Mayfair Games - History

History

The genre of Crayon Rails board games was started by Mayfair's publication in 1982 of Empire Builder.

Mayfair Games was originally founded by 1981 by Darwin Bromley in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Robert T. Carty, Jr., its current Executive VP, came on board in 1998. Its current President, Mr. Larry Roznai, took over in 1999 and now oversees operations. Chairman since 1997, Pete Fenlon became CEO in 2007. Coleman Charlton became Director of Products that same year, the latter half of which marked a major reorganization with a refocusing on Catan and other core brands.

In 1982, Mayfair released its War in the Falklands game just as the war ended, leading the English press to accuse Mayfair of "ghoulish" exploitation.

Gary Gygax had advocated arranging a licensing agreement between TSR, Inc. and Mayfair Games for their Role Aids line of game supplements, but was outvoted in the board meeting considering the question.

In 1993, Mayfair was sued by TSR, who argued that Role Aids—advertised as compatible with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons—violated their 1984 trademark agreement. While the court found that some of the line violated their trademark, the line as a whole did not violate the agreement, and Mayfair continued publishing the line until the rights were bought by TSR.

In 1997, Mayfair shut down for financial reasons, and was subsequently bailed out by Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) who purchased most of the company's assets and restarted operations as Ironwind, Inc. This new company operates publicly under the Mayfair Games trademark, and was owned 30% by ICE, and 70% by the principals who had arranged the bailout. During the bailout by ICE, a warehouse was purchased by a dice company, and the MEGS role-playing game ended up in the hands of Janet Bromley.

In 2003, Mayfair started publishing games by daVinci Games, beginning with the popular card game Bang!.

In 2005 Mayfair also began distributing all of the games published by Phalanx Games.

Mayfair has worldwide English-language publication and distribution rights for the very popular The Settlers of Catan family of games.

In 2011 Mayfair released the card games "Struggle for Catan" and "Rivals for Catan" to highlight the brand's 15th anniversary.