Battles 12 essai

The Southern California Kriegsspiel Society Krieby Marshall Neal Old things become new again. That’s the Not only were the games an case with Kriegsspiel, the wargame elaborate form of torture for eager, developed by the Prussian Army in 1812 young cadets,they often took a long to train officers. The game has enjoyed time to play. Of course, that’s also a renaissance of sorts, thanks to the true for many monster wargames internet and social media. My goal in this today. article is to teach you a little bit about the game, my experience running games, So far it sounds like a wargame, and how you too can organize your own so why the negativity? The reason Kriegsspiel games. First,let’s get the awful truth out of the way.Kriegsspiel,which is is, Kriegsspiel wasn’t played as a wargame. It wasn’t intended to be German for“war game”is not a war game at all.It is not fun,and in its original any more fun than the drill infan- form,it is not worth playing.It was hated by the cadets who were forced to sit try soldiers were forced to perform for hours in hot or freezing classrooms waiting for their professors to deliver ad nauseam. It was a tool for teach- scathing critiques of how miserably they failed. ing and testing a cadet’s mastery of tactics and their character and suit- Kriegsspiel was developed by the Prussian Army with its first set of ability as officers. And in 1812, at rules codified and named, Instructions for the Representation of Tactical the height of the Napoleonic Wars, Maneuvers under the Guise of a Wargame. The game is the great grandfa- the lessons were serious, since the ther of all wargames played today. It was the first time scaled maps were fate of a nation depended on how used as a playing field. Maps were divided into grids, and standardized well these young cadets would per- pieces represented the precise size the formations were expected to oc- form in the field. Kriegsspiel be- cupy in the field. Combat results tables were researched and tabulated for came a valuable tool and it was even the various situations and types of arms and ordinance used at the time. played by experienced generals to Finally, dice provided a random element and were used to decide the out- wargame possible scenarios. come of each exchange of fire. The officers of the Prussian The game was played double blind, with two teams, red and blue, at two Army also recognized that the tables, usually in different rooms. An umpire maintained a third table in game could be improved. Over another room. The umpire’s map showed everything, a god’s view of the time, the game was standardized battle. Red and blue could only see those units visible to their sides. On with maps at 1:8000 scale, and some occasions, players were given a small copy of the map and isolated turns representing two minutes of from their team. game time. In 1876, General Julius von Verdy du Vernois developed Players were not allowed to speak to their teammates about their plans. “Free Kriegsspiel” a version that Instead, they were required to relay orders and information though an um- did away with a lot of the original’s pire. Umpires calculated the time it would take for couriers to deliver the time-consuming minutiae and messages, and only then could a cadet act on what information the message focused more on tactics. The gen- contained. eral even did away with dice, and relied on the umpire’s sole judge-006

iegsSment to determine the outcome of and have attempted to organize My interest in these games led me to the“Kriegsspiel News Forum”whichan engagement, which sped up the and play games across the years is an old-school bulletin board community for the Kriegsspiel players ofgame. with varied success. Most verteran Little Gaddesen,UK.Not only did these fine gentlemen play the digital games wargamers have heard something online, they also met regularly for face-to-face traditional Kriegsspiels. ItBEYOND THE of the game and have a keen interest was during my many virtual campaigns as the great Confederate “FatherCLASSROOM in it. It is attractive and compelling, General” that I was introduced to Kriegsspiel. Their website is still up and especially when set up on display. accepting new registrations and it contains a trove of useful information asIn the 20th century, Kriegsspiel well as a helpful,friendly community.I am still a member,although my visitsspread beyond the Prussian Army My story and the founding of have become infrequent.and various forms were adopted for the So Cal Society is related to myuse by military academies around wonderful experience with the By chance,I encountered a familiar friend on those forums,a person whothe world.As technology developed, wargamers from Little Gaddesen. lived just minutes away from me and was a fellow wargamer. His name isKriegsspiel moved beyond the class- Well over a decade ago, my interest Brett,and Brett had learned how to play Kriegsspiel in the UK.Now Brett androom and into the digital realm. in the American Civil War led me I realized we had a common passion and within weeks we were the proudToday most of the world’s modern to purchase the computer game, co-owners of a set of Kriegsspiel pieces and the well-liked“Metz Map”frommilitaries play highly sophisti- Take Command the spiritual succes- “Too Fat Lardies.”cated versions of the game, moving sor to Sid Meier’s Gettysburg! andstudents and officers from game Antietam. Take Command was laterboards, to, computers and finally to followed by the Scourge of War se-control rooms to practice their com- ries which perfected the games andmand and control skills. introduced real-time multiplayer. Kriegsspiel sets have become The games are digital Kriegs-heirloom items, and a few old sets spiels. Players can command at anyremain in circulation or on display. level from brigade to army with per-The original 1812 set presented to fect fog of war.Orders are relayed byking Fredrick William III is on dis- digital men on horses and take timeplay at a military museum in Berlin, to arrive.If the digital couriers strayGermany. Reproductions have been too close to the enemy, they mightmade throughout the years by hob- never arrive. The Scourge of Warbyists. games are still available online and more recently a Napoleonic series The game remains in play, al- has been published by Matrixthough there are only two active Games.communities that I am aware of,one in Little Gaddesen,England andmy own community, the SouthernCalifornia Kriegsspiel Society whichplays games in Los Angeles threetimes per year. I have heard fromvarious people who own small sets

KRIEGSSPIEL ▼ A Confederate corps encounters Union cavalry on a ridge outside Gettysburg, both sides have skirmishers deployed.spiel We organized our first game and was labor intensive,and he was alone I spent another year learning about Kriegsspiel, reading what I could find, Brett brushed up on the rules. Brett on the job. researching and planning to run a game of my own. agreed to umpire, allowing me to play along with a half dozen of his We planned a second game, For my first game, I decided I had to do away with the original rules and friends.We occupied two floors of a armed with the lessons of the first. play in General Julius Von Verdy du Vernois fashion.It was the rules that were downtown law office on a weekend We decided that a software program spoiling the games. I needed to streamline as much as possible.And since I and settled in to play.As predictable written to resolve Kriegsspiel battles would be umpiring alone,I wanted to limit the variables I had to contend with. as a marriage,that’s when my infatu- could be run on a laptop and would ation with Kriegsspiel turned into make Brett’s life easier. Once again, I chose a map from the Library of Congress of a random county inVirginia. misery. we played and while the computer My criteria for choosing a map was strict. First, it had to be a period authen- helped, we only fought half-a-battle tic map from the Civil War or a time shortly thereafter. It had to be relatively After about 8 hours of real time before it was time to pack up and go pristine, and free of markings. Maps that showed the deployment of armies confined to a room with a fellow home.It was obvious that Kriegsspiel were excluded. I wanted players to feel like they were fighting a battle for the wargamer whom I hardly knew, my wasn’t playable. first time,not rehashing history.I needed a large map,since I expected to have brave division of French infantry several people around it.Wargamers like big maps, so a big map would draw had marched about two miles on LEARNING attention to the game,which would be played at a regional convention.Finally, the map and just spotted the en- the map had to have an extensive road network,like a web,so I could confine emy when it was time to go home. It was after this depressing episode players to the network for simplicity’s sake, while also giving them a reason- Brett, clearly overworked and over- that I decided to do what all good able degree of flexibility. whelmed had managed to struggle wargamers eventually do –read his way though about two hours the directions. More precisely, I re- Playing on a county sized map meant that battalion vs. battalion, tradi- of battle, and the fighting had just searched just how my friends in tional Kriegsspiel was impossible.This too was a deliberate choice.Umpiring started. England managed theàir games. I alone,there would be no time to roll a handful of dice for every volley.Instead, asked them questions and read their I decided to create my own system of modifiers and to roll a single die for Brett and I immediately autopsied after-action reports. each side,and let the difference between them determine outcome.I made up the now-dead game.Why did every- my own list of modifiers. High ground was +1, support was +1, a significant thing move so slow? We quickly real- The group in Little Gaddesen did size advantage +1 and so on.These would be negated by opposing modifiers. ized that he had to spend a lot of time two things very differently. They Units would behave logically, even retreating against orders if they took too answering questions from his friends played at a higher scale with units many losses. I tracked the losses with pips on the dice counting as so many who knew little about Napoleonic sometimes representing divisions casualties and so on. tactics,and nothing about Kriegsspiel. rather than battalions. They called it In addition, he was rolling dice faith- “operational” scale and they gamed As for the pieces, I ordered a custom set from Photon Cutter Studios, fully,in strict accordance of the rules, entire campaigns, such as Jackson’s which specializes in making attractive and affordable Kriegsspiel pieces. I to resolve each round of combat. It Shenandoah Campaign over the customized the colors with blue and gray, and had trim applied, yellow for course of a day or a weekend. And cavalry,red for artillery,and blue for infantry.I also had the pieces numbered, they had a lot of umpires, some- which would allow me to keep everything organized between the spreadsheet times one umpire per player. These where I tracked results and the placement of pieces on each map. tweaks along with experienced play- ers made the game playable. Like I On game day, I gang pressed friends and friends of friends into playing imagine a good marriage counselor Kriegsspiel. I spent the previous two days hustling the game to anyone who would do,it changed my attitude and would listen, and managed to set everyone down at their tables. I issued pa- game me hope. per and pens and sternly instructed everyone that they must never touch the pieces.I then dived headfirst into one of the most grueling experiences of my gaming life.008



KRIEGSSPIEL ▼ ▼ ▼ Players commu- Union Cavalry nicate by written The Union is deploys behind notes, and can only positioned around a Confederate act on information Gettysburg in an at- Division, as it is after the report is tempt to defend the city. A third corps engaged with delivered. is marching to deny Union forces the Confederates the newly-built railroad crossing. Within an hour I realized that units. Many of the orders were did the same with artillery,each lost gun was another pip on the piece.Elbow I was not going to finish the game lengthy and the hastily scrawled grease cleaned the pieces afterwards. I refused to give detailed reports or at the rate I was moving. Luckily, notes were sometimes illegible. answer lengthy questions. I expected players to be ready and the few times I anticipated that too and built a Players had started talking and con- players were not ready, I did not accept their orders. Units that were out of face-saving factor into the briefing,I ferring with one another,despite the communication were controlled by me. I moved them in accord with their warned players there was a threat of rules.What could I do about it? last orders doing what I felt was reasonable. a storm which could end the battle early. I canceled the edict requiring As a final life-saving measure, I recruited a friend and subject matter ex- written orders and only required pert on Napoleonic warfare as a fellow umpire. Between the two of us, the As I worked, and sweated from them when communicating over next couple games ran much more smoothly.More recently,we have stream- running between three tables I long distances.I allowed command- lined the process just a little more and added a third umpire,allowing one of began to discard rules and stream- ers within visual range of one an- us to stay at the master map and roll combats. line the process on the fly. I allowed other to talk. In their defense, they players to move their own pieces continued to play fair, even cor- Since then, I have changed the map each year to keep things new and in- and merely checked their work. I recting themselves if they caught teresting, and just last year enough members were trained to the point that took photos with my phone and themselves being tempted to act on I was able to play my own Kriegsspiel for the first time. Several players have used those to synchronize the maps information they weren’t supposed now offered to assist umpiring games.As an unofficial rule,we require that a rather than trying to memorize ev- to know. player“apprentice”or assist at least twice before becoming a proper umpire. erything. The system we now use has become so efficient that I am proud to say our In my wisdom I had laid plexi- games run in real time or better. That means we can fight one or even two Still, there were problems. Paper glass sheets over the maps to pre- days of battle over the course of a single eight to ten-hour session.It’s a hectic ran low on supply as each gen- serve them. I issued both teams a time for the umpires,but it can be done. eral furiously wrote orders for their single dry-erase marker and al- lowed them to draw on the glass to At this point, a fair question arises. Are we playing Kriegsspiel or some show their orders. For some, it was watered-down, made up game that barely deserves to share the name? This easier to draw an arrow than stutter, is where it becomes philosophical.In my estimation,the answer is yes,this is “form column,route march!” very much still Kriegsspiel By the end of the gaming session Kriegsspiel was developed to train officers.What matters are the decisions the battle drew to a natural con- people make,especially amid the fog of war created by a double-blind system. clusion. I didn’t have to invoke my Do they apply the correct tactics? How do they react when they are in trouble battle-ending thunderstorm. My or confronted with a no-win situation? What happens when a courier never planning had paid off with a battle arrives or when they are given orders they feel conflicts with their mission? that started as skirmishes across the Do the players assist one another, do they abide by their chain of command, map and coalesced into a final epic or do they freeze up and stop giving orders because they are overwhelmed? engagement. I was dripping with I have seen all of these things happen in games. Just like many umpires be- sweat, but my players were hooked. fore me,I have seen some players blunder and others rise to the occasion and One of my happy players bought me a sandwich at lunch, and another bought me dinner and a beer after- wards.Who knew wargaming paid so well! I had learned a lot.More im- portantly, the Southern California Kriegsspiel Society was born. The lessons of the first game were applied to the second. I used the same map for the next two games that year. I streamlined my process- es further. I quit tracking individual losses. When I noticed a unit was being battered, I used a dry-erase marker to put a dot on the piece on my master map. The dots told me how weak the unit was becoming. I010

BATTLES Magazine # 11 - 035

Umpire Mark Luta gives the post-battle briefing. Note the use of dry-erase on plexiglass to facilitate orders.012

▼ A pair of divisions tangles near Willoughby Run. Neither division would make it to the battle at Gettysburg, although the Union eventually routed the Confederates. 013

▼surprise. This is the heart and soul of Kriegsspiel. A beautiful map, attrac- are well suited for two players or small groups. They are played face-to-face tive pieces,a growing and enthusiastic community,and professional umpires and are not umpired. I might add their games are stunning in their presen- coming together to provide an experience of battle that hexes and counters tation, works of art in and of themselves. In the digital realm there are the cannot recreate. Scourge of War games as well as Dr. Ezra Sidran’s “General Staff,” which is anticipated for release later this year. That game uses a sophisticated A.I. de- DIY veloped by Dr.Sidan whose work has been supported by DARPA (the Defense Advance Research Project Agency). Gamers who are interested in starting their own Kriegsspiel community will be pleased to find there are several resources available. The original and Nearly any battle or campaign can be “Kriegsspieled,” although it seems revised rules are available online.General Julius Von Verdy du Vernois’s book that Napoleonic warfare naturally works best. I advise would-be umpires to is available as a free PDF on Google Books in German and there is an English playtest their scenarios before going live with a whole group.This is strongly translation available. Retailers such as Too Fat Lardies offer a nice selec- advised in cases where a person wants to Kriegsspiel a modern or ancient tion of maps. Photon Cutter Studios does an amazing job providing pieces battle or a naval engagement, or even something from the realm of fantasy which can be customized. Customization of colors adds a nice touch of his- or Sci Fi. torical flavor while custom numbering will help keep games organized. For gamers who want a light experience with Kriegsspiel ,the “Pub Battles”series Maps can also be found online. For my most recent Kriegsspiel, I used a from Command Post Games provides casual games that play quickly and post-Civil War map of Gettysburg from the 19th century. The map required a lot of work to prepare, but it turned out beautifully. Hours were spent in Dry erase markers on the umpire map show Photoshop resizing, sharpening, and colorizing until a small map of the the player’s intent, but not every maneuver is battlefield became a 54”x50” amateur work of art. It drew a lot of attention completed, owing to the nature of the exercise. and interest. If you are willing to perform the effort and pay the expense to prepare a good,large map,if will pay off in interest from the players who have to look at it for the day.014

▼ ▼ Compatibility issues The Confederates had an early advantage, ruined an early but halted on the hills attempt to colorize outside the town, giving the Union team the map by hand. a chance to occupy it. Just as much can The Union would go on go wrong planning a to win the game. Kriegsspiel as playing one! whatsoever. There are no officers, Little Gaddesen, but alas, the time just those of us who have been difference and the collective need around longer than others and those for beauty rest on both sides of of us who like to umpire and those the Atlantic seem to prohibit this who just like to play.You can join us from ever happening, but we can by joining our Facebook group,and dream. anyone is welcome at our games. Presently games are played on the A final word of advice, plan your Sundays of President’s Day weekend, games at least several months in Memorial Day weekend, and Labor advance. Gathering the resources, Day weekend at the LAX Hilton in printing maps, planning a scenario Los Angeles,California.We are host- and getting a diverse group of peo- ed by the Strategicon Convention ple together in one place for about on all three occasions. Those who ten hours is very hard to do, espe- wish to play must register with the cially on short notice.It’s also expen- convention, and there is a fee to at- sive. At present, printing a 50”x50” tend,although that fee is for the con- map can cost well in excess of $300. vention, not our society. There are There are cheaper ways to print, additional fees due to the location, but even the least expensive means such as parking fees, lunch, and so costs money and takes time. The on.Games usually start around 9-10 pieces also take time to customize, AM and will run until about 6-7 PM print,prepare and arrive by mail. in the evening. Like the original game, I can be contacted via the Kriegsspiel is a lot of work to pre- Facebook group and am always pare, and it takes a small miracle to happy to answer questions and pull it off successfully. However, if help people start their own com- you manage do a good job you will munities. I hope someday to play be rewarded with a group of people a game pitting the members of the who will be addicted to the most Southern California Kriegsspiel unique and possibly realistic expe- Society against my friends in rience available in wargaming. Rather than recreate history, I also advise umpires to develop their ownsemi-historical or what-if scenarios. That will help to sidestep two problemsthat are common with gamers. On one hand, some gamers may be temptedto simply follow history and do what was done historically. This is boring towatch,especially as an umpire.The second problem is the matter of the sub-ject-matter expert, a gamer who knows too much for their own good. Thatperson will annoy you with the litany of details you got wrong when settingup the game.You don’t need that in your life,so avoid it by changing the battleto something a little different. Being an umpire is a lot of work, but it’s also a fun job. The umpire hasthe best seat in the house and gets to watch players on both sides pull theirhair out and anguish over decisions. It is remarkable to watch players whoare overwhelming their opponents panic because they are surrounded bythe fog of war.You will notice that defeat is much less a question of numbersand more a question of psychology, as the player whose spirit breaks first isthe one who loses and that isn’t always the weaker player.This lesson may beamong the most profitable insights you will gain as an umpire as you realizethat in all your dealings, from the board room to the game room, the loser isoften the one who breaks first. The Southern California Kriegsspiel Society welcomes new membersfrom around the world. There are no membership dues or any formalities 015