The U.S. Army increasingly relies on game-based training as a tool for skill development in nontraditional areas such as moral–ethical decision-making, social–cultural awareness, and cognitive reasoning. The use of game-based exercises is nonetheless a novel approach for training human-intelligence tasks. Human-intelligence tasks are the actions related to collecting information from people and other sources (i.e., social networks, print and visual media) to identify elements, intentions, composition, strength, dispositions, tactics, equipment, personnel and capabilities. In U.S. Army, human-intelligence skills are taught in a week-long resident course called the Attack the Network (AtN) course. In order to determine the extent to which game-based training provides a meaningful and effective contribution to the development human-intelligence skills, two forms of scenario-based practical exercises were compared in the AtN. Course performance and perceptions of training were compared across students who completed traditional paper-based practical exercises to students who completed game-based practical exercises in the Army’s Enhance Dynamic Geo-social Environment (EDGE) desktop training environment. The EDGE practical exercises did no better in increasing end-of-course test scores than did traditional paper-based practical exercises. In addition, the paper-based practical exercises were perceived as more beneficial to learning and course outcomes as compared to the EDGE practical exercises. These results add to the growing literature that fails to find a relative advantage of game-based training. However, these data as well as insights from AtN instructors were used to determine how EDGE may have a greater impact on human-intelligence skills. These insights may have wider applicability for increasing game-based training effectiveness in other contexts.