In modern gaming parlance, this "point value" is analogous to " hitpoints ". The number of hitpoints a unit has is determined by the type of unit, the number of men in it, and their formation.

For instance, a cavalry squadron with 90 riders has 60 hitpoints, and a line infantry half-battalion with men has 90 hitpoints.

Individual cavalry riders are "tougher" than infantrymen 1. In most cases, a piece is simply removed from the map when it has lost all its hitpoints.

An exception to this is line infantry. Line infantry had a special function in early 19th century warfare. On the battlefield, infantry stood close together in long lines facing the enemy.

A key tactical purpose of a line of infantry was to obstruct the advance of enemy troops. When the line suffered casualties, this resulted in the formation of openings through which enemy troops could slip through.

If the defender didn't have reserve infantrymen with which to plug the openings, this was a disaster, as then the enemy could move through the openings to isolate and flank his troops.

To represent this phenomenon on the game map, the game provides "exchange pieces" for infantry half-battalion pieces.

The exchange pieces are commensurately smaller in length. So if a half-battalion piece in a line of such pieces is replaced with an exchange piece, this will create a gap in the line.

Furthermore, a half-battalion piece is removed from the map when it loses half of its hitpoints, because a half-battalion that had lost half of its men was considered ineffective in combat and typically the men just fled the battlefield.

To track hitpoint loss, Reiswtiz's original manual provided sheet of paper called the "losses table". The losses table is divided into columns for line infantry, tirailleurs, jagers, cavalry, and artillery.

Each column has a series of numbered dots. At the start of the game, the umpire shall stick one pin for each piece on the map in the first dot of the appropriate column.

For instance, if the Red Army begins with three infantry pieces and two cavalry pieces, the umpire will stick three pins in the first dot in the infantry column and two pins in the first dot in the cavalry column.

Generally, the dot a pin is stuck in represents how many damage points the corresponding unit has accumulated. When a unit takes damage, the umpire will move the corresponding pin down its column to the appropriate dot.

If a pin reaches the bottom of the column, then the corresponding piece is removed from the map, or in the case of line infantry, replaced with an exchange piece.

For instance: if a cavalry squadron suffers 10 points of damage, the umpire will move the corresponding pin ten dots down the cavalry column. If the pin reaches the 60th dot in the column, that's as much damage as a cavalry squadron can take, and the umpire will then remove the corresponding piece from the map.

Tschischwitz's version of Kriegsspiel was very much like Reisswitz's version, but it incorporated new advances in technologies and tactics.

For instance, by the Prussian army had transitioned from muskets to breech-loading rifles and hence troops could inflict casualties at up to paces instead of a mere Whereas Reisswitz used a unique set of dice, Tschischwitz used conventional gaming dice; his manual provided tables with which to translate dice rolls into combat outcomes.

Tschischwitz's game did not use line infantry exchange blocks. By , Prussian battle doctrine had moved away from line infantry tactics to an emphasis on wider deployments.

To represent this, the game represents infantry companies individually with their own blocks, so exchange blocks for battalions are no longer required.

Rules for deploying skirmishers were also updated to reflect the newer tactics. Whereas Reisswitz's manual prescribed just one map around which all the participants were gathered, Tschischwitz's manual proposed the option of having multiple maps: one for the umpire which displayed the positions of all troops, and one for each team with displayed only those troops which the respective team could see; and the teams would be placed in separate rooms with their respective maps so that they could not see the other team's map nor the umpire's map.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Redirected from Kriegsspiel wargame. This article is about the 19th century Prussian wargame. For chess varient, see Kriegspiel.

For other uses, see Kriegsspiel disambiguation. One face of Die I, which is used to determine ranged damage by infantry, and hand-to-hand combat results when the odds are even.

Anleitung zum Kriegsspiel [ Instructions for Wargaming ]. Beitrag zum Kriegsspiel [ Contribution to Wargaming ]. Reiswitz's wargame was not intended as a commercial offering, like that of Hellwig or Venturini—it was a lavish, custom-built gift for a monarch, with an apparatus fit for a museum; cost-effective manufacturing of the Taktisches Kriegs-Spiel cabinet was simply out of the question.

The players transmit written orders, authored to their units in the persona of a commander, and for the most part the umpire enjoys significant leeway in deciding how these orders will be interpreted.

Certainly there was no lack of officers capable of this function, but there were few with sufficient courage to study and assimilate the complicated rules governing the game.

Verdy du Vernois therefore proposes the obvious: to simply remove those entirely from the game, and to allow the umpire's assessment of the tactical situation to determine the outcome of any encounter.

How else can Prussia's lopsided victories be explained? Competitive games are good for those who enjoy that atmosphere, but we aim to attract a wider group of players for some of whom a much more relaxed environment is important.

Kriegsspiel News Forum. Latest topics. Allerdings findest du auch einige Kriegsspiele, bei denen weder geballert noch kommandiert wird.

Stattdessen setzt du dich beispielsweise im historischen Setting mit Keule und Schwert zur Wehr und haust deinen Gegnern ordentlich auf die Pixelrübe.

Alternativ kannst du in Crush the Castle mittelalterliche Burgen mit einem Katapult auseinandernehmen oder dir bei Super-Mechroboter einen eigenen futuristischen Kampfroboter zusammenbauen und andere Mechs zu Schrotthaufen verarbeiten.

Ganz egal, welches War Games-Genre dir am besten gefällt, ob du lieber auf realistischen beziehungsweise historischen Schlachtfelder aufräumst, Fantasy-Welten mit Fabelwesen, Magie und Schwertern oder Science-Fiction-Settings bevorzugst: Bei uns findest du sicher das richtige Kriegsspiel, mit dem du dir am Computer actionreich die Zeit mit Spielen vertreiben kannst.

Worauf wartest du also noch? Beweise dir und der ganzen Welt, dass in dir ein cleverer Stratege, Actionheld und virtueller Kriegsveteran steckt.

The setting allows for the depiction of different levels of command: each team is split into one army corps HQ and three to five division level commands, each with a separate map and set of tokens.

Army corps commanders have to assess the situation, decide, and formulate orders according to the written messages they receive from division level commanders; this allows the depiction of several aspects of staff work in army corps level operations.

The map used for the Königgrätz games is a contemporary topographic map of the battle field specifically made to recreate the events in the Kriegsspiel.

The original version that has been preserved by the British Library possibly is the only map of its kind that survived to our day. A short presentation introducing the contemporary map and how it depicts topographic features can be seen here.

Furthermore the rules take great care to distinguish and depict different tactical formations, often by representing single tactical units by multiple tokens and defining how these have to be arranged to indicate a specific formation.

Confusingly, a single tactical unit, like an infantry battalion or a gun battery are therefore represented by more than one token, even though they can not be split into independent sub units.

Moving companies of infantry independently was in fact already an experimental feature of infantry tactics by , but battalion lines were still standard practice.