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Gettysburg 1964
#501 was the first game in the Avalon Hill catalog (1958). Gettysburg also appeared in a battlefield version that was identical except for the unmounted map. It sold at the site museum for $2.49. A 1961 edition came with a hex-map. This 1964 version reverted back to the squares.
"As he hoped for a change in his home life, John vented some of his frustrations by playing Gettysburg, a battlefield board game, with Jim Willette. The game had clear rules of what a player could and could not do, which made it very safe for him. Board games were one of his few constant pleasures outside his faith. He would play them all his adult life. John always won. John's board games also allowed him to socialize one-on-one without Helen. He was more comfortable in little groups than at the parties for the Sutherland Cost Division, at which he behaved awkwardly. Most employees usually ate, drank, and danced. Everybody but John table-hopped and flirted with other people's wives. John stayed at Helen's side. No glad-hander, John apparently failed to see that that joking with his superiors at the office party might help his career. This "good personality" that the interviewer had seen proved to be facade.
At these events, Helen's aloof, condescending manner annoyed the other wives. She felt that with his University of Michigan M.B.A., John was better educated than others at Sutherland, and she made no secret of her views. Helen seemed determined to prove that she and her young accountant were on their way past the others to the top. Understandably, Toni Willette and the other women at Sutherland never went out of their way to include Helen in their social gatherings.
So Jim and John would play Gettysburg on weekends, by themselves. Toni did not want to come over to the Lists' house and be lectured by Helen, and Helen never came out to talk with Jim when he came over, although at the time Jim did not attach any significance to this."
RIGHTEOUS CARNAGE-The List Murders
Timothy B. Benford & James P. Johnson
Charles Scribner's And Sons 1991