Gaming as a History Lesson

Gaming is simply great fun. I enjoy challenging myself to competitive play and have since I was quite young. Alongside this I learned about history and eventually I became better versed in history because of my gaming. There are games that have nothing to do with history and they are great fun, but I want to talk about gaming as way to enhance and even encourage the learning and better understanding of history - and like me, the inspiration to study history.


My first "historical" game was a board game called Blitzkrieg. While not actually a re-creation of some historical event, it used history as the framework. The World War Two German "Lightning War" strategy inspired this game design and by playing it, it encouraged me to learn more about this period in history. Eventually I did learn a great deal more about it and alongside of this learning I started playing games that allowed me to participate in that history. As I played these games I discovered the reasons things happened the way that did and by sometimes putting me in the shoes of those who were there I learned much more than I ever could by just reading books.

Avalon Hill's' Blitzkrieg box(1971)

Blitzkrieg game pieces on board map

Using cardboard squares that represented military unit organizations such as divisions or battalions, these pieces were moved across a game board map and we conducted combat with them. Some of these became quite detailed in their rules, attempting to as accurately as possible to simulate a specific battle or war in history. An example of this was a game called Civil War by Victory Games.

Victory Games Civil War box front

Civil War at play

Placing oneself into the position of a national leader (Third Reich by Avalon Hill) , a general or even a low-level commander or a unit of troops (such as in the game Panzer Blitz) gave the budding historian, like myself, the unique perspective that could only be had by participating such as activity.

Third Reich by Avalon Hill

Third Reich board game

Panzer Blitz by Avalon Hill

It became clear that my understanding of history was vastly improved by the hobby of gaming. This genre of gaming is often called war gaming, and it would be an accurate description, but I prefer historical simulation gaming because it is far more accurate. I cannot overestimate the value such an activity has on the learning of geography, history of individuals, nations and events.

But, alas, as we grow older we find we have less and less time to devote to such an activity due to family duties and work and home as well as the incredible difficulty finding the human opponents to play these games. The advent of the personal computer in the 1990's vastly helped me in this by allowing the computer to handle the minutia and number-crunching and even supply the sometimes intelligent and sometimes dimwitted opponent! Such games as Europa Universalis gave the player an opportunity to lead an historical nation in Europe an amazing historical simulation set between the early middle ages and the modern era.

Europa Universalis II

Other games allowed one to command an historical unit in combat from the first-person perspective such as Panzer Elite. It was finally possible to have the immersion into the environment missing with those old cardboard games.

Panzer Elite

Eventually, however, even finding time to sit down and play such a computer game became difficult, and when one has a family, one needs activities that a family can enjoy together. So, I began my move back to the board /table-top game world.

I discovered that there were a number of interesting historical games available for families - those that didn't have 20 pages of rules and required 6+hours to play. A few of these were Memoir 44 by Days of Wonder, Conquest of Empire and the old favorite Axis & Allies. 

Memoir 44 by Days of Wonder

Conquest of Empire

Axis & Allies

Each of these games  provided the chance to explore historical events without the hours-long rules-heavy gaming of the past or the isolated-in-you-room-glued-to-a-monitor gaming experience provided by the computer. It was then that I realized that gaming could provide the historical experience without complexity and allow families and friends to participate in a few short hours. Everyone could take away something from the experience whether it be simple joy of social interaction, a chance to compete, the opportunity to see if one could improve upon history or acquire the desire to learn more of history itself.

Power Play Games is the result of this long sojourn in gaming begun almost 40 years ago with Blitzkrieg! We want to develop games that accomplish these four things mentioned above. We believe that gaming can be many things to different people but can be all things to some - like myself.  Our first two games, Battle for Gallion's Reach and Storm of Steel represent this desire to provide such experiences.

Battle for Gallion's Reach

Storm of Steel box cover

Storm of Steel game board

Storm of Steel Army cards

Storm of Steel Command cards

Battle for Gallion's Reach is  a science-fiction strategy game for 2 to 4 players that can be played in 3-6 hours. In keeping with the family-oriented theme, the game can be played by 12-year-olds and up. the objective is to clobber your opponents with spaceship battles, research advanced technology and discover Gallion's Reach before anyone else!

Storm of Steel is our foray into historical gaming. Players recreate historical World War Two battles.  In keeping with our desire to teach active history, each battle comes with an historical description and listed resources for further learning. In some scenarios, players can use teams of two. This re-creates the difficulty of the alliance system that existed during the conflict. Players send their armies out to battle and acquire command points which allows them to use Command Cards and Event Cards to win the game. Storm of Steel can be played in 2-6 hours with 2 to 3 players 12 and up.

Battle for Gallion's Reach sill be available on the market no later than March 2014 and Storm of Steel is scheduled for release sometime in summer of 2014.

See our website for more details! http://gallionsreach.com