Standard Game · Strategy · Version 1.0.0

Hellwig's Wargame

Hellwig's Wargame
A war game in the manner of the Brunswick master of pages, 1780

SETTING
Somewhere in the German lands in the late eighteenth century, two armies of equal
strength meet on open country broken by woods, rising ground, marsh, a river and
a scatter of villages. Each has a fortress at its back. Johann Christian Ludwig
Hellwig published a war game in 1780 that took chess off its sixty-four squares
and gave it ground: he sold it as a board with a box of terrain pieces the players
laid out before play, so that no two actions were fought over the same country.
This is a game in that manner, on hexes rather than squares.

OBJECTIVE
Beat the opposing army. There are three ways to do it, and you may pursue any of
them: storm the enemy fortress and the action ends at once in your favour; take
5 of his 14 pieces and his army breaks and quits the field; or, failing
either, hold the better of the field at nightfall, which is judged at
3 points for every enemy piece taken and 4 for every village held.

WHAT MAKES IT UNUSUAL
There are no dice anywhere in this game. Hellwig was writing half a century
before anyone thought to put dice on a war game, and an attack here is reckoned
rather than gambled: the attacker's number against the defender's, with the
ground and the supporting pieces counted in, and the difference read off a
five-step ladder. The working of every attack is printed in a ledger beside the
board, so you can see exactly why an assault carried or recoiled — and, before
you commit, what the sum would be.

The board is laid out from 9 terrain squares drawn at random from a set of
16, each of which may be laid either way round, so the country is new every time.

PLAYERS
One player against the machine, at three levels of skill. There is also an
observer mode in which two machines fight and you watch.

PLAY LENGTH
About 21 turns, typically twenty to forty minutes for a full action. The
action is limited to 24 turns, so it always reaches a decision.