Recreational wargaming

A wargame is a strategy game that realistically simulates warfare. Wargames were invented for the purpose of training military officers, but they eventually caught on in civilian circles, played recreationally.

History

Early German wargames (1780-1806)

The first wargame was invented in Prussia in 1780 by Johann Christian Ludwig Hellwig, who was a college professor in Brunswick. Hellwing wanted to design a game by which he could teach some principles of warfare to his students, many of whom were noblemen destined for military service, but he also wanted his game to be fun and accessible to the general public so that he could sell it as a leisure game. Hellwig chose to base his game on chess, believing that this would attract chess players and make it easier for them to learn the rules. Hellwig published a second edition of his rulebook in 1803.

As in chess, Hellwig's game was played on a grid of squares, but it was a much larger grid, and the squares were color-coded to represent different types of terrain: mountains, swamp, water, trenches, etc. The layout of the terrain was not fixed, which allowed players to create their own custom battlefields. The pieces in the game represented real military units: cavalry, infantry, artillery, and various support units. As in chess, only a single piece could occupy a square, and the pieces moved square by square, either laterally or diagonally. Over normal terrain, infantry could move a maximum distance of eight squares, dragoons could move twelve squares, and light cavalry could move sixteen squares — intuitively mirroring the speed at which these units move in the real world. But terrain could impede movement: mountains were impassable, swamps slowed units down, rivers could only be crossed with the help of a special pontoon unit, etc. A player could only move one piece per turn, or one group of pieces if they were arranged in a rectangle. A piece could capture an enemy piece by moving into its square, just like in chess, but infantry and artillery pieces could also shoot enemy pieces, at a maximum ranges of two to three squares. Unlike chess, the pieces had orientation: for instance, an infantry piece could only shoot an enemy piece if they were facing it and flanking it. Hellwig's wargame could also simulate the fog of war to limited degree: while the players were arranging their pieces in their starting positions, they had the option of placing a screen across the board so that they could not observe their opponent's arrangement until the game started. Once the game was in progress, however, there was no hiding anything.

Hellwig's wargame was a great success, and inspired other inventors to develop their own chess-like wargames.

In 1796, another Prussian named Johann Georg Julius Venturini invented his own wargame, inspired by Hellwig's game. Venturini's game was played on an even larger grid. Venturini's game also added rules governing logistics, such as supply convoys and mobile bakeries, and the effects of weather and seasons, making this perhaps the first operational-level wargame.

In 1806, an Austrian named Johann Ferdinand Opiz developed a wargame aimed at both civilian and military markets. Like Hellwig's game, it used a modular grid-based board. But unlike Hellwig's game, Opiz's game used dice rolls to simulate the unpredictability of real warfare. This innovation was controversial at the time. Hellwig, who designed his wargame for both leisure as well as instruction, felt that introducing chance would spoil the fun.

These games were popular among recreational gamers, but they weren't taken seriously by an army because they were too unrealistic. The chess-like grid forced the terrain into unnatural forms, such as rivers that flowed in straight lines and turned at right angles. A unit could only move from one square to the next, not within the square, and only a single unit could occupy a square at a time, even if that square represented a square mile.

''Kriegsspiel''

In 1824, a Prussian army officer named Georg Heinrich Rudolf Johann von Reisswitz developed a more realistic wargame specifically for the Prussian army. Instead of a chess-like grid, the game was played on accurate topographical maps of the kind the Prussian army used in the field. This allowed the game to model terrain naturally and simulate battles in real locations. The scale of the map 1:8000, which was smaller than any wargame before it. Troop formations were represented by little rectangular pieces made of lead, which were painted either blue or red to represent the side they belonged to. Reisswitz used data collected during the Napoleonic Wars to accurately model how the units performed in battle. For instance, his manual provided tables which listed how far each unit type could move in a round over various types of terrain. The game used dice to model variable weapon damage, and firearms damage generally decreased the farther away the target was. Unlike chess pieces, the units could suffer partial losses before being defeated, which were tracked on a separate sheet of paper; Reisswitz's wargame was the first to use unit hitpoints. The most important innovation was perhaps the introduction of an umpire. The players didn't move the pieces across the map themselves. Instead, they wrote orders for their troops on scraps of paper which they discretely submitted to the umpire, and the umpire would move the pieces according to how he judged the virtual troops would carry out their orders. The umpire also managed secret information such as the location of hidden units. The umpire only placed a piece on the map when he judged that the unit in question had entered the enemy's line of sight. This was the first wargame to properly simulate the fog of war.

A number of privately-funded ''kriegsspiel'' clubs were formed in Prussia. They were mainly frequented by army officers, but some had civilian members as well, so ''kriegsspiel'' was certainly being played recreationally during this time.

In 1870, Prussia defeated France in the Franco-Prussian War. The Prussian army did not have any significant advantage in weaponry, numbers, or troop training, but it was the only army in the world that practiced wargaming, so naturally many people credited Prussia's victory to its wargaming tradition. Armies around the world now took an interest in German wargames, which they referred to as ''kriegsspiel'' (the German word for "wargame"). ''Kriegsspiel'' also gained a substantial following among civilian gamers. The world's first recreational wargaming club was the University Kriegspiel 'sic''Club, founded in 1873 at Oxford University in England.

Miniature wargaming

In 1881, the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson became the first documented person to use toy soldiers in a wargame, although he never published his rules. According to an account by his stepson, they were very sophisticated and realistic, on par with German military wargames. In his game, each toy soldier was used to represent an entire unit rather than an individual, and his playing field was just a chalk map drawn on the floor.

In 1898, the British writer Fred T. Jane published the first rulebook for a naval wargame: ''Rules for the Jane Naval War Game''. Jane's wargame was also the first published wargame to use miniature models. It used scale models of warships made out of cork and wires; the wires were used for guns and masts. Jane's rulebook described in great detail the capabilities of the warships, such as the range and armor-penetrating power of the guns. It also simulated localized damage, such as what would happen to a warship if its boiler was damaged, or its gun battery.

The English writer H. G. Wells

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