One of our community members, bloodbeard, has put together a very novel idea that we've been taking a look at.

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Taking a note from the likes of Star Trek, Traveller and Interstellar and more he has designed this wonderful teaching experience where children are able to explore new worlds and delve deeper into space.

You can watch the Space Mission Immigration project on a Live Stream via Youtube above!

The Aim Of The Project

Here's his premise for the experience...

"Imagine a giant system map with planets, astroid belts, gas clouds etc for the teams to explore. This gets explored and sections will be claimed by the teams through the week. See the solar systems you can enter in Mass Effect.

Imagine smaller maps, planet boards. This will be the colony the team is building. This maps is like a close up off a planet from the central map. Through the week this board gets filled with buildings, roads, factories etc.

The point is for the teams to make the strongest, best, most prosperous colony by the end of the week. Through hard work, team work and dedication in the workshops they get benefits in the game. But by working together with the other teams, forming alliances, they will get even more bonuses."

Gamification has become a really interesting way of not only teaching children but also for use in the workplace and more. Simply by having 'fun' it seems that a lot of those facts you need to learn sink in easily. It is, however, decidedly prevalent in schools now and it's great to see someone using games and miniatures as a way to teach things about space, team work and co-operation.

Previously he had done something similar with Roman RISK where he talked and explored the world of Ancient Rome. A great way to learn History - I wish I had him as my teacher when I was younger!

Building The Experience

Of course something this big requires a lot of work. One of the first things he shared within the forum thread (which goes into a lot more detail on this) was the addition of some spaceships. Afterall, you can't explore the galaxy without some ships to do it in.

He scouted around to find a whole bunch of big ships like these and some smaller ones too to represent additional ships within the fleets.

Of course some other bits and pieces had to come together including some Space Station like pieces as you can see above.

This means that they have some big noticeable game pieces which will show the expansion of the game over time as the kids begin to do some exploring.

Some more of the ships that you see above represent smaller ones within their fleet. They are simple but effective and should look great on the tabletop itself.

The Board & Components

The game board itself is utterly massive. You can see just how big it is in this first image which mapped out just what the kids will be exploring.

This huge piece of kit measures 120cm x 200cm and will represent 936 tiles for them to explore, each with interesting things on the other side. The tiles themselves have taken shape with some nice graphics representing different things out there in the void.

The end result is something like this which you see below. The kids will come in when they have time and will start to explore and complete their moves. The full rules for what's going on here can be found in the forum post so if you want to ask questions you can learn more from bloodbeard there.

This shows off what the game looks like once they've actually got some bits and pieces down on the tabletop. As a teaching aid this has certainly gone above and beyond. Even the planets themselves have lots of information on them.

As I've said above you really should check out the thread for more information on the plans behind this project and keep an eye on things to see how they progress via the Livestream and the Forum Post. Maybe this will inspire some more people to create similar schemes.

A big congratulations from us here at Beasts of War for the effort that bloodbeard is going into to teach these kids!

What do you think of the project?