Swedish metallers SABATON have teamed up with the Italian game company Scribabs to create the “A Battle Through History: An Adventure With Sabaton” board game, due out on December 13.

In “A Battle Through History”, each player dresses the part of a time-traveling storyteller (a “Sabaton”), whose journey through historical Eras enables them to relive epic battles alongside legendary troops and heroes. Players can both face “the story” (represented by cards on the main board). He challenges the other players, deploying archers, tanks, airplanes, Vikings, and any other troops that they were able to “conquer” during their travels through the Eras. Moreover, by collecting precious Relics, they can enrich their knowledge and thus gain the points needed to win the game. Whoever collects the greatest Units, Heroes, and Relics during their travels wins the game and can therefore sing of their heroic deeds.

Says SABATON: “Each bandmember of SABATON grew up with the tradition of board games and role-playing games, and the blood of these games runs in our veins. Just as we carry the tradition of playing the metal we grew up with, we also now carry the tradition of keeping board games alive, along with the social interactions that it comes with. Together with our partner Scribabs we present you: ‘A Battle Through History: An Adventure With Sabaton’!”

Pre-order at this location.

In a 2019 interview with Consequence, SABATON singer Joakim Brodén stated about why some bands prefer to write about historical events: “I have no idea. For me, it makes so much sense. We sang earlier in our career about random heavy metal topics, and writing lyrics for us was a necessary evil. It wasn’t like we hated it, but the music was the main thing, and, ‘Okay, we’ve got to write some lyrics now, because we’re going to record in a couple of days.’ It wasn’t really that fun. All of a sudden, we decided one song, which was ‘Primo Victoria’, I had written the music already, and me and Pär (Sundström, bass) sat down to do the lyrics, and we figured, ‘We can’t do this about drinking beer and killing dragons. This song has got a huge sound to it, so we need something huge.’ So we thought, ‘How about D-Day?’ As soon as we started writing that song, it all came into place. It started to make sense for us. It was interesting. We were already into history before, but our history interest has been growing with the band in a way, and I genuinely think there are so many fantastic stories in our past that are being forgotten, so why the fuck should we make up new ones? There are other people who can do that better.”