Standard Game · Strategy

Kriegsspiel

The Prussian war game of 1824. Two parties sit at the same table with different maps, and an umpire between them holds the true position, rules on every shot with his tables and his die, and tells each party only what its own officers can see.

You command one party. Your blocks stand where they stand; the enemy appears only as a report — where he was last seen, by whom, and how many moves ago — with a ring of uncertainty that widens as the report ages. Your orders are written out in full, handed to a galloper, and read when he arrives, which for a squadron two thousand paces off is not this move. Each block is drawn at the true frontage and depth of the body it stands for, so a battalion in line is a long thin bar and the same battalion in column is a short deep one, and you read a formation off the sheet with no key at all.

Six situations, from an advance-guard meeting to the storm of a village, played in moves of two minutes on sheets grown from a written brief. Results are read against par — what the ground and the odds ought to yield in the hands of two capable officers — so taking a village you were always going to take is not a victory; taking it cheaply is.