Tom Dalgliesh

Tom Dalgliesh is the owner/president of Columbia Games in Blaine, WA. Tom is the designer of dozens of well known boardgames. Grant Dalgliesh is his son who also works with him.
Biography
1945: Born Aberdeen, Scotland.
1961: "Ran away to sea" as British Merchant Navy Cadet. Sailed mostly on freighters from Britain to West, South, and East Africa. Spent a lot of time playing games, and designed my first game, a silly golf game, unpublished.
1965: Became licensed Navigation Officer (2nd Mate).
1966: Spent year sailing Pacific coast on freighter carrying salt from Mexico (Baja) to USA and Canada. Met future wife Penny - Oregon girl - and decided to emigrate.
1967: Emigrating to America in 1967, age 22, with Vietnam draft in full swing seemed like a bad idea (visions of gunboat service on the Mekong) so I emigrated to Canada instead. Married and Penny emigrated to Vancouver from USA.
1968: Worked on BC Ferries as 2nd mate, but entered Simon Fraser University with the idea of becoming a history teacher.
1971: Graduated with BA history honors, but decided against teaching. By this time I was deeply into wargames having formed the university "Diplomacy" club.
1972: Founded game company, Gamma_Two_Games, with best friend Lance Gutteridge. Published Quebec 1759.
1973: Designed & published "War of 1812".
1974: Designed & published "Napoleon".
1975: Sold Napoleon to Avalon_Hill who published a second edition the next year. Designed & published "Klondike", a family game on the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898 that sold over 80,000 copies in the next five years. That game, plus the good sales of other family games tempted me out of the wargame field as a publisher (although not as a player). Family games designed and published also included: "Last Spike", "Airline", "Supermoney", "Starlords" (this game first published by us as "Starwars" in 1977, but 20th Century Fox bought the name from us in exchange for a sack of money. They had already registered the name in USA for a movie, but we had Canadian rights as a game name and some claim to worldwide rights by first use - it was fun to negotiate, but we were out of our depth and sold way too cheap.) Another fun game was SMOKERS WILD (I was co-designer) an anti-smoking game that sold mega copies when a very large Canadian Tobacco Company (Imperial Tobacco) took exception to our lampooning their imported American brands. Canadian media characterized this as Tobacco company seeks to suppress anti-smoking game. Story went out on the wire services and the publicity world wide was enormous. I remember getting a phone call from a disk jockey in Guam who wanted to know all about the nasty tobacco companies.
1981: Gamma Two Games closed down. Family game business had proved much too competitive for a small company to make money.
1982: Decided to found Columbia Games and publish wargames and FRP. Bought the rights to all games from Gamma 2.
1983: published HARN, a role-playing game world, written by N. Robin Crossby
1985: Republished "Quebec 1759" and "War of 1812", which had been out of print. Also got back the rights to game Napoleon from Avalon_Hill and republished it in 1987.
1988: Year of the game that never was. We had intended to publish EastFront that year. "The Wargamer" (July 88) had a cover and big article on the game because we sent them the details in advance. But at the last minute I cancelled the game as being too complex. A revision took 3 years, but the game got much better.
1991: Published EastFront (co-design with Craig Besinque). WestFront, MedFront, VolgaFront, and EuroFront were all published over the next five years with Craig Besinque as the primary designer.
1993: Bobby Lee designed and published. Sam Grant followed in 1997.
1994: Designed and published DIXIE: Bull Run, a collectible card game on the ACW. Including follow up games, Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Waterloo, sold over 500,000 decks of this game series which may be the highest for any wargame, except possibly Squad Leader. Alas, the CCG market tanked in 1996/97 so other planned games in the series have remained unpublished.
1998: Victory (an old game that had been around since 1979) redesigned and published. This game and its many expansion maps and blocksets have sold better than any of our historical blockgames except DIXIE.
2000: Published Pacific Victory and Wizard Kings.
2009: Still publishing. 2009 release is Richard III
Authored games
(with Jerry Taylor)
Airline
Athens & Sparta
Bobby Lee
Crusader Rex (with Jerry Taylor)
EastFront (with Craig Besinque)
Gettysburg (with Grant Dalgliesh)
Klondike
Last Spike
Liberty (with Mark Kwasny
Mid East Peace (with Dave Kowan)
Napoleon
Pacific Victory
Quebec 1759
Richard III (with Jerry Taylor)
Sam Grant
Star Lord (Star Wars)
Team (Slapshot)
Texas Glory (with Dan Mings and Carl Willner)
Victory
War of 1812
Wizard Kings (with Grant Dalgliesh)

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