Hellwig's Wargame — how to play

Choose your army and the calibre of your opponent on the opening sheet, then press Lay the board. Nine terrain squares are drawn and laid, and both armies deploy.

Turn order

Each army has 8 orders a turn, and the two armies spend them alternately: you give one order, then your opponent gives one, and so on until both allowances are gone. No piece may take more than one order in a turn. The initiative — who gives the first order of the turn — changes hands every turn. The action lasts 24 turns.

Movement

Click one of your pieces to take it in hand. The ground it may occupy is shaded, and the enemies it may strike are ringed. Hover any shaded hex and the route is traced hex by hex with a chip quoting what it costs against the piece's allowance. Click to send it.

Ground costs movement to enter: open ground and roads are quick, wood is slow, marsh is slower still and closed to horse, and water may only be crossed at a bridge or a ford. A piece that moves next to an enemy must halt there.

Attacking

With one of your pieces in hand, click an adjacent enemy to attack it, or — if you have artillery in hand — any enemy within reach and in view to bombard it. Hover the enemy first and the card prints the whole sum before you commit. There are no dice: add the attacker's number, what its arm gains or loses on that ground, and one for each friendly piece already beside the defender (up to three); set against it the defender's number, the cover of its ground, and less two if it is in disorder. The difference decides it:

• +2 or more — the position is carried
• +1 — the defender is driven back
• 0 — both fall into disorder
• -1 — the attack is repulsed
• -2 or less — the attacking piece is broken up

The full working of every attack is entered in the ledger beside the board.

The arms

    Musketeers   march 2   attack 3   defence 3
    Grenadiers   march 2   attack 4   defence 3
    Jäger        march 3   attack 2   defence 2
    Dragoons     march 4   attack 4   defence 2
    Hussars      march 5   attack 2   defence 1
    Artillery    march 1   attack 1   defence 1
    Pontoniers   march 2   attack 0   defence 1
    Miners       march 2   attack 1   defence 2

Winning

• Occupy the enemy fortress and the action ends at once in your favour.
• Take 5 of his pieces and his army breaks.
• Otherwise the field is judged at nightfall: 3 points for each enemy piece taken and 4 for each village held.

Losing

The same three conditions run against you. If your fortress is occupied, or you lose 5 pieces, or you hold the poorer of the field at nightfall, the day is lost. An equal count at nightfall leaves the field disputed.

Saving

The action is saved automatically after every order, yours and the machine's, in this browser's own storage under the single key tronsoft_hellwigs_wargame_save. Nothing is sent anywhere. Close the page whenever you like and press Resume the action on the opening sheet to pick it up. If your browser refuses storage — private browsing will — the game still plays; it simply will not remember.

Restarting

Reload the page and press Lay the board for a fresh action on new country. Finishing an action clears the saved game, and the closing sheet offers New action directly.

Handling the board

Drag to pan, wheel or pinch to zoom, or use the buttons at the corner of the map. Arrow keys scroll, + and - zoom, 0 fits the whole plate, N takes up the next piece that has not moved, space stands fast for the rest of the turn, R opens the rules and Esc puts a piece down.