"Stratego" was not a direct inspiration for block wargames. In 1972, Lance Gutteridge of Gamma Two Games originally planned on using six-sided dice to represent pieces and to provide for stepwise reduction in strength. The high cost of dice led him to decide to instead use wooden blocks with labels (and four possible steps of strength). The first such block wargame was "Quebec 1759", depicting the campaign surrounding the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. Gamma Two Games later produced "War of 1812", covering the war of that name, and "Napoleon", covering the Waterloo campaign, before changing its name to Columbia Games.