The game Thermopyles was designed, not only to be a neat little game, but most importantly to mimic the actual Battle of Thermopylae. The battle was between the Persians and the Greeks. The Persians having two hundred fifty thousand men in Xerxes’ army. While the Greeks had seven thousand soldiers, and three hundred mighty Spartans, all led by King Leonidas. The Greeks and Spartans had heavy armor, while the Persians had very light armor. In regards to the game, the player has to put down a Spartan card and the number or power level will decide whether or not the Persians lose that round of play. So, of course this game has Spartan and Persians depicted in the artwork. Also, one can notice that the Persians are drawn with little armor, and the Spartans and drawn with their bronze helmet and chest plate. The mechanics of the game also imitate the real battle. The Spartans were the strongest warriors, trained from the age of seven and educated to fight. A single Spartan, given the same number as two Persians, will still be able to take them down. The Persians, both in real life and in the game, only had one advantage over the Spartans, and that was their numbers. In the game, the Spartans have only sixteen cards, while the Persians have twenty six. The support dice could signify the extra strength, courage, and teamwork that the Spartan warriors have over the Persians. It is not clear if the game is portraying the immortals, but the same idea exists that “Every time one of the ten thousand was killed, instantly, in reserve, there was another guy waiting just to step into his place.” In the game, it seems like there are endless Persians, just like how it was in real life. Also, this game is very hard to win, and after playing it numerous times, the closest I have been to winning before retreating to number seven is with three Spartans left and six Persians left. The Battle of Thermopylae took place in Thermopylae because it was the beginning of the main stretch before Athens. Xerxes goal was to capture all of mainland Greece and Athens was his priority. The map on the game from numbers one to seven signifies Thermopylae at number one and Athens at number seven. All three hundred Spartans died with honor, and the game allows the player to throw all of ones cards into battle and essentially killing all the army. The Spartans knew that they would not return home, and in the game, once a Spartan is put into play, there is no turning back.
I definitely thought the game Thermopyles significantly paralleled the actual battle of Thermopylae, and the thing that most caught my attention was when you mentioned how the Spartans knew that once they were out in battle there would be no turning back. Even though it wasn’t explicitly put, I think the whole aspect of the game where once a Spartan card was played, even if he won the battle, he still wouldn’t return to the deck sort of symbolized the roll of the archers in the Persian army during the battle. Usually, the act of defeating another person entails that the victor survives while the other perishes. In the Battle of Thermopylae, however, the Spartans, even though they were superior in soldier-to-soldier conflict, inevitably would die from the Persian aerial attacks. These Persian archers never needed to be given an actual role in the game because there was no question whether they were going to succeed or not, and like the Spartans regarded their attack as cowardly and unworthy of recognition, the archers remained a hidden, cowardly presence and their role left unspoken.
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