Hellwig's Wargame v1.0.0 has been published on Tronsoft Games.
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.
- Genre: Strategy
- Developer: Tronsoft Games
- Version: 1.0.0
