games was originally founded by 1981 by Darwin Bromley in Chicago
, Illinois
, United States
. Robert T. Carty, Jr., its current Executive VP, came on board in 1998. Its current President, Mr. Larry Roznai, took over in 1999 and now oversees operations. Chairman since 1997, Pete Fenlon
became CEO in 2007. Coleman Charlton
became Director of Products that same year, the latter half of which marked a major reorganization with a refocusing on Catan and other core brands.
In 1982, Mayfair released its War in the Falklands game just as the war ended, leading the English press to accuse Mayfair of "ghoulish" exploitation.
Gary Gygax
had advocated arranging a licensing agreement between TSR, Inc.
and Mayfair Games for their Role Aids line of game supplements, but was outvoted in the board meeting considering the question. In 1993, Mayfair was sued by TSR, who argued that Role Aids—advertised as compatible with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons—violated their 1984 trademark agreement. While the court found that some of the line violated their trademark, the line as a whole did not violate the agreement, and Mayfair continued publishing the line until the rights were bought by TSR.
In 1997, Mayfair shut down for financial reasons, and was subsequently bailed out by Iron Crown Enterprises
(ICE) who purchased most of the company's assets and restarted operations as Ironwind, Inc. This new company operates publicly under the Mayfair Games trademark, and was owned 30% by ICE, and 70% by the principals who had arranged the bailout. During the bailout by ICE, a warehouse was purchased by a dice company, and the MEGS
role-playing game ended up in the hands of Janet Bromley.
In 2003, Mayfair started publishing games by daVinci Games, beginning with the popular card game
Bang!
. In 2005 Mayfair also began distributing all of the games published by Phalanx Games.
Mayfair has worldwide English-language publication and distribution rights for the very popular The Settlers of Catan
family of games and is (2011) releasing the card games "Struggle for Catan" and "Rivals for Catan" to highlight the brand's 15th anniversary.
Board game
A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...
, card
Card
Card primarily refers to an entire or piece of card stock.Card may refer to:-Small flat objects:* ATM card* Business card* Charge card* Cigarette card* Debit card* Flashcard* Gift card...
, and roleplaying games. They also license
License
The verb license or grant licence means to give permission. The noun license or licence refers to that permission as well as to the document recording that permission.A license may be granted by a party to another party as an element of an agreement...
German-style board game
German-style board game
German-style board games, frequently referred to in gaming circles as Euro Games or Euro-style, are a broad class of tabletop games that generally have simple rules, short to medium playing times, indirect player interaction and abstract physical components...
s and publish them in English throughout the world. They license the worldwide English-language rights to publish the The Settlers of Catan
The Settlers of Catan
The Settlers of Catan is a multiplayer board game designed by Klaus Teuber and first published in 1995 in Germany by Franckh-Kosmos Verlag as Die Siedler von Catan. Players assume the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop their settlement while trading and acquiring resources...
series from Catan
Catan
Catan is the Xbox Live Arcade version of Klaus Teuber's The Settlers of Catan, developed by Big Huge Games in collaboration with Teuber. It was released on May 2, 2007 for 800 Microsoft Points...
GmbH.
History
The genre of Crayon RailsCrayon rails
Crayon rails is the generic term for a board game which recreates the building of railroads via the use of crayons on a reusable wipe clean board...
board games was started by Mayfair's publication in 1982 of Empire Builder
Empire Builder
The Empire Builder is a passenger train route operated by Amtrak in the Midwestern and Northwestern United States. It is Amtrak's busiest long-distance route and busiest daily train, carrying more than 500,000 travelers annually since 2007. Overall, it is the railroad's 10th-busiest line. Before...
.
Mayfair Games was originally founded by 1981 by Darwin Bromley in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Robert T. Carty, Jr., its current Executive VP, came on board in 1998. Its current President, Mr. Larry Roznai, took over in 1999 and now oversees operations. Chairman since 1997, Pete Fenlon
Pete Fenlon
Pete Fenlon is an American Role-playing game designer, game developer, graphics designer, and publisher. He began creating fantasy role playing rules and drawing large and very detailed full-color Middle-earth maps in MERP modules. He later published science fiction, mystery, and historical games...
became CEO in 2007. Coleman Charlton
Coleman Charlton
Coleman Charlton was one of the founders of Iron Crown Enterprises and designers of the Rolemaster role-playing game system in 1980. In 1984 he simplified the Rolemaster set of rules in order to create MERP, the first Middle Earth Role Playing game, also edited by ICE.- External links :* * *...
became Director of Products that same year, the latter half of which marked a major reorganization with a refocusing on Catan and other core brands.
In 1982, Mayfair released its War in the Falklands game just as the war ended, leading the English press to accuse Mayfair of "ghoulish" exploitation.
Gary Gygax
Gary Gygax
Ernest Gary Gygax was an American writer and game designer best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons with Dave Arneson. Gygax is generally acknowledged as the father of role-playing games....
had advocated arranging a licensing agreement between TSR, Inc.
TSR, Inc.
Blume and Gygax, the remaining owners, incorporated a new company called TSR Hobbies, Inc., with Blume and his father, Melvin Blume, owning the larger share. The former assets of the partnership were transferred to TSR Hobbies, Inc....
and Mayfair Games for their Role Aids line of game supplements, but was outvoted in the board meeting considering the question. In 1993, Mayfair was sued by TSR, who argued that Role Aids—advertised as compatible with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons—violated their 1984 trademark agreement. While the court found that some of the line violated their trademark, the line as a whole did not violate the agreement, and Mayfair continued publishing the line until the rights were bought by TSR.
In 1997, Mayfair shut down for financial reasons, and was subsequently bailed out by Iron Crown Enterprises
Iron Crown Enterprises
Iron Crown Enterprises was a publisher of role playing, board, miniature battle, and collectible card games.ICE was incorporated in 1980 shortly after the principal founders graduated from the University of Virginia...
(ICE) who purchased most of the company's assets and restarted operations as Ironwind, Inc. This new company operates publicly under the Mayfair Games trademark, and was owned 30% by ICE, and 70% by the principals who had arranged the bailout. During the bailout by ICE, a warehouse was purchased by a dice company, and the MEGS
Mayfair Exponential Game System
The Mayfair Exponential Game System or MEGS is a rules system developed for role-playing games. It is noteworthy for its use of an exponential system for measuring nearly everything in the game. This system makes it possible to have both cosmically-powered characters and ordinary human characters...
role-playing game ended up in the hands of Janet Bromley.
In 2003, Mayfair started publishing games by daVinci Games, beginning with the popular card game
Card game
A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games...
Bang!
Bang!
Bang! is a wild west-themed card game similar to a spaghetti western designed by Emiliano Sciarra and released by Italian publisher daVinci Editrice in 2002...
. In 2005 Mayfair also began distributing all of the games published by Phalanx Games.
Mayfair has worldwide English-language publication and distribution rights for the very popular The Settlers of Catan
The Settlers of Catan
The Settlers of Catan is a multiplayer board game designed by Klaus Teuber and first published in 1995 in Germany by Franckh-Kosmos Verlag as Die Siedler von Catan. Players assume the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop their settlement while trading and acquiring resources...
family of games and is (2011) releasing the card games "Struggle for Catan" and "Rivals for Catan" to highlight the brand's 15th anniversary.
Games
This list includes both games originally published by Mayfair and games licensed by Mayfair from other publishers.Board games
- 18XX18XX18XX is the generic term for a series of board games that, with a few exceptions, recreate the building of railroad corporations during the 19th century; individual games within the series use particular years in the 19th century as their title , or "18" plus a two-letter geographical designator...
games: 1830, 1856, 1870, 1853 - Alchemist
- Amazonas
- Anasazi
- Anno 1503
- The Company War (1983), based on the C. J. CherryhC. J. CherryhCarolyn Janice Cherry , better known by the pen name C. J. Cherryh, is a United States science fiction and fantasy author...
novel Downbelow StationDownbelow StationDownbelow Station is a science fiction novel written by C. J. Cherryh and published in 1981 by DAW Books. It won the Hugo Award in 1982, was shortlisted for a Locus Award that same year, and was named by Locus Magazine as one of the top 50 science fiction novels of all time in 1987.The book is set... - Cosmic EncounterCosmic EncounterCosmic Encounter is a science fiction-themed strategy board game, designed by "Future Pastimes" and originally published by Eon Games in 1977...
- Crayon railsCrayon railsCrayon rails is the generic term for a board game which recreates the building of railroads via the use of crayons on a reusable wipe clean board...
games:
- Empire BuilderEmpire Builder (board game)Empire Builder is a railroad board game centered on the construction of railroad track, and then the delivery of goods along those railroad tracks. The original Empire Builder game is set in North America, but the line has expanded to include games set across the world, on the moon and even in a...
, Australian Rails, British Rails, Eurorails, India Rails, Iron Dragon, Lunar Rails, Nippon Rails, North American Rails, Russian Rails, China Rails, Agent of Change, Uncle Happy's Train Game, Silverton- Dragonriders of Pern
- EntdeckerEntdeckerEntdecker is a German-style board game designed by Klaus Teuber and published in 1996 by Goldsieber in German. Although the game won 2nd prize in the Deutscher Spiele Preis, many gamers were disappointed with the game after the success of Teuber's previous game, The Settlers of Catan...
- The Forever War, based on the Joe HaldemanJoe HaldemanJoe William Haldeman is an American science fiction author.-Life :Haldeman was born June 9, 1943 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His family traveled and he lived in Puerto Rico, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Bethesda, Maryland and Anchorage, Alaska as a child. Haldeman married Mary Gay Potter, known...
book of the same name - Hammer's Slammers
- HueHue (wargame)Hue is a board wargame first published in 1973 by Simulations Design Corporation in Conflict #6 and again in 1977 as Battle for Hue, and subsequently published by Mayfair Games in 1982 under the one-word title....
- Jerusalem
- The Keep (1983)
- The Market of Alturian
- Morgan's Rifles
- Myth Fortunes
- Nautilus, Adventure in the Deep
- Naval Battles
- OceaniaOceania (board game)Oceania is a board game by Klaus Teuber, published by Mayfair Games. It is a simpler version of Entdecker, and is played with one or two players. The solitaire version's objective is completely different than the two player version's.-Two-Player Version:...
- Quo Vadis?
- The Pillars of the Earth
- Red Star Falling
- Road to the White House
- Shear Panic
- Silverton
- Settlers of Catan games:
- The Settlers of CatanThe Settlers of CatanThe Settlers of Catan is a multiplayer board game designed by Klaus Teuber and first published in 1995 in Germany by Franckh-Kosmos Verlag as Die Siedler von Catan. Players assume the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop their settlement while trading and acquiring resources...
, Seafarers of CatanSeafarers of CatanThe Seafarers of Catan is an expansion of the board game The Settlers of Catan for three to four players . The main feature of this expansion is the addition of ships to the game, allowing play between multiple islands...
, Cities & Knights, Traders & BarbariansCatan: Traders & BarbariansCatan: Traders & Barbarians is the third expansion to the Settlers of Catan games, developed by Klaus Teuber. It contains a series of new scenarios and small variations, which are meant for two, three, or four players , with limited compatibility between the other two expansions, Catan: Seafarers...
, Starfarers of CatanStarfarers of CatanStarfarers of Catan is a multiplayer board game loosely based on the Settlers of Catan series of games. It was created by Klaus Teuber as an official spin-off and is distributed by Kosmos in German and Mayfair Games in English...
, Starship CatanStarship CatanStarship Catan is a two-player card game, loosely based on the Starfarers of Catan board game. As a member of the Catan family of games, it is designed by Klaus Teuber, and distributed by Kosmos in German and Mayfair Games in English....
, Struggle for RomeStruggle for Rome (board game)Catan Histories: Struggle for Rome is a 2006 German-style board game based on the game mechanics of Settlers of Catan, depicting the fall of the Roman Empire. The game is created by Klaus Teuber, the creator of Settlers, and is published under license from Catan GmbH by Kosmos in German and ...
, Settlers of the Stone AgeSettlers of the Stone AgeThe Settlers of the Stone Age is a German board game, heavily based on The Settlers of Catan, with a stone age theme. It is a member of the Catan series of games, and as such it is created by Klaus Teuber and published by Kosmos in German and Mayfair Games in English.- Gameplay :The game is played...
, Settlers of America- Test of Fire
- Tigris and EuphratesTigris and EuphratesTigris and Euphrates is a German strategy board game designed by Reiner Knizia and first published in 1997 by Hans im Glück in German . Before its publication, it was highly anticipated by German gamers hearing rumors of a "gamer's game" designed by Knizia. Tigris and Euphrates won first prize in...
- Toledo
- Wake Island
- War in the Falklands
- Weinhandler
- Xanth
Card games
- Abracadabra (2004)
- Alibi
- Bang!Bang!Bang! is a wild west-themed card game similar to a spaghetti western designed by Emiliano Sciarra and released by Italian publisher daVinci Editrice in 2002...
- Elixir
- Express
- Family Business
- Modern ArtModern Art (game)Modern Art is a bidding game designed by Reiner Knizia and first published in 1992 by Hans im Glück in German. Players represent art dealers, both buying and selling works of art by five different fictional artists. At the end of each round, they sell the paintings they bought back to the "bank"...
- SimCity
- Station Master
Roleplaying games
- Chill - out of print
- DC Heroes - out of print
- Role Aids - out of print
- Underground - out of print
External links
- Mayfair Games listing at BoardGameGeekBoardGameGeekBoardGameGeek is a website that was founded in January 2000 by Scott Alden and Derk Solko as a resource for the board gaming hobby. The database holds reviews, articles, and session reports for over 45,000 different games, expansions, and designers. BoardGameGeek includes German-style board games,...