Training Pacific Geography with Board Games

I noticed people in my Navy Reserve unit looked bored during my Pacific Geography PowerPoints. Fair enough. I was also bored while presenting even though I pretended not to be. While playing a popular board game called Ticket to Ride with my niece and nephews, I thought this is a more natural way to learn. Alaska connecting to Kamchatka stems from my childhood playing Risk, and is a crazy untrue thought I sometimes have. But how cool is it that that thought is still easy to access from my brain? Long story short, I made a board game that maps out the pacific in scale that is a favorite with my niece and nephews. My ten year old nephew can tell me that it takes about three days for a merchant ship to get from Wake Island to Saipan off the top of his head.

For my process, I went to google maps and selected the slice of the globe I wanted. I used an AI script remover to remove all writing and then faded the map appropriately. I mapped out most of the most relevant ports in the Pacific, but balanced that with spacing considerations to create a network that had similar characteristics to Ticket to Ride so that game play would remain fun. I made sure that each block represented 480 nm so that it represented one day of travel at 20 kts, which is pretty typical of merchants. I used AI to generate graphics. Then I had it manufactured. Only a few copies were made because this project is not a commercial venture. If you're in a command that wants a copy though, hit me up and we'll figure it out. I will not try to profit off this game at all.

I am working on a less educational game with my nephew where each player mines resources to build space ships, recruit generals, and buy black market services to kill each other with another way of winning being to get so rich that you can bribe enough bureaucrats in the galactic empire to intervene with their army and subjugate all of the other players. Maybe some intuitive practice in linear algebra, but that one will be almost pure fun. If that one is as fun as it's shaping up to be, I'll go commercial with that one to pay his college fund. Below are some of the graphics I made for the geography training game.