Kriegsspiel
Sign in to saveright|thumb|300px|A Kriegsspiel session in progress. Kriegsspiel is a genre of wargaming developed by the Prussian Army in the 19th century to teach battlefield tactics to officers. The word Kriegsspiel literally means "wargame" in German, but in the context of the English language it refers specifically to the wargames developed by the Prussian army in the 19th century. Kriegsspiel was the first wargaming system to have been adopted by a military organization as a serious tool for training and research.
~28 min read
Encyclopedic overview
19 sectionsContents
- History
- Precursors
- Reisswitz Sr.'s prototype (1812)
- Reisswitz Jr. perfects ''Kriegsspiel'' (1824)
- ''Kriegsspiel'' after Reisswitz Jr.'s death
- The ''free Kriegsspiel'' movement
- Spread of wargaming beyond Germany
- ''Kriegsspiel'' in the present day
- Reisswitz rules (1824)
- Materials
- Order of play
- Combat
- Tschischwitz rules (1862)
- Verdy du Vernois' flexible approach (1876)
- See also
- Footnotes
- References
- Bibliography
- External links
right|thumb|300px|A Kriegsspiel session in progress. Kriegsspiel is a genre of wargaming developed by the Prussian Army in the 19th century to teach battlefield tactics to officers. The word Kriegsspiel literally means "wargame" in German, but in the context of the English language it refers specifically to the wargames developed by the Prussian army in the 19th century. Kriegsspiel was the first wargaming system to have been adopted by a military organization as a serious tool for training and research.
It is characterized by high realism, an emphasis on the experience of decision-making rather than on competition, and the use of an umpire to keep the rules flexible and manage hidden information. After Prussia's impressive victory over France in the Franco-Prussian War, other countries began designing similar wargames for their own armies.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Kriegsspiel” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.