Matthew Keeler remembers the first time he was hooked on playing games.
“When my buddies I grew up with got a box of figurines, these fantasy figurines, sort of generic ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ stuff, playing as high elves and humans, that’s what initially got me into it,” said Keeler, an Army Reserve public affairs noncommissioned officer. “Seeing my buddies playing got me interested and then I found out about the 40K version, and as a bit of a sci-fi nerd myself, I was like, ‘This is pretty cool.'”
As Keeler grew up, he got into playing tabletop strategy games, which are essentially the “Risk” board game on steroids; they have different units that fight each other in different ways, a variety of terrains to fight upon and much deeper rule sets than the popular board game. He didn’t know the history, but modern tabletop games for entertainment draw heavily from the tradition established by “Konigspiel” and “Kriegsspiel” — Prussian training tools for young officers where each side played on a map with dice and small pieces that represented military units. “Kriegsspiel,” the more advanced version of the game, translates to “war game” and features fire damage, hand-to-hand combat and other game mechanics.
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But where modern games such as “Risk” reduce the complicated mechanics from those early games to make them easier to play, tabletop games like “Warhammer 40,000” — usually truncated by fans to “Warhammer 40K” or just “40K” — lean into complicated mechanics and recruit a die-hard audience.
For fans such as Keeler, the game is equal parts an arts project to chill out and a tough game to play for fun or competitively. But it also has potential to teach players how to think through second- and third-order effects. Full-sized games can take more than three hours, though shorter fights with fewer units are common. And so a bad decision while building the team or in the opening phases of a fight can screw a player dozens of turns and hours later. That experience with preparation and managing risk in the game helped Keeler during his military career.
“It’s fascinating how something as simple as a mission or campaign creation, how the lessons that you learn, how close and how similar they are when you’re playing any game, going back so far as to Checkers,” he said. “Things seem really simple, but as you approach the enemy, you’re looking at their movements and making your decisions, and you’re internalizing those steps you take, and then you take those lessons out into the world.
“For us, that can affect how you understand the unit you’re attached to, how you think of movements on a patrol, how you think through tactics. They’re just games that you play and play as kids and as adults, but how much you pore over the lessons learned in strategy and reacting and understanding and adjusting, that can be used in the real world and you can utilize skills developed in this and other games.”
Keeler is quick to remind people that games are just one avenue of learning, though, and there are plenty of other games with similar lessons and value.
“Participating in different games provides a great chance to learn lessons, but also a great chance to develop your own community,” he said. “The military is a great opportunity to learn from a multitude of intelligent people that tackle situations differently. And it’s through games like 40K that I’ve developed great friends for almost two decades.”
War gaming has always had support in the military to some degree. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger recommended that his Marines practice battle in war games, and he even included instructions to do so in his Commandant’s Planning Guidance in 2019. That put him in the same intellectual tradition of another former commandant, Marine Gen. Charles C. Krulak, who published Marine Corps Order 1500.55 in 1997, encouraging wargaming for its potential to improve military thinking and decision-making. Meanwhile, the U.S. Naval War College now has a wargaming center with a 111,000-square-foot facility.
Of course, when official military leaders encourage war gaming, their subordinates typically choose more grounded games, such as “Axis and Allies,” than fantasy or science fiction fare like “Warhammer 40,000.” But 40K fans like Matt can also use the game to relax after long training days or during deployments, especially since many players also paint their own pieces, giving the game an arts-and-crafts angle.
“It’s a good stress relief opportunity, just to build something, get out of your own headspace for a bit,” he said, “especially since, between the military and everyday life, it can be hard to take a step back and relax. It’s important to find an activity that requires you to stop and focus for 30-60 minutes, and ground yourself in that activity. Those opportunities are rare today.”
People interested in playing tabletop games can usually find a local shop or club, or there are hundreds of channels and videos on sites such as YouTube and Twitch, a livestreaming platform. Warhammer, especially, encourages all of its players and shops to create a welcoming environment for new players, and most shops host demo games to teach interested players the ropes.
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