Gawler resident Russell Lowke has given people across the globe a chance to honour our Anzacs and learn about the historic Gallipoli landing by playing out the battle in their own homes.
Mr Lowke and his Sydney-based colleague, Kieran Oakley, have researched the battle, included the soldiers involved and their stories, and mapped out the conflicts to create an educational, strategic board game called Assault on Gallipoli: Second Edition.
Member for Light, Tony Piccolo MP, was impressed with the level of detail and the ability for each of the five scenarios in the game to be completed within 3.5 hours either solo or against others.
“It’s an interesting concept where each day of the war is completed after each opponent takes their turn using a combination of combat cards, dice and moving pieces,” said Mr Piccolo.
“I’ll admit, I’m more of a scopa and briscola (Italian Card Games) player myself, but I love the concept and think it’s great to see someone in our region putting the hours in to pay homage to the Gallipoli battle and develop interest in learning about it through a unique platform.”
Mr Lowke spent a number of years in America as a software programmer and developer, including two years working at Disney Interactive as a Senior Software Engineer.
Specialising in computer games, he took an interest in an unsuccessful Kickstarter project for a game focused on Gallipoli, but it wasn’t until he returned to Australia, moving to Sydney, that fate resulted in Mr Lowke becoming involved in the game.
“It turned out that a friend of mine from high school knew the guy who did the Gallipoli Kickstarter (Kieran) really well and he introduced me to him,” said Mr Lowke.
“We became good friends because of our interest in board games and miniature games, but one day four years ago, he came to me and wanted to restart the Gallipoli game he’d put together.
“Kieran is more focused on the historic direction and flavour of the game, but was frustrated with the mechanics of the game as they weren’t working, so thought I could assist in making it function properly because of my background in games and development.”
Since moving to Gawler three years ago, Mr Lowke has been working on the game in the front room of his home with regular 4-5 hour Skype calls, pitching ideas, simulating game-play, writing game notes – and even running to Table Top Warfare to trial a range of 10-sided dice to find the right die to emulate for their game.
“We did rush the first edition of this game out a couple of years ago and it required a few tweaks because we tried to simplify it too much and Kieran self-published and we were losing money each copy,” said Mr Lowke.
“It was also a blessing, though, because we received a 9-star rating on BoardGameGeek (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/370073/assault-on-gallipoli) and gathered interest from Wargames publisher Hexism, who are publishing our second edition for us now worldwide.
“This conflict created some very famous leaders and even as we’ve been playing, it’s been surprising what I’ve learnt and how historically accurate the battles have turned out to be – it’s exactly what we’ve been trying to do.
“I feel the memory of the whole conflict is fading in some places, but here in Gawler we’ve got an ANZAC statue on Murray Street and South Australians played a vital role.
“The 10th Battalion from South Australia made it further inland on the first day than any other troops and it’s in our game and those characters are there because South Australians played an important role in this particular conflict – I’m proud people will get to see that and the other stories of Gallipoli.”
The game is available at all Table Top Warfare stores, including Gawler, and be sure to follow the Gawler store’s socials for future demonstration games and events.