Digging around the old Trapper Keeper notebook that I stash a lot of old gaming material inside, I dug out this old Alnavco advertising flier from the inside front pocket (along with an
AD&D combat computer wheel and a Thieves' Cant phrasebook taken from old issues of
Dragon magazine, a map traced from an Arduin book, and a bunch of old Scratch'n'Sniff stickers).
I like the graphic design on the front of this circular: three emblematic fighter icons in staggered formation at the top, and just three words:
Starfleets by Superior in a shadowed font at the bottom. Very clean and elegant.
When you open this publication up, it unfolds onto photographs of all five factions in the
Starfleet Wars line, images that spurred me to get these ships and
start this blog. The text here really sells the setting background and notes "the designs of each fleet have been influenced by the physical characteristics of the beings who conceived and built them...designs based on military, scientific and fantasy considerations." There's also an image of the
SfW rulebook with information about the game.
Flip the page over and you see the additions to the line, including the super galactic dreadnought models and a space station. This side also has blurbs for the
MAATAC ground combat game and the company's short-lived periodical,
Wargamers Forum. There's also a section about the
Stardate: 3000 line of ship models, suitable for various games, with a parenthetical note that these minis "can also be used with Superior StarFleets."
The postmark on the envelope the flier came in was dated July 9, 1980. Finding this catalog was a blast from the past, taking me back to the days loooooong before the internet, when if you lived in a small West Texas town with no gaming store, you actually had to send off for a catalog like this and order products through the mail.
Interestingly,
Alnavco is still in business, and they have (almost) the same mailing address--except now they're at PO Box 10 instead of 9. Although they're out of the starship business, Alnavco still sells historical warship miniatures, so go check out their merchandise--no need to send off for a catalog!
