Posted as a service by The Army Men Homepage and Milihistriot

COMIC BOOK WAR GAMES

"TASK FORCE"

A BATTLE GAME ON "LAND, SEA AND AIR" BY HELEN OF TOY, CO.

comicwargameTaskForceAd.jpg

Task Force was a great Naval Battle Game. It was essentially one of the many early versions of a favorite “pencil & paper” public-domain War Game that had appeared in various published forms, under various names, since at least the early 1930’s. The most famous version of all these games was eventually published in 1967 by Milton Bradley who called their version “Battleship!” (which of course became a beloved American Classic.)

But Charles Fogarty, who authored the game in 1957 and then started Helen of Toy, beat Milton Bradley to the punch by ten years with Task Force which not only had battleships to sink, but also had aircraft carriers, landing barges, planes, tanks, gun emplacements and headquarters to “Locate, Occupy and Destroy!”

Task Force was a fun little War Game, with simple rules, that had 88 tiny plastic game pieces, 357 red markers, and paper fold-out “battlefield” playmats that represented a large colorful ocean with islands. The paper playmats would later be changed to plastic.

The Task Force Ad above was found in a 1961 comic book called Adveture #280.

Below are some reference photos we found which appear to show a fairly complete Task Force game. Note that the set actually seems to have only modern looking delta wing jets, despite the WWII type warplanes shown in the Ad illustration. It is possible that some early versions of Task Force had only the WWII planes, but later versions featured the delta wing jets.

See photo below to view the actual Task Force directions.

comicwargamesTaskForce.jpg