International Team (IT) was an Italian game company founded in the 1970s and active until the early 1980s. While the company started as a jigsaw puzzle producer, it is mostly remembered as a wargame company, a business that IT approached in 1979 after game designer Marco Donadoni joined in.
6-406: Magic Wood is a 1979 board game published by International Team . When it first appeared in the U.S., the suggested retail price of the game was $ 17.95, considerably more than many other board games of the time. Magic Wood is a game in which elves, gnomes, goblins, and trolls all work to capture one another using foxes, ferrets, and martens for help. There are no dice; each player is simply given
12-776: A more developed hobby and gaming culture) they saturated the Italian market (where in early 1980s fluent English readers were by no means common) and also enjoyed commercial success in France and Germany. Some of their best games were highly innovative, such as the non-strategic Napoleonic ones (Austerlitz, Jena, Waterloo), presenting a unique Octagons and Squares board, better suited to the Napoleonic infantry formations (square, line, column...). Some other, like 'Norge' and 'Supermarina' tackled topics and campaigns which seldom enjoyed dedicated boardgames. This board game -related article or section
18-463: A move of seven that can be divided between any of the pieces the player currently has. In the May 1980 edition of Dragon (Issue 37), William Fawcett found the gameplay of Magic Wood to be too simplistic and the graphics too childish to appeal to devoted gamers. He thought the rules booklet was "a poor translation from the Italian, and it took me several readings to figure out a playable set of rules. This
24-506: Is perhaps the game’s greatest failing... Many areas are not covered or left ambiguous and unclear." Due to its childish simplicity and high price, Fawcett did not recommend the game, saying, "Considering the high price tag of Magic Wood , most gamers will probably decide that there are better games that will offer more challenge and variety for the money." In the January 1981 edition of The Space Gamer (Issue No. 35), Elisabeth Barrington found
30-457: The game to be suitable only for a younger audience, and recommended it "to gamers 6-12 years of age." International Team IT was the first Italian wargame company and its most successful games, such as Zargo's Lords , were instrumental in introducing the wargame culture in Italy . IT games were translated in other languages (mostly French , German and English ) and exported abroad. At
36-749: The peak of IT's popularity, foreign branches of the company were founded, such as International Team France (established in 1979). Besides wargames, IT also published a few roleplaying games (such as Legio VII and Magikon ) and ordinary board games . The company went bankrupt in 1988. Some of their assets were acquired by the French company Eurogames , that later published a few games based on designs and materials by IT, such as Colonizer based on IT's Kroll & Prumni and Zargos based on Zargo's Lords . While some of International Team's games were quite "typical" of their era and generally not on par with U.S. and British offerings (which benefitted from
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