The first of the military games is thought to have been Wei-Hai ("encirclement"), a Chinese game which is usually now called Go. A later, similar game was the Indian Chaturanga, the system from which chess in its various forms came about. Chess itself gave birth to at least one game which more formally depicted armed combat. This was the 1644 design known as The King's Game from one Christopher Weikmann. It included 30 pieces per side of 14 military types, each with a different fixed rate of movement. Like its predecessors, it was played principally for pleasure but differed by its emphasis on the strategic level of war.
The first game to break away from chess, however, was invented by Helwig, Master of Pages to the Duke of Brunswick in 1780. This game included 1666 squares, each coded for a different rate of movement depending on the terrain the square represented. Playing pieces now represented groups of men instead of a single soldier, and each unit was rated for different movement (infantry moved 8 spaces, heavy cavalry 12, for example). There were also special rules for such things as pontooneers and the like. In 1795, Georg Vinturinus, a military writer from Schleswig, produced a more complex version of Helwig's game. He modified it in 1798 by using a mapboard that depicted actual terrain on the border between France and Belgium.
Nevertheless, such innovations did not move wargames out of the entertainment world into that of the military until 1811 when a Prussian father-son team began to make their studies known. The father, Baron von Reisswitz, was a civilian war counselor to the Prussian court at Breslau. During the dark days of Prussian domination by the Napoleon, Reisswitz introduced a game that used a specific scale (1:2373) and a sand table instead of a map grid. In 1811 the game was observed by two Prussian princes who then showed it to the King. The game immediately became the rage at both the Prussian and Russian courts, but professional soldiers saw little use for it. All that change in 1824. In that year Reisswitz' son, Leutnant George Heinrich Rudolf Johann von Reisswitz of the Prussian Guard Artillery, introduced his own version of his father's game. The game was called Anleitung zur Darstelling militarische manuver mit dem apparat des Kriegsspiels (Instructions for the Representation of Tactical Maneuvers under the Guise of a Wargame) and included a number of new innovations, the most important of which were the use of actual topographical maps to portray the battlefield and rigid rules which specifically quantified the effects of combat.
The rules were published under the patronage of Prussian Prince Wilhem who became impressed with them after an evening's play. The Prince then recommended the rules to the Chief of the Prussian General Staff, General von Muffling, who finally granted von Reisswitz an audience. One of von Reisswitz' companions, a young officer named Dannhauer, described the meeting which many believe to be the birth of the military wargame:
On our arrival we found the General surrounded by the General Staff officers.
"Gentlemen," the General announced, "Herr von Reisswitz is going to show us something new."
Reisswitz was not abashed by the somewhat lukewarm introduction. He calmly set out his Kriegsspiel map.
With some surprise the General said, "You mean we are to play for an hour on a map! Very well. Show us a division with the troops.
"May I ask your excellency," replied Reisswitz, " to provide us with general and special ideas for manoeuver, and to choose two officers to be the commanders for both sides. Also it is important that we only give each commander in the special idea the information he would have in reality."
The General seemed rather astonished at the whole thing, but began to write out the necessary idea.
We were allocated as troop leaders to both sides, and the game began. One can honestly say that the old gentleman, so cool towards the idea at the beginning, became more and more interested as the game went on, until he exclaimed, "This is not a game! This is training for war! I must recommend it to the whole army."
Von Muffling made good on his promise and shortly thereafter every regiment had their own set, all of the components of which neatly fit into a wooden box 10 inches long and 6 inches wide. Nevertheless, many Prussian officers became jealous of Reisswitz' new fame while many others disputed the accuracy of his system. It is sad to note that because of this the young lieutenant killed himself in 1827.
However, the impact of this first military wargame had been significant. Reisswitz' work particularly impressed one Leutnant Helmuth von Moltke who, in 1828, founded a wargame club called the Kriegspieler Verein which soon began to publish its own periodical. This kept interest in wargames alive and when von Moltke became Chief of Staff in 1837, he officially pushed wargaming from the top. His influence had the desired effect and by 1876 another set of German wargame rules was published, this time by Colonel Julius Adrian Friedrich Wilhelm von Verdy du Vernois. Vernois' system was a "free" Kriegsspiel as opposed to Reisswitz rigid variety. This meant that most calculations and die rolling was eliminated in favor of an umpire who would determine results based on the situation and his own combat experience. Whether "free" or "rigid," however, wargames had become a mainstay of German military training.
Other countries around the world became interested in German wargaming as a result of the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War. In this conflict, the militia and reserve based armies of Prussia decisively defeated the totally professional army of France, then thought to have had the finest soldiers in the world. Many believed that wargames in part were used to successfully compensate for Prussia's reliance on an army of Reserven und Landwehren.
From that point on all countries began to build imitations of German systems as well as developing their
own. In the United States, Army Major William R. Livermore introduced his The American Kriegsspiel, A Game for Practicing the Art of War on a Topographical Map in 1882. The game was complex and similar to Reisswitz' system, but did attempt to cut down on the paperwork involved by the introduction of several training aid type devices. At the same time Lieutenant Charles A. L. Totten introduced a game entitled Strategos: A Series of American Games of War. Totten's game was as complex as Livermore's, but he appealed to the amateur through the inclusion of a simplified, basic set of rules.
Neither was wargaming neglected by the US Navy, thanks to the efforts of William McCarty Little. In 1876, after an accident had forced his retirement from the Navy, Little made his home in Newport, Rhode Island and assisted in the establishment of the Naval War College. At the same time he made the acquaintance of Major Livermore who at that time was stationed across the bay at Fort Adams. Under Livermore's influence, and with the help of some very open minded supervisors like President Captain Henry Taylor, Little was able to make wargaming an integral part of the College's curriculum. His efforts practically made the Naval War College into America's unofficial wargaming center. Little produced a ship-on-ship game, a tactical game and a strategic game, all very accurate (they were able to predict that smaller numbers of big guns on battleships were more effective than large numbers of mixed caliber weapons) but also very complex. It was, in fact, complexity that encouraged resistance to wargaming within the American army and elsewhere. Games like Vernois' were introduced to simplify things, but many argued that such umpire driven systems only replaced arbitrary written rules with arbitrary unwritten rules. Thus by the turn of the century there was an increased tendency all over the world to merge the free Kriegsspiel with the rigid to produce a semi-rigid system. Even Livermore accepted this as the best solution and often ignored his own tables as much as he consulted them.
The semi-rigid wargame thus became the standard for most military conflict simulations around the world through the First World War. The games proved quite successful and history abounds with examples of how commanders were defeated as a result of ignoring the result of a wargame. As an example, a Russian wargame in 1914 predicted defeat if General Samsomov's 2d Army did not begin its advance three days ahead of General Rennenkampf's 1st Army, "an action not contained in the plans. This change, so clearly indicated in the war games, was never made in the plans or their execution." The result was the Russian debacle of Tannenburg the same year.
The years between the world wars was notable for the lack of military wargaming activity, particularly in Britain and the US. In general, most wanted to forget the carnage of the Great War while not a few noted that the failure of Germany's vaunted Schlieffen Plan in 1914 showed that the wargame was far from perfect. There were exceptions to this general rule of inactivity, of course. Germany still relied on the wargame as a principal training tool, especially since the Treaty of Versailles denied that country the right to field the necessary army appropriate for large scale training exercises. One must also look to the contribution of F.W. Lanchester who introduced mathematical formula that predicted attrition rates between two equivalent armies in combat.
In modified form, his two equations are still the basis of many wargames today. Finally, one must note that the US, the Naval War College, in seeming defiance of the other branches of service, continued and expanded its wargaming efforts. The College's labors were to bear great fruits during the upcoming war against the Axis Powers.
Indeed history records many wargame successes during World War II, but perhaps none was more impressive than America's naval victory over Japan . Our wartime Pacific commander, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz explained to a Naval War College class in 1960 that, "the war with Japan had been reenacted in the game rooms here by so many people and in so many different ways that nothing happened during the war that was a surprise - absolutely nothing except the kamikazis towards the end of the war."
From that point on military wargames followed advances in technology, resulting in the complex pilot simulators or computerized strategic systems used around the world today wit most advanced countries' armed forces. Indeed, with the introduction of the US Army's Combat Training Centers, such as Ft Polk, LA or the National Training Center at Ft Irwin, CA, the individual soldier has now become a playing piece. Admittedly,events such as the Vietnam War have shown that wargames are not perfect, for they are only as good as the data humans place into them. Nevertheless, the history of military wargames is such that most failures seem to occur when the results of a wargame are ignored, not when they are taken seriously. This is a solid record by any measure.
And with that being said, it now time to look at another type of wargaming, one whose original concept was not to train for successful conflict, but to prevent such bloodshed from ever happing at all.
There were also several German miniature games of note. One of the most famous was Schlactenspiel, a 1920's design played in a manner similar to Chinese checkers but using terrain boards and model buildings to hinder the movement of the toy soldiers. The game specifically reproduced battles from the 1813 and 1814 campaigns against Napoleon, though later editions added engagements from the "hyphenated wars" (Franco-Prussian War, etc) and World War I.
In 1953, however, a revolution of sorts occurred in the commercial wargaming field. It was in that year that a young man from Baltimore published the first cardboard and paper wargame. Charles Roberts developed a game called Tactics. The game used a paper board with small cardboard pieces called "counters." The counters were printed with military symbols indicating the type unit represented as well as with numbers quantifying such things as movement and combat strength. The game depicted two mythical post World War II powers and became immensely popular after its release by Stackpole Books Roberts' creation boasted a number of advantages over the miniatures community. His board game was cheaper than an equivalent number of miniatures, and needed less time for setup as well as less room to play. Cardboard wargames could also be played solo and could easily simulate echelons of war (operational or strategic) above the tactical battlefield realm of the lead miniature. In fact, Roberts was so encouraged by the game's success that he started his own company dedicated to publishing historical board wargames. From that point on his Avalon Hill Company became the preeminent leader in such games, publishing over 200,000 units in 1962 alone. The company was also innovative and can be credited with establishing the hexagon (admittedly borrowed from Rand Corporation) as the standard mapboard device for regulating movement. Titles included such items as Gettysburg, D-Day and Stalingrad. The company went bust in 1964 for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was a growing mistrust of anything military due to the problems in Vietnam. Monarch Printing absorbed Avalon Hill, however, and the firm continued to publish wargames until very recently.
It is the year 1936, and amity and cooperation form the backbone of China following the admittedly tumultuous Shanghai Conference of 1928, heralded by the resumption of conflict between the Zhili and Fengtian Cliques, however, German money and intelligence proved enough to stall Zhang Zuolin's ambitions, and peace would be restored, leaving two rival governments staring at one another across the Great Wall, one holding the unfortunate burden of restoring the Qing, while the other standing as a fanatical republic calling for vengeance against the old order in honour of the Xinhai revolution.
With foreign companies dotting the coast and spreading their wealth through large-scale infrastructure plans, along with the growing unrest as the KMT does not seem entirely extinguished, China seems to be on the precipice of another disaster as the memories of the Weltkrieg fade, and drums of war beat across the modern world, already exhausted by recession and the sheer loss of life felt throughout the conflict. With a weak Russia in the north, a growing Japanese power in the east, and a fractured and rapidly bleeding India in the south, China has become something of a beacon of stability, though that has come to cost it dearly as tens of thousands of foreigners flood the international legations and the German AOG reaps the profits of their monopoly over the League of Eight Provinces. Generals once contempt to lord over single provinces now hold government positions faced with innumerable challenges as the Qing Empire seems to be on the verge of disintegration every passing day.
Beneath the surface, distrust only continues to grow between Germany and Japan. A fierce war of ideology and espionage is waged beneath Shanghai’s neon signs and in the winding alleyways of ancient cities. Some call for unity, others for Asian brotherhood, and others still for revolution. Across China years of rivalry are only suppressed, not extinguished, and these deep divisions mar an already fragmented sense of unity. The stakes have never been higher, and when the next war comes – which it inevitably will – the fate of China may be decided once and for all.
OOC info
Set in the Kaiserreich universe, this game is most definitely going to only really appeal to a small group, hence why I am not doing anything particularly intensive in terms of mechanics and development. To join, all you have to do is post your top 3 claims (with 1 being most preferred, 3 being least).
Orders aren't split up or anything, with 1 general order covering your actions for a turn (which will encompass roughly 3 months) with a soft cap of 250 words. To send your orders (which are generally written OOC in order to avoid any misunderstandings), simply PM me with KRC - [Faction Name]
Do note, despite the relatively sparse list of playables, this also means players will be able to switch organisations and factions within their playables as the game progresses, and no one is limited to their starting pick.
Playables Great Qing (Northern Zhili Clique) League of Eight Provinces (Southern Zhili Clique) Republic of China - Fengtian Clique Yunnan Clique Sichuan Clique Shandong Clique Shanxi Clique Kuomintang - Wang Jingwei's faction Zhi Gong Party - Chen Jiongming's faction Mongolia - Ungern-Sternberg's Clique
Stats are broadly very basic and will be provided in this thread when the game launches.
Stats Template Country name Country leader - Ideology, @Player name Popular support % / Legitimacy % Army: Size / Equipment / Quality Economy: Size / Outlook
Key Ideologies: National Populism, Paternal Autocracy, Authoritarian Democracy, Social Conservatism, Market Liberalism, Social Liberalism, Social Democracy, Radical Socialism, Totalism Popular support is represented as a percentage, but for internal reference we should assume that any domestically stable regime should have over 20% popular support or it falls apart. Legitimacy more applies to NPC diplomacy and how easily one can opt a more diplomatic route than simply military conquest; for example, the WRRF would have high legitimacy. Army size*: Tiny / Small / Medium / Large / Huge Army equipment*: Obsolete / Dated / Modern / Cutting-edge Army quality*: Awful / Poor / Average / Good / Exemplar Economy size*: Tiny / Small / Medium / Large / Huge Economy outlook*: Depression / Recession / Stagnation / Slow growth / Strong growth / Booming
German Reichstag dissolved - Ludendorff seizes direct rule. With the failure of negotiations between Germany and Japan, along with the chaotic state of Hungary, France and Russia, it was decided that the cabinet lumped together between German social democrats, conservatives and a small faction of liberals was dissolved in June in favour of direct rule from the office of the Chancellor, Erich Ludendorf. It seems unlikely a new cabinet will be convened before the end of the year.
Wilson's administration discredited, America calls for isolation! President Wilson, having reached the twilight years of his administration attempted to pass two hotly contested acts; the Bail Act and Prohibition Act. While Prohibition has gone into full effect and is adopted by 45 states, the Bail Act was cut down by Congress with only 44% support. Republican nominee Leonard Wood speeds ahead in the polls as his popularity on the platform of 'America, First and Only' skyrockets, his intent to cut down on Wall Street and the demands of bankrupt industrialists.
German-Japan-French talks cease; the war continues. Governor-General Sarraut of Indochina was evacuated by Australian troops along with his cabinet to neutral Dutch ports following a nationalist uprising in Saigon, as increasing demands from Siam and nationalist Indochinese elements for the Japanese army to leave saw lynchings of fleeing French and German settlers, and fights between various authorities.
British Liberal government vastly out of favour; Irish MPs walk. Asquith was met with stiff resistence in parliament as Sinn Fein and the Unionist Party were unable to come to a conclusion, and Bonar Law of the Conservatives, resulting in parliament being adjourned as the Irish parties both walked, and Conservatives secure a powerful bloc over the Old Liberal party, while Lloyd George is hastily gathering support for the elections of 1922. Asquith's stance on appeasing Germany and refusing to get involved as placed his party in a negative light as pro-War British politicians continue to push for sanctions and efforts made against Germany.
Red Army victorious in the Caucasus and Ukraine. In the battle of Tsaritsyn, the White Don Army was smashed, and in Kharkiv, Denikin is in full retreat. The Bolshevik government rapidly gathers support from foreign aid including the Ukranian Free Territory. The Russian Civil War is heavily in favour of the Reds in the West, while Kolchak continues his march in the - though the new civillian government established in Vladivostok to act as a caretaker in the absence of the Admiral-President's stance is dubious.
Japan invades Indochina. Following failed negotiations in order to secure peace between the rising Japanese Empire and Germany, elements of the Japanese navy were spotted off the coast of Indochina, which was soon followed by a fully fledged naval invasion of Indochina by the Imperial Japanese Army. Much to the surprise of German officials stationed in Saigon, the former French governorate opened the gates to the Japanese, surrendering the strategic cities of Ha Noi and Saigon to the Japanese...
The Russian Civil War intensifies. The still young state of Ukraine has been set upon, as White Guard under the leadership of General Anton Denikin have seized the strategic island of Crimea, however Red sailors in Sevastopol have yet to surrender. The besieged sailors have set to scuttling the Russian Black Sea Fleet, denying an invaluable asset to ‘White Russia’. Along with this, a declaration of an anarchist free territory under the leadership of Nestor Makhno has further split the Ukrainian people. It appears that Ukraine is to be the site of some of the bloodiest fighting of the Russian Civil War.
The United States and Britain leading up to legislative elections. Despite holding dominance in parliament for nearly six years, H.H Asquith, PM, has confirmed that he will not be attempting to seek re-election in next year’s ballot. Popular reformer Lloyd George argued that ‘the old dog gave Europe to Germany’, and it seems a majority of parliament stands behind him, as there was a legitimate threat of walkout should no action be made to mediate the ‘Faroe Incident’ of 1915 between the Danish and German governments. The Republican caucus opened this week to great anticipation from the once-beleaguered party; with a wide range of candidates including former Chief of Staff Gen. Leonard Wood vying for the party’s nomination, many are not failing to discount outsiders such as Sen. Warren Harding of Ohio should the convention become gridlocked. With President Wilson’s cabinet increasingly frustrated by his inaccessibility and their own party’s waning popularity, the Democratic Caucus promises to be a test of WIlson’s ability to keep the party in check, with many delegates expected to choose between Wilson’s preferred candidate of his son-in-law Secretary of the Treasury William McAdoo and Ohio Governor James Cox.
Paris crippled by strikes. Workers from the National Arsenal that were dismissed last year have convened and called a strike in the Quartier de Javel munitions factory, which had been hastily converted into a warehouse following the end of the war with the support of Bourse du Travail. This has spiraled out of control as sympathy strikes have broken out across the city. Prime Minister Clemenceau is under pressure to address the strikers, who are demanding an easing of austerity measures and reduction in the ration programme. It’s said that SFIO leader Ludovic-Oscar Frossard will address the strikers and meet with Clemenceau in the coming months.
@durasteel derek Both territories are heavy 'bush', in the context of map markers and 1919 they won't majorly affect conflicts in Africa -- naturally this will change as the RP goes along.
The first of the military games is thought to have been Wei-Hai ("encirclement"), a Chinese game which is usually now called Go. A later, similar game was the Indian Chaturanga, the system from which chess in its various forms came about. Chess itself gave birth to at least one game which more formally depicted armed combat. This was the 1644 design known as The King's Game from one Christopher Weikmann. It included 30 pieces per side of 14 military types, each with a different fixed rate of movement. Like its predecessors, it was played principally for pleasure but differed by its emphasis on the strategic level of war.
The first game to break away from chess, however, was invented by Helwig, Master of Pages to the Duke of Brunswick in 1780. This game included 1666 squares, each coded for a different rate of movement depending on the terrain the square represented. Playing pieces now represented groups of men instead of a single soldier, and each unit was rated for different movement (infantry moved 8 spaces, heavy cavalry 12, for example). There were also special rules for such things as pontooneers and the like. In 1795, Georg Vinturinus, a military writer from Schleswig, produced a more complex version of Helwig's game. He modified it in 1798 by using a mapboard that depicted actual terrain on the border between France and Belgium.
Nevertheless, such innovations did not move wargames out of the entertainment world into that of the military until 1811 when a Prussian father-son team began to make their studies known. The father, Baron von Reisswitz, was a civilian war counselor to the Prussian court at Breslau. During the dark days of Prussian domination by the Napoleon, Reisswitz introduced a game that used a specific scale (1:2373) and a sand table instead of a map grid. In 1811 the game was observed by two Prussian princes who then showed it to the King. The game immediately became the rage at both the Prussian and Russian courts, but professional soldiers saw little use for it. All that change in 1824. In that year Reisswitz' son, Leutnant George Heinrich Rudolf Johann von Reisswitz of the Prussian Guard Artillery, introduced his own version of his father's game. The game was called Anleitung zur Darstelling militarische manuver mit dem apparat des Kriegsspiels (Instructions for the Representation of Tactical Maneuvers under the Guise of a Wargame) and included a number of new innovations, the most important of which were the use of actual topographical maps to portray the battlefield and rigid rules which specifically quantified the effects of combat.
The rules were published under the patronage of Prussian Prince Wilhem who became impressed with them after an evening's play. The Prince then recommended the rules to the Chief of the Prussian General Staff, General von Muffling, who finally granted von Reisswitz an audience. One of von Reisswitz' companions, a young officer named Dannhauer, described the meeting which many believe to be the birth of the military wargame:
On our arrival we found the General surrounded by the General Staff officers.
"Gentlemen," the General announced, "Herr von Reisswitz is going to show us something new."
Reisswitz was not abashed by the somewhat lukewarm introduction. He calmly set out his Kriegsspiel map.
With some surprise the General said, "You mean we are to play for an hour on a map! Very well. Show us a division with the troops.
"May I ask your excellency," replied Reisswitz, " to provide us with general and special ideas for manoeuver, and to choose two officers to be the commanders for both sides. Also it is important that we only give each commander in the special idea the information he would have in reality."
The General seemed rather astonished at the whole thing, but began to write out the necessary idea.
We were allocated as troop leaders to both sides, and the game began. One can honestly say that the old gentleman, so cool towards the idea at the beginning, became more and more interested as the game went on, until he exclaimed, "This is not a game! This is training for war! I must recommend it to the whole army."
Von Muffling made good on his promise and shortly thereafter every regiment had their own set, all of the components of which neatly fit into a wooden box 10 inches long and 6 inches wide. Nevertheless, many Prussian officers became jealous of Reisswitz' new fame while many others disputed the accuracy of his system. It is sad to note that because of this the young lieutenant killed himself in 1827.
However, the impact of this first military wargame had been significant. Reisswitz' work particularly impressed one Leutnant Helmuth von Moltke who, in 1828, founded a wargame club called the Kriegspieler Verein which soon began to publish its own periodical. This kept interest in wargames alive and when von Moltke became Chief of Staff in 1837, he officially pushed wargaming from the top. His influence had the desired effect and by 1876 another set of German wargame rules was published, this time by Colonel Julius Adrian Friedrich Wilhelm von Verdy du Vernois. Vernois' system was a "free" Kriegsspiel as opposed to Reisswitz rigid variety. This meant that most calculations and die rolling was eliminated in favor of an umpire who would determine results based on the situation and his own combat experience. Whether "free" or "rigid," however, wargames had become a mainstay of German military training.
Other countries around the world became interested in German wargaming as a result of the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War. In this conflict, the militia and reserve based armies of Prussia decisively defeated the totally professional army of France, then thought to have had the finest soldiers in the world. Many believed that wargames in part were used to successfully compensate for Prussia's reliance on an army of Reserven und Landwehren.
From that point on all countries began to build imitations of German systems as well as developing their
own. In the United States, Army Major William R. Livermore introduced his The American Kriegsspiel, A Game for Practicing the Art of War on a Topographical Map in 1882. The game was complex and similar to Reisswitz' system, but did attempt to cut down on the paperwork involved by the introduction of several training aid type devices. At the same time Lieutenant Charles A. L. Totten introduced a game entitled Strategos: A Series of American Games of War. Totten's game was as complex as Livermore's, but he appealed to the amateur through the inclusion of a simplified, basic set of rules.
Neither was wargaming neglected by the US Navy, thanks to the efforts of William McCarty Little. In 1876, after an accident had forced his retirement from the Navy, Little made his home in Newport, Rhode Island and assisted in the establishment of the Naval War College. At the same time he made the acquaintance of Major Livermore who at that time was stationed across the bay at Fort Adams. Under Livermore's influence, and with the help of some very open minded supervisors like President Captain Henry Taylor, Little was able to make wargaming an integral part of the College's curriculum. His efforts practically made the Naval War College into America's unofficial wargaming center. Little produced a ship-on-ship game, a tactical game and a strategic game, all very accurate (they were able to predict that smaller numbers of big guns on battleships were more effective than large numbers of mixed caliber weapons) but also very complex. It was, in fact, complexity that encouraged resistance to wargaming within the American army and elsewhere. Games like Vernois' were introduced to simplify things, but many argued that such umpire driven systems only replaced arbitrary written rules with arbitrary unwritten rules. Thus by the turn of the century there was an increased tendency all over the world to merge the free Kriegsspiel with the rigid to produce a semi-rigid system. Even Livermore accepted this as the best solution and often ignored his own tables as much as he consulted them.
The semi-rigid wargame thus became the standard for most military conflict simulations around the world through the First World War. The games proved quite successful and history abounds with examples of how commanders were defeated as a result of ignoring the result of a wargame. As an example, a Russian wargame in 1914 predicted defeat if General Samsomov's 2d Army did not begin its advance three days ahead of General Rennenkampf's 1st Army, "an action not contained in the plans. This change, so clearly indicated in the war games, was never made in the plans or their execution." The result was the Russian debacle of Tannenburg the same year.
The years between the world wars was notable for the lack of military wargaming activity, particularly in Britain and the US. In general, most wanted to forget the carnage of the Great War while not a few noted that the failure of Germany's vaunted Schlieffen Plan in 1914 showed that the wargame was far from perfect. There were exceptions to this general rule of inactivity, of course. Germany still relied on the wargame as a principal training tool, especially since the Treaty of Versailles denied that country the right to field the necessary army appropriate for large scale training exercises. One must also look to the contribution of F.W. Lanchester who introduced mathematical formula that predicted attrition rates between two equivalent armies in combat.
In modified form, his two equations are still the basis of many wargames today. Finally, one must note that the US, the Naval War College, in seeming defiance of the other branches of service, continued and expanded its wargaming efforts. The College's labors were to bear great fruits during the upcoming war against the Axis Powers.
Indeed history records many wargame successes during World War II, but perhaps none was more impressive than America's naval victory over Japan . Our wartime Pacific commander, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz explained to a Naval War College class in 1960 that, "the war with Japan had been reenacted in the game rooms here by so many people and in so many different ways that nothing happened during the war that was a surprise - absolutely nothing except the kamikazis towards the end of the war."
From that point on military wargames followed advances in technology, resulting in the complex pilot simulators or computerized strategic systems used around the world today wit most advanced countries' armed forces. Indeed, with the introduction of the US Army's Combat Training Centers, such as Ft Polk, LA or the National Training Center at Ft Irwin, CA, the individual soldier has now become a playing piece. Admittedly,events such as the Vietnam War have shown that wargames are not perfect, for they are only as good as the data humans place into them. Nevertheless, the history of military wargames is such that most failures seem to occur when the results of a wargame are ignored, not when they are taken seriously. This is a solid record by any measure.
And with that being said, it now time to look at another type of wargaming, one whose original concept was not to train for successful conflict, but to prevent such bloodshed from ever happing at all.
There were also several German miniature games of note. One of the most famous was Schlactenspiel, a 1920's design played in a manner similar to Chinese checkers but using terrain boards and model buildings to hinder the movement of the toy soldiers. The game specifically reproduced battles from the 1813 and 1814 campaigns against Napoleon, though later editions added engagements from the "hyphenated wars" (Franco-Prussian War, etc) and World War I.
In 1953, however, a revolution of sorts occurred in the commercial wargaming field. It was in that year that a young man from Baltimore published the first cardboard and paper wargame. Charles Roberts developed a game called Tactics. The game used a paper board with small cardboard pieces called "counters." The counters were printed with military symbols indicating the type unit represented as well as with numbers quantifying such things as movement and combat strength. The game depicted two mythical post World War II powers and became immensely popular after its release by Stackpole Books Roberts' creation boasted a number of advantages over the miniatures community. His board game was cheaper than an equivalent number of miniatures, and needed less time for setup as well as less room to play. Cardboard wargames could also be played solo and could easily simulate echelons of war (operational or strategic) above the tactical battlefield realm of the lead miniature. In fact, Roberts was so encouraged by the game's success that he started his own company dedicated to publishing historical board wargames. From that point on his Avalon Hill Company became the preeminent leader in such games, publishing over 200,000 units in 1962 alone. The company was also innovative and can be credited with establishing the hexagon (admittedly borrowed from Rand Corporation) as the standard mapboard device for regulating movement. Titles included such items as Gettysburg, D-Day and Stalingrad. The company went bust in 1964 for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was a growing mistrust of anything military due to the problems in Vietnam. Monarch Printing absorbed Avalon Hill, however, and the firm continued to publish wargames until very recently.
<div style="white-space:pre-wrap;">The first of the military games is thought to have been Wei-Hai ("encirclement"), a Chinese game which is usually now called Go. A later, similar game was the Indian Chaturanga, the system from which chess in its various forms came about. Chess itself gave birth to at least one game which more formally depicted armed combat. This was the 1644 design known as The King's Game from one Christopher Weikmann. It included 30 pieces per side of 14 military types, each with a different fixed rate of movement. Like its predecessors, it was played principally for pleasure but differed by its emphasis on the strategic level of war.<br><br>The first game to break away from chess, however, was invented by Helwig, Master of Pages to the Duke of Brunswick in 1780. This game included 1666 squares, each coded for a different rate of movement depending on the terrain the square represented. Playing pieces now represented groups of men instead of a single soldier, and each unit was rated for different movement (infantry moved 8 spaces, heavy cavalry 12, for example). There were also special rules for such things as pontooneers and the like. In 1795, Georg Vinturinus, a military writer from Schleswig, produced a more complex version of Helwig's game. He modified it in 1798 by using a mapboard that depicted actual terrain on the border between France and Belgium.<br><br>Nevertheless, such innovations did not move wargames out of the entertainment world into that of the military until 1811 when a Prussian father-son team began to make their studies known. The father, Baron von Reisswitz, was a civilian war counselor to the Prussian court at Breslau. During the dark days of Prussian domination by the Napoleon, Reisswitz introduced a game that used a specific scale (1:2373) and a sand table instead of a map grid. In 1811 the game was observed by two Prussian princes who then showed it to the King. The game immediately became the rage at both the Prussian and Russian courts, but professional soldiers saw little use for it. All that change in 1824. In that year Reisswitz' son, Leutnant George Heinrich Rudolf Johann von Reisswitz of the Prussian Guard Artillery, introduced his own version of his father's game. The game was called Anleitung zur Darstelling militarische manuver mit dem apparat des Kriegsspiels (Instructions for the Representation of Tactical Maneuvers under the Guise of a Wargame) and included a number of new innovations, the most important of which were the use of actual topographical maps to portray the battlefield and rigid rules which specifically quantified the effects of combat.<br><br>The rules were published under the patronage of Prussian Prince Wilhem who became impressed with them after an evening's play. The Prince then recommended the rules to the Chief of the Prussian General Staff, General von Muffling, who finally granted von Reisswitz an audience. One of von Reisswitz' companions, a young officer named Dannhauer, described the meeting which many believe to be the birth of the military wargame:<br><br>On our arrival we found the General surrounded by the General Staff officers.<br><br>"Gentlemen," the General announced, "Herr von Reisswitz is going to show us something new."<br><br>Reisswitz was not abashed by the somewhat lukewarm introduction. He calmly set out his Kriegsspiel map.<br><br>With some surprise the General said, "You mean we are to play for an hour on a map! Very well. Show us a division with the troops.<br><br>"May I ask your excellency," replied Reisswitz, " to provide us with general and special ideas for manoeuver, and to choose two officers to be the commanders for both sides. Also it is important that we only give each commander in the special idea the information he would have in reality."<br><br>The General seemed rather astonished at the whole thing, but began to write out the necessary idea.<br><br>We were allocated as troop leaders to both sides, and the game began. One can honestly say that the old gentleman, so cool towards the idea at the beginning, became more and more interested as the game went on, until he exclaimed, "This is not a game! This is training for war! I must recommend it to the whole army."<br><br>Von Muffling made good on his promise and shortly thereafter every regiment had their own set, all of the components of which neatly fit into a wooden box 10 inches long and 6 inches wide. Nevertheless, many Prussian officers became jealous of Reisswitz' new fame while many others disputed the accuracy of his system. It is sad to note that because of this the young lieutenant killed himself in 1827.<br><br>However, the impact of this first military wargame had been significant. Reisswitz' work particularly impressed one Leutnant Helmuth von Moltke who, in 1828, founded a wargame club called the Kriegspieler Verein which soon began to publish its own periodical. This kept interest in wargames alive and when von Moltke became Chief of Staff in 1837, he officially pushed wargaming from the top. His influence had the desired effect and by 1876 another set of German wargame rules was published, this time by Colonel Julius Adrian Friedrich Wilhelm von Verdy du Vernois. Vernois' system was a "free" Kriegsspiel as opposed to Reisswitz rigid variety. This meant that most calculations and die rolling was eliminated in favor of an umpire who would determine results based on the situation and his own combat experience. Whether "free" or "rigid," however, wargames had become a mainstay of German military training.<br><br>Other countries around the world became interested in German wargaming as a result of the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War. In this conflict, the militia and reserve based armies of Prussia decisively defeated the totally professional army of France, then thought to have had the finest soldiers in the world. Many believed that wargames in part were used to successfully compensate for Prussia's reliance on an army of Reserven und Landwehren.<br><br>From that point on all countries began to build imitations of German systems as well as developing their <br><br>own. In the United States, Army Major William R. Livermore introduced his The American Kriegsspiel, A Game for Practicing the Art of War on a Topographical Map in 1882. The game was complex and similar to Reisswitz' system, but did attempt to cut down on the paperwork involved by the introduction of several training aid type devices. At the same time Lieutenant Charles A. L. Totten introduced a game entitled Strategos: A Series of American Games of War. Totten's game was as complex as Livermore's, but he appealed to the amateur through the inclusion of a simplified, basic set of rules.<br><br>Neither was wargaming neglected by the US Navy, thanks to the efforts of William McCarty Little. In 1876, after an accident had forced his retirement from the Navy, Little made his home in Newport, Rhode Island and assisted in the establishment of the Naval War College. At the same time he made the acquaintance of Major Livermore who at that time was stationed across the bay at Fort Adams. Under Livermore's influence, and with the help of some very open minded supervisors like President Captain Henry Taylor, Little was able to make wargaming an integral part of the College's curriculum. His efforts practically made the Naval War College into America's unofficial wargaming center. Little produced a ship-on-ship game, a tactical game and a strategic game, all very accurate (they were able to predict that smaller numbers of big guns on battleships were more effective than large numbers of mixed caliber weapons) but also very complex. It was, in fact, complexity that encouraged resistance to wargaming within the American army and elsewhere. Games like Vernois' were introduced to simplify things, but many argued that such umpire driven systems only replaced arbitrary written rules with arbitrary unwritten rules. Thus by the turn of the century there was an increased tendency all over the world to merge the free Kriegsspiel with the rigid to produce a semi-rigid system. Even Livermore accepted this as the best solution and often ignored his own tables as much as he consulted them.<br><br>The semi-rigid wargame thus became the standard for most military conflict simulations around the world through the First World War. The games proved quite successful and history abounds with examples of how commanders were defeated as a result of ignoring the result of a wargame. As an example, a Russian wargame in 1914 predicted defeat if General Samsomov's 2d Army did not begin its advance three days ahead of General Rennenkampf's 1st Army, "an action not contained in the plans. This change, so clearly indicated in the war games, was never made in the plans or their execution." The result was the Russian debacle of Tannenburg the same year.<br><br>The years between the world wars was notable for the lack of military wargaming activity, particularly in Britain and the US. In general, most wanted to forget the carnage of the Great War while not a few noted that the failure of Germany's vaunted Schlieffen Plan in 1914 showed that the wargame was far from perfect. There were exceptions to this general rule of inactivity, of course. Germany still relied on the wargame as a principal training tool, especially since the Treaty of Versailles denied that country the right to field the necessary army appropriate for large scale training exercises. One must also look to the contribution of F.W. Lanchester who introduced mathematical formula that predicted attrition rates between two equivalent armies in combat.<br><br>In modified form, his two equations are still the basis of many wargames today. Finally, one must note that the US, the Naval War College, in seeming defiance of the other branches of service, continued and expanded its wargaming efforts. The College's labors were to bear great fruits during the upcoming war against the Axis Powers.<br><br>Indeed history records many wargame successes during World War II, but perhaps none was more impressive than America's naval victory over Japan . Our wartime Pacific commander, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz explained to a Naval War College class in 1960 that, "the war with Japan had been reenacted in the game rooms here by so many people and in so many different ways that nothing happened during the war that was a surprise - absolutely nothing except the kamikazis towards the end of the war."<br><br>From that point on military wargames followed advances in technology, resulting in the complex pilot simulators or computerized strategic systems used around the world today wit most advanced countries' armed forces. Indeed, with the introduction of the US Army's Combat Training Centers, such as Ft Polk, LA or the National Training Center at Ft Irwin, CA, the individual soldier has now become a playing piece. Admittedly,events such as the Vietnam War have shown that wargames are not perfect, for they are only as good as the data humans place into them. Nevertheless, the history of military wargames is such that most failures seem to occur when the results of a wargame are ignored, not when they are taken seriously. This is a solid record by any measure.<br><br>And with that being said, it now time to look at another type of wargaming, one whose original concept was not to train for successful conflict, but to prevent such bloodshed from ever happing at all.<br><br>There were also several German miniature games of note. One of the most famous was Schlactenspiel, a 1920's design played in a manner similar to Chinese checkers but using terrain boards and model buildings to hinder the movement of the toy soldiers. The game specifically reproduced battles from the 1813 and 1814 campaigns against Napoleon, though later editions added engagements from the "hyphenated wars" (Franco-Prussian War, etc) and World War I.<br><br>In 1953, however, a revolution of sorts occurred in the commercial wargaming field. It was in that year that a young man from Baltimore published the first cardboard and paper wargame. Charles Roberts developed a game called Tactics. The game used a paper board with small cardboard pieces called "counters." The counters were printed with military symbols indicating the type unit represented as well as with numbers quantifying such things as movement and combat strength. The game depicted two mythical post World War II powers and became immensely popular after its release by Stackpole Books Roberts' creation boasted a number of advantages over the miniatures community. His board game was cheaper than an equivalent number of miniatures, and needed less time for setup as well as less room to play. Cardboard wargames could also be played solo and could easily simulate echelons of war (operational or strategic) above the tactical battlefield realm of the lead miniature. In fact, Roberts was so encouraged by the game's success that he started his own company dedicated to publishing historical board wargames. From that point on his Avalon Hill Company became the preeminent leader in such games, publishing over 200,000 units in 1962 alone. The company was also innovative and can be credited with establishing the hexagon (admittedly borrowed from Rand Corporation) as the standard mapboard device for regulating movement. Titles included such items as Gettysburg, D-Day and Stalingrad. The company went bust in 1964 for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was a growing mistrust of anything military due to the problems in Vietnam. Monarch Printing absorbed Avalon Hill, however, and the firm continued to publish wargames until very recently.</div>
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