Kriegspiel (The Avalon Hill Game Company, 1970) entered the wargaming world with the usual amount of hype from Baltimore, it being an era when the wargame market was not overly saturated, and TAHGC was still releasing games on a limited basis. Despite the normal pent-up demand for an Avalon Hill product (by 1970 they had done only 21 wargames), Kriegspiel hit the market with the proverbial thud, selling 86,000 copies which was low by AH's standards at the time. Few professionally done games have been as unpopular as this one was with reviewers and players, and it earned the distinction of ranking at the bottom of surveys done by both AH and Strategy & Tactics.
Several factors explain this. First, Kriegspiel was intended to be an introductory level game, almost automatically a bad sign for the hardcore gamer. With a map board measuring 20 by 17 hexes, and only 21 counters for the Republic of Red and 18 for United Black, the game was not going to appeal to wargamers used to standard sized maps and a couple of hundred counters. Kriegspiel was a good size for someone new to the hobby but that was it. Typical of the company's offerings at the time, the game included very simple basic rules and a more advanced version in a Battle Manual. AH did its usual hit or miss style of proofreading, sometimes referring to Black as 'Blue' in the rules, and usually calling the hexes 'squares.' The most unusual thing about the game was its use of a matrix CRT (called the Battle Table), rather than the typical dice-based one. The matrix system was also used to resolve diplomacy, a nice innovation that won very grudging praise from the hardcore.
Secondly, Kriegspiel was an abstract game, and these have not met with much success on the market. The basic problem here is the lack of historical reference. Wargamers would much rather play Napoleon than President of Big Purple or something. Despite this hesitation, there have been a number of abstract games on the market.
Abstract Games
The game that started it all was Tactics (The Avalon Game Company, 1954). This was an experiment by Charles Roberts to see if there was any market for wargames. He sold some 2000 copies through Stackpole Books, coming close to breaking even. Tactics featured two countries (Red and Blue) fighting for an island continent. Each army had infantry, armor, paratrooper, and amphibious divisions, plus headquarters which were important for movement. Each unit was assigned to a corps headquarters. The map used squares. Instead of movement factors, both armies used movement points which were distributed among units as desired.
He then decided to form The Avalon Hill Game Company (adding 'Hill' to avoid a conflict with another company) in 1958 to publish that and other adult games. Tactics morphed into Tactics II (1958, 1961, 1972, with rules revisions in 1973 and 1975), essentially the same game with some revisions, mainly to the movement method. It used the same map. In 1983, TAHGC celebrated its 25th anniversary with a rerelease of the 1954 game. This version used the map originally intended, but never used, for Tactics. Tactics and Tactics II were hugely innovative for the time period, but they were soon eclipsed by history-based wargames such as Gettysburg.
(Note: Sources disagree on when Charles Roberts published Tactics. Avalon Hill in its anniversary booklet uses 1952 as a publication date, as does iSimulacrum. Roberts, in an interview in 1983, said he designed it in 1952 but did not sell it until 1954. Pimper's and several Simulations Publications Inc. sources use 1953 as the date, which is probably when he finished designing it.).
In 1961, Avalon Hill released Nieuchess, a much simpler game which eschewed cardboard units in favor of pawns. Pawns had been used in AH's 1961 Civil War and seems to have been an idea Roberts had for introductory games. Nieuchess was a stripped down wargame with a smaller, hex-based board, the usual CRT, and several traditional rules for movement and combat. It did not stay too long in Baltimore's line.
TAHGC had been besieged almost from the start with pleas for a game covering World War II. Rather than issue an historical one, the company produced Blitzkrieg in 1965. Once again, Red and Blue, the Hatfields and McCoys of wargaming, hit the battlefields in something that sort of looked like The Big One. Blitzkrieg was not a bad game and it sold well, but it had some problems. The game tended to clog in the middle of the board, resembling World War I more than anything else. SPI addressed this problem and tried to increase the game's realism in its Blitzkrieg Module System in Strategy & Tactics #19. This revision offered lots of new rules and alternate armies in a modular format that allowed gamers to use the ones that they liked. TAHGC did its own revision of the game in 1975 which incorporated some of SPI's ideas as well as many from other players. Both revisions improve the game much.
A little known game, Strategy One, was produced by the MIT Strategic Games Society in 1967. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology had long been a wargaming hotbed and it was only a matter of time before they began making their own. SO used squares and was designed for multiplayer interaction. Panzerfaust magazine did a second edition in 1967.
SPI jumped into the abstract genre with Strategy I (1971). This was a monster game that recreated 17 historical situations on a generic map. There were several rules modules and a huge set of counters that enabled players to cover eras from the Hellenistic period to the Cold War. The map was divided into provinces that could be grouped to simulate various countries. The historicity of Strategy I is so far above the other generic games that there really is no comparison.
John Edwards of Jedko made his reputation redesigning (some would say fixing) the Avalon Hill classics. In particular, The Russian Campaign won wide acceptance by wargamers looking for something to replace Stalingrad. Jedko entered the abstract field with Field Marshall (1976). Some of the game is simply TRC applied to the situation and it had the obligatory Red and Blue contestants, but there were a few twists. Players drew cards that helped or hurt them, part of each army needed to go to a Southern Command at the beginning of the game, and there is a Black country which can enter the war with the right card pull. FM is the best of the abstract efforts after Strategy I, and what Kriegspiel could have been.
Yaquinto offered its Battle in 1979. This was more operational and tactical in nature (no scale was provided) and recreated battles from the ancient to the modern periods using armies of 10 or 11 counters. There were 12 army rosters in the game, plus some Hyborian ones in Yaquinto Dispatch #2. Terrain pieces allowed players to vary the setup so it had high replay value. A simpler version of it was reprinted in Matthew J. Costello, The Greatest Games of All Time, 1991.
3W contributed Strategy as an introductory offering in 1991. Played on two 8 1/2 by 11 hex sheets, the game had a mix of air, land and sea pieces. Like most 3W efforts, this one had rules problems and seems to have gone nowhere in wargaming consciousness.
Decision Games printed Maneuver in Moves 71 in 1992. This is the smallest of the abstract games with only 10 counters per side (Red and Blue of course) and no terrain on the 8 by 7 inch map. Maneuver had very basic rules and was not a bad introductory vehicle, but there was no real replay value.
Hexwar was designed by Jeremy Lindsey and published on the Web in 1998. This was a modern era game featuring step reduction and unit purchase. It seems to be tactical in scope. Published as freeware, it seems to have gone out of print..
Columbia Games came out with Victory: The Blocks of War (1998) as another entrant in its brilliant block family of games. Again, modern red and blue armies fight over hypothetical terrain. The base game comes with 4 maps and 100 blocks, but over the years Columbia has added more rules, 12 maps, and extra armies for multiplayer scenarios. In 2000, Columbia added Wizard Kings, a generic fantasy game along the same lines as Victory.
Finally, there is Hotspots, a freeware abstract modern game published in 2002. This emphasizes Third World warfare but uses the traditional Red versus Blue rivalry. It seems to be strategic, maybe operational, in its scale. Players use random maps and pick missions and armies.
Revising Kriegspiel
So Kriegspiel is not a great game, certainly not as good as the ones in the previous section, except for Maneuver and Strategy. Nonetheless, there is potential here. Kriegspiel already offered a slew of advanced rules for airpower, corps organization, diplomacy, forts, logistics, nukes, POWs, replacements, strategic movement, and weather. Using these enhances the game to a great degree. And of course, any right thinking wargamer has to redesign any and all games in his possession. Hence, tinkering with it should pose no problem for any of us. In other words, it is best to treat Kriegspiel as a gamekit. Because of the small size of the game, repeated experimentation is easy.
Here are some other suggestions, adapted mostly from Field Marshall and the newer Blitzkrieg:
(1) Find another copy or two. Adding more boards and counters expands the scope of the game nicely and brings it closer to a standard size. Simply adding another counter set to the game, using the organization section, and allowing stacking up to 3 units per hex radically changes play for the better. Give a bonus to attacks utilizing only units from one corps. Kriegspiel was so unpopular that extra copies should still be around at reasonable prices. One can also make extra maps using blank hex sheets to vary the terrain.
(2) Second movement. Allow mechanized units to move half their movement factor (round down) in a second movement phase. Units may attack after this phase, but it is not required. Second movement is not allowed on mud or snow turns. Units using Strategic Movement may do second movement but cannot attack.
(3) Experiment with combat tables. Make a roster sheet for each side and try step reduction. The CRTs from Blitzkrieg or Guadalcanal or any other game using this could work here. Try using The Russian Campaign or Field Marshall CRTs. For those that dislike matrix systems, here is a Battle Table based on the game's charts:
| Die Roll | 1-3 | 1-2 | 1-1 | 2-1 | 3-1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AE | AE | AE/D-4 | AE/D-4 | AE/DE |
| 2 | AE | AE | AE/DE | NC | NC |
| 3 | AE | AE/D-4 | AE/DE | A-4/DE | A-4/DE |
| 4 | A-4 | AE/DE | NC | A-4/DE | A-4/DE |
| 5 | NC | NC | NC | A-4/DE | DE |
| 6 | NC | NC | A-4/DE | DE | DE |
(4) There are blank counters in the game (4 red and 2 black). These can be used in a variety of ways. For example place 2 on the board to represent an industrial complex and an oil field. If the industry piece is captured then no armor replacements are allowed. If the oil one is taken, all mechanized units reduce their movement in half, and there is no second movement until it is recaptured. Blank counters can be used to represent air units (each one shifts a column one attack or defense) instead of using the system in the manual. Create artillery units with a strength of 4 and a range of 2 hexes.
(5) If using corps organization have one player move one corps. Then the other player moves a corps. The first one moves another one, and so on. The turn ends when all of the corps have been moved. This makes the game more interactive.
(6) If using a second set of counters, then divide each set into corps but do not use the designations in the Battle Manual. Instead, create corps of 3 units according to type for Red. This will give Red 4 armored corps, 6 infantry, 2 special forces, and 2 paratroopers. Black can be split into 5 mechanized corps of 3 units each, 2 infantry corps of 3 each, 3 special forces of 3 divisions, a paratroop one with 3, and a reserve force of 1 armored infantry, 1 special forces, and 1 paratrooper. Allow units to stack up to 3 so that a corps can travel and fight as a group. If an entire corps fights together, then combat is shifted 1 column right if attacking, and 1 column left if defending. Keep replacement rates the same. Red puts any 3 corps aside to be used as reinforcements. Black does this with 2 corps.
(7) With each side having a number of corps, this opens up some possibilities. Arrange the boards in a square format. Each board has roads leading off them on each side. At the beginning of the game, each player must send 2 corps off map, one on each side of the board. These corps are fighting off the map. Should a player capture the other player's road on either side of the board, then his off map corps returns. For example, if Red captures FF2, then the corps that Red assigned to that side of the board returns through that hex. Should Red capture FF19, then the units on that side of the map return there. It is assumed that the penetration caused the enemy's front to collapse and thus released some resources for other uses. Off map corps may be released earlier via random events. If the appropriate hex is not captured, then corps freed by random events enter behind friendly lines on that side of the board.
When the game starts, each player must designate 2 corps as a reserve, one in the capital, and the other on the hex row furthest from the front. The capital reserve is released when the enemy is adjacent to the capital, the other when the enemy is within 2 hexes of the corps. Reserve corps may be released through random events.
To summarize, Red has 14 corps. 7 start the game on the map, 3 are used for reinforcements, 2 go off map, and 2 are in reserve. Black has 12 corps with 6 on the map at the start, 2 as reinforcements, 2 off map, and 2 in reserve. Players always decide which corps to use where.
If using just one set of counters, divide Red into 2 armored, 3 infantry, 1 special forces, and 1 paratrooper corps. 4 start the game on the map, 1 is used for reinforcements, 1 goes off map, and 1 is in reserve. Black gets 2 mechanized corps, 1 infantry, 1 special forces, 1 corps of 2 armored infantry and 1 special forces unit, and 1 light infantry corps of 2 paratrooper and 1 special forces. 1 corps goes into the reserve and off map modes each, and 4 start on the map. Black does not have reinforcements. Players must agree on which side of the map is to be used for the off map fighting. Reserve corps start in capitals. There is no stacking in this scenario.
(8) Stuff happens, especially in war where nothing is certain. Adding random events to the game can upset even the best plans. Here is a sample chart. Just roll a 20d every turn or two according to taste. Results apply only to the rolling player and may happen more than once. Treat #s 9-12 as No Effect if those corps have been brought into play already.
1 Storms. No air operations, including paratroop drops.
2 Fuel shortage. All movement halved. Round down. No second movement.
3 Fuel shortage. No second movement.
4 Floods. Cross rivers via roads only. Special forces may not invade beaches.
5 Riots. Roll a d6. 1-4 = the number of units that must be sent to city hexes to restore order. If a city hex is occupied by the enemy, then it is not necessary to garrison it.
For example, Black rolls a 4 indicating he needs to garrison 4 city hexes. However, Red occupies 2 city hexes, leaving Black with only 3 under his control. Thus, he only needs to send units to those 3 hexes. These units cannot be used anywhere else until they have reached a city hex. The capital reserve units may be used to garrison the capital but this does not release them. No garrisoning is necessary with a roll of 5 or 6.
6 Riots. Same as #5 but units cannot leave the city hex unless the player rolls higher than
a 4 on a d6. Roll for each unit. If the capital reserve has not been released yet, this does
not release that corps.
7 Partisans. If a player occupies enemy territory, roll a d6 and divide by half round up.
This is the number of units that are frozen for this turn. They are chasing guerillas. Occupying one enemy hex is enough to trigger this event. Frozen units can move
next turn.
8 Partisans. Same as #7, but units are not unfrozen unless the player rolls a 4 or higher on a d6. Roll for each unit separately.
9 Good communications. One reserve corps, player's choice, is released.
10 Good communications.Both reserve corps are released.
11-12 Off map victory. One off map corps can return on any friendly road except those on the
opposite side of the map. The other player must keep his corps off map.
13 Potholes. Road movement costs 1/2 MF per hex.
14 Bomb craters. Road movement costs 1 MF per hex.
15 Food shortage. Infantry movement halved. (not special forces or paratroopers)
16 Antiwar movement. No replacements this turn. They do not accumulate.
17 Antiwar movement. No reinforcements this turn.
18 Ordnance problems. Shift attacks one column left.
19-20 No effect
============================
Note: The original version of this review appeared in Strategist 36 (September 2004):5-8.
The Strategist is the newsletter of the Strategy Gaming Society.
Mike Shefler offered his own variant rules in "Advanced Kriefspiel Theory" The Avalon Hill Geneeral 10, no. 2 (Joly-August 1973):12-13. These included step reduction, prisoner escapes, ABMs, and new nuclear rules, among others.
Historical Rail Baron by Peter L. de Rosa
Maharaja Revisions by Peter L. de Rosa