From Jan: Board Games we played in Rhodesia and my love of Board War Games for History

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[I was chatting to one of my supporters about board games which we played before PC's existed. I told the supporter about board games we played in Rhodesia. I loved board games. Jan]

I wrote:
Families are the best place for board games – a chance to play with each other. I remember that as a child my very oldest sister (much older than me) managed to get some old and used board games, and sometimes, we were missing the rules or even the pieces. There were games we couldn’t play, but others, we could figure out. I might even have one of them. It was a space war game, but we had the rules, so we used pieces from other games. I loved that game to bits. We had some of the parts so there was a "warp drive" but you couldn’t tell where the ships would come out of space. I enjoyed that so much. I have all my old games. I’m busy repacking in my house in the coming months so I’ll see which of the Rhodesian games are there. I’m sure I can find used copies of some of the games. A game that gave us LOTS of fun was a card game about crossing a border. So you had to declare or not declare items. And someone played the customs guy, and he’d have to determine who is lying. Then you saw all sorts of characters coming out of people you knew!!! The lying and the faking was a whole other story. It would probably have been a great game for Jews!

Much later, in the 1980s, when I was living in SA I bought board war-games, which were about historical wars. I must tell you, that for boys when they are teenagers, that’s a good thing. There are war-games that are so good and so realistic. I will, with time, look for some of them. There’s one in particular, the first one I bought, which I even opened and replayed in recent years. I’ll make a note. I might put it in my shop.

So I’m not sure how many people will buy the war games, but I’ll put up ones that are really historically excellent. The war game I first bought was a tank war game, for small scale battles. And you can invent your own battles with it. So in the end you can play lots of different battles. I made my own battles. It really makes you think and it allows you to truly understand the times.

I had a friend in California, who was into this type of stuff. And he had a table where he’d put up a war game and his pals would come around weekly and they would play once a week and then leave the war game standing until the next week. I think for families, games that people play together around a table are awesome.

Another game we liked a lot in Rhodesia was a horse racing board game. The whole game was about buying horses, training them, and then racing them. I might even have the game. Things I never threw away were my books and my board-games.

I have a real proper, Napoleon war game, with all his campaigns. But there was a strange Napoleon War Game that was more of a board game than a war game. Modern board war-games don’t have squares. They are hexagonal. But that Napoleon sort-of-war-game was played on squares. Even so it was a really fun game and I played it a lot with my nephew.

There are really nice, proper, war games. Another one I have is a lovely one about Caesar in Gaul. There are tons of used board war-games. And when you buy them, the rules may be complex but they give you a "feel" for the time. It’s such good stuff. If I was a teacher at a high school, I’d have boys playing board war-games. It makes history come to life. These games existed until the 1990s. Then PC’s took over. But to play those games you had to study the rules and look carefully.

I think games bring history to life in a way that’s just awesome.