Gamemaster (board game series)

The Gamemaster Series of board games consists of five war simulation games released by the game company Milton Bradley beginning in 1984. The games were not developed "in-house" by Milton Bradley, with each game initially published in limited runs by smaller game publishers in the early 1980s before their rights were acquired by Milton Bradley. Despite this, some modern reissues of these games refer to the Milton Bradley versions as the "first edition" of each game.

The original Milton Bradley Gamemaster Series included:

The first three games were designed by Larry Harris, while the last two were designed by Mike Gray, though neither were credited for their creations until their subsequent re-releases. Of these five, Axis & Allies was the most successful, spawning several revised versions, spinoffs, computer games, and a miniature game series, though Conquest of the Empire, Fortress America, and Shogun also saw some success. Broadsides and Boarding Parties was the most significant departure from the strategic focus of the other titles in the series, instead featuring a two-player duel between naval vessels.

The rights to four of the five games in the series are currently held by Hasbro. Though all five games were released under the Milton Bradley umbrella, by the 1990s Axis & Allies was the only game being continually updated. In 1999, Milton Bradley's parent company, Hasbro, moved Axis & Allies to its Avalon Hill imprint, which specialized in board wargames. In 2004, Avalon Hill was made into a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast, another Hasbro imprint that specialized in board games for a more dedicated "gamer" audience. Shogun is also currently published by Avalon Hill, but retitled Ikusa.