By MARTY RACINE
Copyright 1996 Houston Chronicle
Tony Elam lives in a house of cards, but there are more than enough boards to keep it standing.
The Clear Lake resident might be the most prolific collector of boxed games in Texas. From his second-floor boardroom he directs his miniature empires, dispatching soldiers, commandos and assorted agents in the pursuit of his passion -- and his 3,000th acquisition.
"I'm about 16 shy," he said, like a ballplayer anticipating his 3,000th hit. When he reaches that figure in a couple weeks he'll celebrate with a party.
So, what's a grown man doing with the Bride of Frankenstein, Dweebs Geeks & Weirdos, and the Bionic Woman? What is it about Dragonfire, Tales From the Crypt, Creature Castle, Fu Manchu's Hidden Hoard, Monster In My Pocket and Cosmic Encounters (his favorite) that keeps a research coordinator at Rice University enthralled?
The competition. But only in person; the physical isolation common to computer games leaves Elam cold.
"I played those back in the late '70s when Apple computer came out with a lot of crude games. Now the computer games have great graphics, but they don't interact well. Part of the fun of playing games is to beat somebody or have them pull something on you that you weren't expecting.
"Last weekend I played with hundreds of people on computer. But I still missed looking somebody in the eye as you're playing them, and attempting to bluff them, attempting to read their mind. There's something about trying to influence a person during a game that I still think is really interesting."
Elam, 42, grew up as an Army brat and invented war games for fun as a kid. At age 17 he moved from Louisiana to Lexington, Ky., where he bought his first game, an Avalon Hill war model, Waterloo.
"I took it home, read the rules, played it, thought, `I love this.' "
In Lexington he and fellow boardman Alwin Lance tested proposed new games for manufacturers.
"Alwin had a knack for being able to find loopholes in the rules that I wouldn't even think of. It was amazing. It was great for play-testing, because (companies) don't want a quirk in the rules where if you know it you can exploit that to win the game."
Elam's interest became a hobby in the late '70s after he graduated from the University of Kentucky and was able to attend conventions and auctions. By the mid-'80s he was a serious collector.
In 1987, Elam was transferred by then-employer IBM to Clear Lake for a NASA-related project that was later scrapped. But he remained here with IBM.
At the time he owned about 2,000 games. But where to put them? Homes on the Gulf Coast do not have basements, and the heat and humidity in attics and garages are harmful for storage.
So Elam appropriated the living room and an upstairs guest room after convincing his wife, Cherie.
Among his collection are games from Britain, Italy, Germany and Japan. The British games, Elam believes, are second only to those of the United States in terms of sophistication and entertainment value. In general, Italian games are pretty, German games value craftmanship, and the Japanese are big on science fiction.
Elam pulls out two card games, Logomachy from 1889 and Reciprocity from 1892. They are dusty but otherwise in mint condition.
"You can win on the deal," Elam said of Reciprocity. "There's not a whole lot to it. Most of the real old games were cards, and they were very simple compared to what you get today. Surprisingly, games now require a longer attention span."
Board games came of age in the 1900s. Until the '30s, the boards were sold separately from the attendant box of dice, cards or miniatures.
Some were controversial. The makers of Uncle Wiggily were forced to change the animal illustrated on their board from a beastly Cyclops to a barnyard figure because it scared kids.
"By today's standards people wouldn't even think about it," Elam said.
Of the uncountable number of games ever invented, few truly have been innovative, Elam says. Chess and various card games have endured for centuries. Then there's Monopoly, which appeared during the Depression.
"It had a lot of things going for it,"said Elam, who owns an original Monopoly set. "People could feel like they were playing with money again. And it was a fun game to play."
Not until 1973, Elam believes, was there another major innovation: Dungeons & Dragons.
"No one had thought of role-playing games, where you make up a character and you go off on an adventure. That kind of created a whole new game industry. There are a hundred different role-playing games now, based on the idea that (Dungeons & Dragons creators) Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson had."
Dungeons & Dragons set off a round of "swords and sorcerers"games. Sci-fi games followed in the late '70s. Games based on films or TV shows have been with us since those media existed.
The most recent stir in the industry was the card game Magic, invented by math professor Richard Garfield in 1993.
"The guy basically said, when you buy a deck of cards you don't know what you were going to get," Elam said. "There were 300 unique cards. You buy a deck of 60, you have no idea which of the 300 you're going to get."
With multiple purchases, a player can customize a Magic deck.
"When I sit down and play you, I have no idea which cards you've chosen to play with. But because they're randomly shuffled you don't know necessarily when you're going to get a particular card."
In addition, a deck of 60 consists of two "rare" and 10 "uncommon"cards, making some highly collectible. Elam owns one of the most prized, an original "alpha" cut Black Lotus worth perhaps $400.
An original Dungeons & Dragons that cost $10 new might be worth $100 today. But there are few standards in the game-collecting market, Elam says.
"I had a guy call me the other day who had found a 1920s vintage commemorative card game for (aviator Charles) Lindbergh. He asked me, `How much do you think it's worth?' It's worth what people will pay for it. Some people will pay more than others. It's really difficult to say what the values of the games are."
Elam's collection, some of it still shrink-wrapped, half of it unplayed, is worth thousands. But it's not intended as an investment, he says.
"I collect them just for my own personal use and love."
His collection, which contains a handful of duplicates, comes from game stores, auctions, conventions and individuals. He plans to pick up more games this weekend at a convention at San Jacinto College.
Parker Bros. and Milton-Bradley are the biggest U.S. manufacturers of board games. They maintain staffs but also buy up games created by independents and smaller companies. Collectors strive for the originals, for example, pre-Milton-Bradley versions of Axis & Allies or Broadsides and Boarding Parties.
Elam, who joined Rice University several months ago after years at IBM, only can fantasize of making a living designing games.
"I've actually designed a couple little games that my friends and I wind up playing. But to be honest, you can't make much money at it unless you do something so innovative, like Garfield did (with Magic)."
Elam belongs to the American Game Collectors Association, has friends who own game companies and used to play competitively at the major conventions. Now with sons Austin and Andy entering their teens, he hasn't the time.
"I used to play these long, complex, time-consuming games. There's games I have in here that have literally hundreds of pages of rules. I used to enjoy that -- I don't know why, now that I think about it.
"Now I play games that have an element of luck in them."
Or psychology.
"There's a very popular one called Diplomacy. It's a World War I game, where each person is playing the ruler of another country and you have generic navy and army forces. It's very diplomatic. You cannot win without convincing people to do what you want. You have to persuade them to act in your best interest."
But if he's curtailed his participation in tournaments, Elam hopes to open a game store, perhaps when he retires. Finding the stock should be no problem.
"Sid Sackson is a premier collector in Florida," he says when asked if there are bigger known collections. "He probably has 10,000 games. And there's Darwin Bromley in Chicago."
Elam pauses. Well, there's two, anyway.