A wargame is a strategy game that realistically simulates warfare. Wargames were invented for the purpose of training military officers, but they eventually caught on in civilian circles, played recreationally.
History Early German wargames (1780-1806)
The first wargame was invented in Prussia in 1780 by Johann Christian Ludwig Hellwig, who was a college professor in Braunschweig. Hellwing wanted to design a game by which he could teach some principles of warfare to his students, many of whom were noblemen destined for military service, but he also wanted his game to be fun and accessible to the general public so that he could sell it as a leisure game. Hellwig chose to base his game on chess, believing that this would attract chess players and make it easier for them to learn the rules.In a letter from Hellwig, dated 26 September 1801, quoted in :"The first thought which presented itself to my mind was that the learning of my game ought not to be burdened with too many details if it was to fulfill its mission. I judged from the first that I should achieve my object in the quickest way if I took for its basis the game of chess, in favor with so many distinguished persons of all ranks. My idea was to adapt, as far as possible, the game of chess to my own game, in order so to interest amateurs that they would at least give mine a trial. [...] experience confirmed the wisdom of my expectations, for chess players were the first to welcome my invention [...]" Hellwig published a second edition of his rulebook in 1803.
As in chess, Hellwig's game was played on a grid of squares, but it was a much larger grid, and the squares were color-coded to represent different types of terrain: mountains, swamp, water, trenches, etc. The layout of the terrain was not fixed, which allowed players to create their own custom battlefields. The pieces in the game represented real military units: cavalry, infantry, artillery, and various support units. As in chess, only a single piece could occupy a square, and the pieces moved square by square, either laterally or diagonally. Over normal terrain, infantry could move a maximum distance of eight squares, dragoons could move twelve squares, and light cavalry could move sixteen squares — intuitively mirroring the speed at which these units move in the real world. But terrain could impede movement: mountains were impassable, swamps slowed units down, rivers could only be crossed with the help of a special pontoon unit, etc. A player could only move one piece per turn, or one group of pieces if they were arranged in a rectangle. A piece could capture an enemy piece by moving into its square, just like in chess, but infantry and artillery pieces could also shoot enemy pieces, at a maximum ranges of two to three squares. Unlike chess, the pieces had orientation: for instance, an infantry piece could only shoot an enemy piece if they were facing it and flanking it.:"Infantry and artillery units may discharge their firearms instead of advancing on an enemy; if an infantry unit destroys an enemy with gunfire, that enemy is removed from the board but the infantry unit does not advance to occupy the vacated position. The efficacy of rifles rests largely on the orientation of the opposing unit: infantry units facing one another enjoy effectively immunity to one another's gunfire, so only flanking fire had an effect." Hellwig's wargame could also simulate the fog of war to a limited degree: while the players were arranging their pieces in their starting positions, they had the option of placing a screen across the board so that they could not observe their opponent's arrangement until the game started. Once the game was in progress, however, there was no hiding anything.
Hellwig's wargame was a great success, and inspired other inventors to develop their own chess-like wargames.
In 1796, another Prussian named Johann Georg Julius Venturini invented his own wargame, inspired by Hellwig's game. Venturini's game was played on an even larger grid.:"Although Venturini replaced the wargame board with a map, he still imposed a one-inch square grid over that map, and he imagined each square of the grid to be two thousand paces (Schritte) across, which if we assume a German military pace of rough thirty inches, means his game employs a scale around 1:60,000, or a bit shy of one mile per square." Venturini's game also added rules governing logistics, such as supply convoys and mobile bakeries, and the effects of weather and seasons, making it perhaps the first operational-level wargame.:"Venturini increases the variety of terrain, takes into account seasons and weather, vastly increases the sorts of entrenchments and fortifications that combatants might construct, and adds significant, but not necessarily exciting, detail to the feeding, equipping and support of forces in the field."
In 1806, an Austrian named Johann Ferdinand Opiz developed a wargame aimed at both civilian and military markets. Like Hellwig's game, it used a modular grid-based board. But unlike Hellwig's game, Opiz's game used dice rolls to simulate the unpredictability of real warfare. This innovation was controversial at the time. Hellwig, who designed his wargame for both leisure as well as instruction, felt that introducing chance would spoil the fun.:trans.:"A secondary intention was to give a pleasant entertainment to a person who did not need such instruction through a game in which nothing depends on chance but on the direction of the player."
These games were popular among recreational gamers, but were not taken seriously by an army because they were too unrealistic. The chess-like grid forced the terrain into unnatural forms, such as rivers that flowed in straight lines and turned at right angles. A unit could only move from one square to the next, not within the square, and only a single unit could occupy a square at a time, even if that square represented a square mile.:"...the grid imposed on the wargames of Hellwig and Venturini significantly limited the capacity of these systems to represent the position of troops realistically. Effectively, in a board wargame divided into squares of a scale mile across, there is only one position that troops within a mile's range could hold.":"In these early attempts the landscape had been forced into squares and triangles, with rivers, seas, villages, mountains, valleys and so on pushed out of their natural shapes and into straight lines. In the same way movements of troops, the representation of troop types, the effect of firepower, were also severely modified in such a way that a realistic picture of events failed to be produced."
Kriegsspiel
In 1824, a Prussian army officer named Georg Heinrich Rudolf Johann von Reisswitz developed a more realistic wargame specifically for the Prussian army. Instead of a chess-like grid, the game was played on accurate topographical maps of the kind the Prussian army used in the field. This allowed the game to model terrain naturally and simulate battles in real locations. The scale of the map was 1:8000; smaller than any wargame before it. Troop formations were represented by little rectangular pieces made of lead, which were painted either blue or red to represent the side they belonged to. Reisswitz used data collected during the Napoleonic Wars to accurately model how the units performed in battle. For instance, his manual provided tables which listed how far each unit type could move in a round over various types of terrain. The game used dice to model variable weapon damage, and firearm damage generally decreased the farther away the target was. Unlike chess pieces, the units could suffer partial losses before being defeated, which were tracked on a separate sheet of paper; Reisswitz's wargame was the first to use unit hitpoints. The most important innovation was perhaps the introduction of an umpire. The players did not move the pieces across the map themselves. Instead, they wrote orders for their troops on scraps of paper which they discreetly submitted to the umpire, and the umpire would move the pieces according to how he judged the virtual troops would carry out their orders. The umpire also managed secret information such as the locations of hidden units. The umpire only placed a piece on the map when he judged that the unit in question had entered the enemy's line of sight; this was the first wargame to properly simulate the fog of war.
A number of privately-funded kriegsspiel clubs were formed in Prussia. They were mainly frequented by army officers, but some had civilian members as well, so kriegsspiel was certainly being played recreationally during this time.
In 1870, Prussia defeated France in the Franco-Prussian War. The Prussian army did not have any significant advantage in weaponry, numbers, or troop training, but it was the only army in the world that practiced wargaming, so naturally many people credited Prussia's victory to its wargaming tradition.:"In the aftermath of the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War, European and world military opinion suddenly became enamored of things German, including Kriegsspiel, to the use of which many experts attributed the German victories.":"During the wars of German unification, Prussian wargaming appears to have provided a significant advantage. How else can Prussia's lopsided victories be explained? Prussian forces were more often than not outnumbered, weapon advantages were mixed, and training methods were similar, though some think Prussia had an advantage in the education of staff officers. At this time, though, the Prussian military had a monopoly on second-generation wargaming and had integrated it into its staff education and its staff planning methods, especially at the higher levels." Armies around the world now took an interest in German wargames, which they referred to as kriegsspiel (the German word for "wargame"). Kriegsspiel also gained a substantial following among civilian gamers. The world's first recreational wargaming club was the University Kriegspiel [sic] Club, founded in 1873 at Oxford University in England.
Miniature wargaming
In 1881, the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson became the first documented person to use toy soldiers in a wargame, although he never published his rules. According to an account by his stepson, they were very sophisticated and realistic; on par with German military wargames. In his game, each toy soldier was used to represent an entire unit rather than an individual, and his playing field was just a chalk map drawn on the floor.
In 1898, the British writer Fred T. Jane published the first rulebook for a naval wargame: Rules for the Jane Naval War Game. Jane's wargame was also the first published wargame to use miniature models. It used scale models of warships made out of cork and wires; the wires were used for guns and masts. Jane's rulebook described in great detail the capabilities of the warships, such as the range and armor-penetrating power of the guns. It also simulated localized damage, such as what would happen to a warship if its boiler was damaged, or its gun battery.