THIS MEANS WAR! Hans Kishel spent the better part of a decade creating
The Blitzkrieg Legend: The Battle for France, 1940, a strategy board game.

Hobbies and interests come in every shape and form. Some hobbies are cheap and take no time at all, while others are lavish and time consuming. To say that lifelong war game lover Hans Kishel of Eau Claire has a hobby that is time-consuming is a vast underexaggeration. Kishel has spent the last seven-plus years designing The Blitzkrieg Legend: The Battle for France, 1940, a strategy board game that is part of the Operational Combat Series (OCS). The OCS is a series of strategy board games focusing around 20th century battles, which can incorporate small or massive armies, depending on the game and situational campaign itself.

The Blitzkrieg Legend recreates the period of World War II between May 10 and June 3, 1940, when Germany invaded France and neighboring countries, an operation that led to the surrender of France and the evacuation of British troops at Dunkirk. The game was created with historical accuracy at its forefront.

“There is a great deal of thought and work that goes into the playing of a single turn, which would represent two days of real time.” – game maker Hans Kishel on war game strategy

“I spent a great deal of time studying the battles and history of this in order to try to create a game that would be historically accurate,” Kishel said. “This involved a great deal of work on determining the strengths and weaknesses of the armies on both sides of the conflict, as well as for several nations.”

The game is played between two opponents, which can be individuals or teams. In order to achieve victory, players must rely on their knowledge of the history and the game rules and mechanics (having a bit of luck helps too). “It is like chess or Risk on steroids,” Kishel said, “There is a great deal of thought and work that goes into the playing of a single turn, which would represent two days of real time.”

This project began in 2004 when Kishel met series designer Dean Essig. Being familiar with the game series, Kishel asked Essig if anyone had ever worked on creating a game about this topic; Essig replied that someone had once tried but gave up. Essig gave Kishel the previous person’s notes and gave him the go ahead to start working on the game. Kishel’s interest in this period came from an inspiration to show this campaign in a new light, based on new research on the topic. He felt this event in history had never been shown in a way such as this, and he wanted to be the one to do it.

Kishel spent the next seven years working with the previously established OCS game mechanics to make this scenario come to life. He can only guess at the number of hours he put in. “As far as the time investment, a gazillion hours at least. … Seriously, I never kept track, but a great deal of my free time in the evenings and weekends for the last seven years was spent working on this game,” he said.  About half of his development time was spent on research: reading books, collecting and analyzing data, and modeling factual armies. He also created historically accurate maps of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, and Germany. Kishel says his main source, The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West by Karl-Heinz Frieser became the inspiration for the board game’s name.

Kishel’s game is currently available for purchase, but be sure to do your research before jumping in. “Many of the games in the series can take months to finish, even with playing every weekend for eight hours on each day of the weekend,” he said. “In a recent play test for a game on the Battle of Gettysburg a group of play testers, including myself, played the game for four days straight for at least 10 hours a day and we did not get to the end of the game.” For comparison, the real-life Battle of Gettysburg only took three days. But don’t let that turn you away! Kishel is confident that the true nature of this game is that enjoyment can be found at so many different levels.

“Some simply enjoy the competition and want to see if they can win,” he says. “Others enjoy the experience of being able to recreate a conflict in history and see if they can do better than the historical figures did. Others enjoy the puzzles that the game rules present.” If you are hesitant, however, UW-Eau Claire’s McIntyre Library has been hosting game days for a few years now, and Kishel has used them as one way to introduce new games to new people. He is already working on his next game and is always looking for more people to find interest in the war game series he has loved his entire life.

Learn more about The Blitzkrieg Legend: The Battle for France, 1940 at MultimanPublishing.com.