Hellwig took chess off its sixty-four squares and gave it ground. His board was a field of coloured squares, and the box held terrain pieces the players laid out before play, so that no two actions were fought over the same country. Each arm moved after its own fashion, the ground told for and against, and an attack was reckoned rather than gambled — he was writing half a century before anyone thought to put dice on a war game.
Nine terrain squares are laid at random for every action. You have an army of fourteen pieces and eight orders a turn, and so has your opponent; you use them alternately. Take his fortress, break his army, or hold the better of the field by nightfall.