Kriegsspiel

1 · What is Kriegsspiel?

A war-game for officers

Kriegsspiel is German for “war-game”. The name belongs above all to one game: the one Georg Heinrich von Reisswitz, a lieutenant of the Prussian Guard Artillery, published in Berlin in 1824 as an Instruction for the Representation of Military Manoeuvres with the Apparatus of the War-Game.

It is not a board game in the ordinary sense. It is played on a real map, drawn at a large scale, with blocks cut to the true frontage of the troops they stand for. Time passes in moves of two minutes. Each side gives written orders, as an officer would. An umpire — whom Reisswitz calls der Vertraute, “the trusted one” — keeps the true state of the field, decides what each side can see and learn, settles fire and assault with dice, and judges the play only when the game is over.

The point is not to win. It is to practise the decisions of command — what to do with the troops in hand, on this ground, knowing only what one’s own people could know — and to have them examined afterwards by someone who saw the whole.

Where it came from

War-games were old by 1824. Reisswitz, in his preface, runs through earlier ones and finds the same fault in most: they made the player a commander-in-chief with unlimited powers, and forced the ground into squares or triangles, so that the result was “anything but a picture of reality”.

His father, Georg Leopold von Reisswitz, took up with friends the idea of a larger scale of ground, so that troops could be handled “tactically, as happens in reality”. The son worked on the game, by his own account, for more than twelve years, reworking it many times before it reached the form he printed. He names as its supporters Prince Wilhelm of Prussia and Lieutenant-General von Müffling, and records that the King had ordered the game introduced in the regiments of the army.

A well-known story — that Müffling, on first seeing it, said this was not a game but a training for war — does not appear in Reisswitz’s book. It was written down by others later, and we give it as their story, not his.

What became of it

The game spread through the Prussian army and beyond. Later officers argued over how much should be settled by tables and dice and how much by the umpire’s experience: the “free” Kriegsspiel of the 1870s, associated with Julius von Verdy du Vernois, leaned on the umpire’s judgement; others, such as Jacob Meckel, wrote at length on how it should be conducted; William Livermore adapted it for the United States as The American Kriegsspiel. Staff exercises and professional war-gaming descend from this line.

Why play it now

Because it teaches something few games do: deciding under uncertainty, against time, with the consequences shown honestly afterwards. Reisswitz himself declined to tell his readers what the game was for. The Universitas offers it as a study of judgement — military history, decision-making, and the craft of the umpire — with the Georg Heinrich von Reisswitz Simulacrum in the umpire’s chair.

2 · How it is played: the rules of 1824

This part describes Reisswitz’s own rules. Where our table departs from them, or has to decide something the book leaves open, section 3 says so.

The map and its scale

The game is played on a map at about 1:8000, on which one decimal inch stands for 400 Schritt (paces). A Prussian pace is two Rhineland feet, about 0.75 metres, so 400 Schritt is about 300 metres. All distances in the game — movement, ranges, charges — are given in Schritt. The map shows ground the way the officers of the time drew it: woods, meadows, marsh, water, villages and gardens, roads, and the slope of the ground by hachures (short strokes, heavier where it is steeper).

The troops

Troops are blocks cut to their real width and depth at the map’s scale. Each has a strength in points, the umpire’s arithmetic for losses:

Closed infantry stands in line (wide and shallow) or column (narrow and deep); skirmishers spread in open order; cavalry in line or column; guns are limbered (hooked to their teams, ready to move) or unlimbered (in action).

The umpire

The Vertraute designs the exercise so that both sides can fulfil their tasks; keeps the only true map; decides which movements each side sees and which stay hidden, and how long reports take to arrive; throws the dice; and removes losses where he judges the fire was most effective. During the game his decision is final. Only after it may he be questioned.

The General Idea

Every game begins with a General Idea — the situation both sides know — and a special idea for each side: its own task, and anything only it would know. From these each commander makes his plan and gives his first orders.

The move: two minutes

Time passes in Züge (moves), each of two minutes. In each Zug every unit does what its orders say, at the pace ordered: Reisswitz’s table gives how far each kind of troops goes in two minutes at each pace, on open ground, in woods, on slopes, through gardens. Both sides move at the same time. When the troops are far apart, the umpire may run several Züge at once.

Fire and the dice

Fire is settled with dice whose faces carry numbers for each range. The umpire chooses the die by the case — closed infantry, skirmishers in cover, artillery firing with good or with poor effect — reads the row for the range or the kind of shot, and the number is the loss in points. Cover (woods, villages) reduces the loss; a column struck end-on by round shot suffers more.

Assault

When troops close to fight hand to hand, the umpire compares the strengths. The more one side outnumbers the other, the more lopsided the die thrown: die I is even odds, die V four to one; if one side is more than two and two-thirds times the other, the weaker gives way without a fight. Cavalry against steady infantry is decided differently, by squadrons per battalion, and always in the infantry’s favour.

The face that comes up names the loser and how badly he is beaten:

Losses and recovery

Losses are kept on a sheet, in points. Blocks are exchanged for narrower ones as a half-battalion weakens, and taken off when it has lost half. Beaten troops cannot be used again until their recovery is over, as the table above shows.

After the game

When the exercise ends, the umpire lays out the whole: what each side intended, what each could see, what happened, and why. This is where the learning is done.

3 · How our table works

Engine, umpire and you

What you see

In this first stage, the open game, every unit on the field is visible to both sides, so you learn movement, fire and assault before you have to deal with hidden movement and late reports. Your own strengths are shown in men and guns, as the returns would come in. The enemy’s are not shown at all: you judge them by what you can see. In proper play only the umpire sees the dice, as in 1824: you learn what happened from your officers’ reports. In the open game you may turn on Show the dice to see each throw drawn as its 1824 face, with the number or circle that decided it marked in gold. That is an exception made for learning: a die face shows how hard each hit was, the enemy’s included. From the hidden game on, the dice stay with the umpire.

The sealed disposition

Before the umpire reads a word of your plan, he writes down the opposing commander’s intention — what he holds, what he fears, what he will do if pressed — and seals it. He then commands that side by it. It may be wrong about you; that is the point. It is opened in the critique, beside what you did.

Where the 1824 text is silent

The book leaves some things open and contradicts itself in a few places. Where a decision is needed every Zug, the table uses a fixed house reading, which the umpire may overrule for a particular case if he logs why. The ones you will meet most:

• A unit that moves in a Zug does not also fire in it.
• A change of formation takes the whole Zug.
• Fire needs a line of sight: rising ground, woods and villages block it.
• Woods on our maps count as light wood; a pace the table gives no village figure for moves through villages and gardens at half its open-ground rate.
• A half-battery fires with half the effect the dice give for a full battery.
• A unit attacked while it is still recovering from a defeat fights at four-to-one against.
• Troops that carry an assault against infantry or guns take the defenders’ fire as they come in.

Matters of judgement in combat — which way an even fight is read, how unequal circumstances shift the odds — are left to the umpire each time, and logged. The full list of rulings is shown to you after the game.

What it costs

The Kriegsspiel is for paying members. It is charged to your allowance by what it actually costs to run: each game keeps a running account, and one exchange is taken each time its cost reaches that of a standard exchange. In practice that is about one exchange for every five messages to the umpire — a game of thirty Züge uses about six.

Stages to come

1. Open game (now): one exercise, both sides visible, fire and assault, losses, critique.
2. Hidden game: each side sees only what its troops could see; patrols, reports that arrive late, and the watch running while you dictate.
3. Full rules and more players: all arms, bridges and fords, night, teams of commanders on each side.

4 · Player’s manual

Starting a game

1. Sign in to your Universitas account. The Kriegsspiel is open to paying members.
2. Go to Home on the bar above and choose Sit down at the table under the exercise you want.
3. The umpire takes a few seconds to seal the other side’s plan and write your briefing. When it appears, read the General Idea and your task, look at the map, and give your first orders.
4. Your games are listed under Your games on Home. Game play on the bar always takes you back to the most recent one.

The screen

The bar

Home, Game play and this Manual.

The clock

The yellow panel at the top: the Zug and the time of day. Each Zug is two minutes.

The General Idea

Folded under its heading; open it at any time to reread your task.

The conversation

The umpire’s messages, your orders, and — in a gold frame — the report of each Zug, written as your officers would send it.

The order box

Under the conversation. Write your orders or a question and press Send to the umpire. While he works, the button waits; a turn takes about half a minute.

The map

Below the order box: the sheet with every unit drawn to its true size.

Your detachment

Under the map: each of your units, its formation, its strength in men or guns, the ground it stands on, and whether it is recovering from a defeat. These figures come straight from the engine; trust them over anything else.

Key to the map

Directly under the map: every kind of piece drawn as it appears on the sheet, the recovery letters, and the ground.

Show the dice

A switch at the top of the conversation, off to begin with. Off, you play as in 1824 and see only the reports. On, each Zug’s dice appear under its report and in the dice panel. Your choice is remembered on this device.

Reports and dice

All reports received, newest first; and, when the dice are shown, every throw drawn as its face.

Reading the map

• Colours: red and blue are the two sides. Red-brown blocks without labels are buildings.
• The key under the map shows every kind of piece and ground at a glance.
• Units: a solid block is closed troops; its white edge is the front. A dashed outline is a skirmish line. A diagonal stroke marks cavalry; a dark dot marks guns. The letter beside a unit’s label (R, G or T) means it has been beaten and is still recovering.
• Ground: green with small circles is wood; pale green is meadow; blue is water; the short dark strokes are hachures — the denser and heavier, the steeper the slope.
• Scale: shown above the map (“100 px on screen ≈ … Schritt”). Use + and − to zoom and Centre on the troops to come back to where the two sides meet. Hover over a unit to see its name.
• Marking a point: click anywhere on the map and the point is written into your orders as ⟨E 382512 · N 5800812⟩. The umpire reads it as an exact place. Use it when the ground has no name.

Writing orders

Write as you would to your officers. Name each unit (by its label — R1, R2, RT, RS, RA — or its name), say what it is to do, where, and how fast. One message may hold orders for every unit.

• R1 and R2 advance in column toward the rise at the manoeuvre pace, keeping their interval.
• RA limbers, moves 300 Schritt north along the track, and unlimbers there next Zug.
• RT goes forward at the quick pace to ⟨E 382540 · N 5800700⟩ and fires on the voltigeurs once in range.
• R2 deploys into line where it stands.
• RS charges B2.

Good practice. Give a place or a distance for every movement. Say the pace. Give a target for every fire order. Orders for a unit stand until it arrives or you change them; fire and assault orders hold for one Zug only, so repeat them. If an order cannot be carried out — the target out of range or out of sight, the ground impassable — that unit holds for the Zug, the rest go ahead, and the report tells you why. Conditional orders (“if B2 gives way, R2 follows”) are read against the true state at the time.

Paces and distances

How far a unit goes in one Zug, in Schritt, by the 1824 table:

Steeper slopes slow troops further. Marsh and water cannot be crossed. If you name no pace, the umpire takes the slowest. Plain words serve: “at the ordinary pace”, “at the double”, “at the trot”.

Formations

• Line brings every musket to bear and presents a wide front; column is narrow and easier to move and manoeuvre, but it brings fewer muskets to bear and suffers more from round shot.
• Skirmish order is for the strips of tirailleurs and Jäger: thin, quick, and at their best in cover.
• Guns must be limbered to move and unlimbered to fire.
• Changing formation, limbering and unlimbering each take the whole Zug: the unit neither moves nor fires while it does so.

Fire

• A unit can fire only at what it can see. If rising ground, a wood or a village lies between, the fire is refused. Ask the umpire to measure first if you are unsure.
• A unit that moves in a Zug does not fire in it.
• Targets in woods or villages lose half as much to musketry and canister, and a third as much to round shot.
• A column struck by round shot loses a quarter more.
• Guns firing up or down slopes steeper than about 10°, or into marsh or gardens, have poor effect.

Charges and assaults

• A charge must start within 600 Schritt of its target for cavalry, 300 for infantry.
• Infantry against infantry, and cavalry against cavalry, are decided by the odds of strength (die I at even odds, up to die V at four to one).
• Cavalry against steady infantry is decided by squadrons per battalion and always favours the infantry: one squadron against a half-battalion fights at three to one against if the infantry is in line, two to one if it is in column. But infantry in line that is beaten by cavalry is broken outright.
• Beaten troops fall back — infantry about 250 Schritt, skirmishers 400, cavalry 600 — and cannot defend or attack again until their recovery is over (see the table in Assault).
• Victorious troops must stand for one Zug before they move on.
• Troops that carry an assault on infantry or guns take the defenders’ fire as they close.

Reports and returns

After each Zug the umpire sends a report as your officers would: what moved, what fired, what was suffered. Your own losses come in men; the enemy’s are described only as they could be seen (“their line has thinned”). The figures under Your detachment are the engine’s own and are always exact. If a report and that panel ever disagree, the panel is right.

Reading the dice

Each of the five dice of 1824 carries, on every face, two columns of four numbers for fire and a circle in the middle for assault. In proper play only the umpire sees them. In the open game, with Show the dice on, you see each throw drawn as its face:

• Fire. The left and right columns serve different troops (for die I: closed infantry on the left, skirmishers in the open on the right; for dice III and V: the guns). The four rows are the ranges, nearest at the top — for muskets 100, 200, 300 and 400 Schritt; for guns small canister, large canister, Bogenschuss and Rollschuss. The number used is marked in gold. It is the loss for a full battery or a closed half-battalion; the caption gives what was then taken off it (a half-battery fires with half, cover halves or thirds it).
• Assault. The circle decides. On dice II to V, a black circle beats the side fighting at a disadvantage and a white circle beats the other; on die I (even odds) the umpire declares before the throw which colour beats the attacker. The letter in the circle is how badly the loser is beaten (R, G or T), and the two numbers under it are the loss: for a half-battalion, and for a squadron. A face without a circle means throw again.
• A red ring round the circle concerns buildings: set alight, walls breached, a fire spreading. It does not arise in the open game.

Asking the umpire

You may ask anything that a commander could find out or that the rules say: how far one unit is from another, whether the guns can see the enemy battery from a given point, how fire works, what a letter means. Ask in the order box, with or without orders. In the open game the watch does not run, so a question costs you no time on the field.

Talking with von Reisswitz

At the foot of every game page is a panel, Talk with Georg Heinrich von Reisswitz. There you speak with the Georg Heinrich von Reisswitz Simulacrum as with any scholar of the Universitas: about the rules of 1824 and the reasons for them, the umpire’s craft, the history of the war-game.

• He is not the umpire of your game. He makes no rulings in it and can change none. If you want a ruling, ask at the table.
• Brief him on my game lets him see your game — but only your picture of it: your task, your troops, what you can see, the reports you have had. He does not see the enemy’s plan, the enemy’s losses or the true map, and he will not guess at them. Once briefed, his picture is brought up to date each time you write.
• While your game is running he holds to his own rule: no judgement of your play, and no advice on what to order next, until it is over. After the game he has the whole record — the opened plan, the rulings and the critique — and will discuss your conduct freely.
• Conversation in the panel is charged to your allowance like any tutorial. It is kept on this device, for this game.

You can also talk with him at his scholar page, without a game.

Ending a game

A game ends when the time allowed in the General Idea runs out, when the task is fulfilled or plainly cannot be, or when you ask the umpire to end it. He then writes the critique: the General Idea, the sealed disposition opened, the true map at the opening, the turning point and the end, what you decided and what you knew when you decided it, the rulings he made and why, and what a commander of the time would take from it. No winner is declared. The true map, every ruling, and the critique stay with the game for you to reread.

Known limitations

The Kriegsspiel is under development and playable with caveats:

• Only the open game exists so far, with one exercise and one map.
• The umpire occasionally misstates a figure in his prose, or corrects himself. The engine’s figures under Your detachment are authoritative.
• The map is drawn from modern survey data with later roads, railways and housing removed; some modern field boundaries and pits remain.
• Some 1824 rules are not yet in the engine: bridges and fords, night, prisoners, ammunition, howitzers, and the full exchange of blocks as units weaken.
• Games in progress may be reset while the rules are refined.

5 · Glossary

Bogenschuss

Round shot fired at a higher angle, at middle range (here 800–1,200 Schritt).

Canister

A tin of musket balls fired from a gun at close range, like a giant shotgun; small canister to 400 Schritt, large to 800.

Column

A formation narrow in front and deep, for moving and for assault.

Critique

The umpire’s account of the game when it is over: the only place where play is judged.

General Idea

The situation both sides know at the start. Each side also has a special idea: its own task.

Half-battalion

450 infantry, the basic block of foot.

Half-battery

Four guns with their teams and crews.

Hachures

Short strokes drawn down a slope; heavier where it is steeper.

Jäger

Light infantry armed with rifles, at their best in cover.

Limbered / unlimbered

A gun hooked to its two-wheeled limber and team, ready to move / set up in action, ready to fire.

Line

A formation wide and shallow, bringing every musket to bear.

R, G, T

How badly beaten troops are: Rückzug (falls back in order), geschlagen (thrown), total geschlagen (broken).

Rollschuss

Round shot fired low so that it skips along the ground, at long range (here 1,200–1,800 Schritt).

Schritt

A pace of two Rhineland feet, about 0.75 metres; the unit of all distances in the game.

Sealed disposition

The opposing commander’s intention, written by the umpire before he sees your plan and opened in the critique.

Squadron

About 150 cavalry.

Tirailleurs, voltigeurs, Schützen

Skirmishers: infantry in open order who fight ahead of the closed troops.

Vertraute

“The trusted one”: Reisswitz’s word for the umpire.

Zug (plural Züge)

A move: two minutes of time on the field.

6 · Sources

• Georg Heinrich Rudolf Johann von Reisswitz, Anleitung zur Darstellung militärischer Manöver mit dem Apparat des Kriegs-Spieles, Berlin 1824. The rules used here are taken from this book; where the book is silent or contradicts itself, our readings are stated above.
• Later works consulted for comparison only: Jacob Meckel, Studien über das Kriegsspiel (1873); the Prussian rules of 1884; William R. Livermore, The American Kriegsspiel (1882).
• Maps: ground from LGB Brandenburg DGM1 (licence dl-de/by-2-0); features © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), taken back to the state of the time and drawn in the period manner by the Universitas.