I've been to ... Stockholm

During the Easter holidays, Ann and I visited Stockholm. Yes, I know this is almost 2 months ago, but never late then never to publish some images that might be of interest to wargamers.

We visited a lot or art and history locations, and one of the stops was the Army Museum. As could be expected, a lot of focus on Swedish military history. Too much to show it all in photographs, but here are a few fun highlights.

 

A diorama of miniature soldiers showing formations from the Pike & Shot period.

A close-up of that same diorama.

A life-size display of Swedish cavalry charging during the Great Northern War.

An old Swedish Kriegsspiel: "VinterKrigsspelkarta".

Detail of the same Kriegsspiel.

A German cypher machine - these machines always interest me as a computer scientist.

An Engima machine ... Alan Turing and all that.

 Needless to say, we also visited the Vasa museum. I was very much impressed!

Book Review: Verdy's Free Kriegspiel

Some time ago I reported about my interest in Kriegspiel as a wargaming form. I finally found the time to read the book Verdy's Free Kriegspiel, published by John Curry in his History of Wargaming series.

The book consists of several parts. Part 1 is the actual book by General v. Verdy Du Vernois, "Beitrag Zum Kriegspiel." It presents a variant on the classic Von Reissewitz idea, by dropping most rules and employing an umpire to interpret and judge the movements and combat made by the various players. After a short preface, the book basically describes the conduct of a wargame by two players, almost by the minute. Thus, it is an entertaining read, and one gets quickly the idea how such a free kriegspiel can be run. However, I also got the feeling that players back then had much more time and patience. I doubt whether a game nowadays can be run in exactly the same manner.

The 2nd part of this publication describes rules for the Victorian Army's 1896 Wargame. Again, this is meant to be a tool for 'serious wargaming', but instead of leaving everything up to the umpire, rules are presented to adjudicate movements and combat.

The 3rd part of the book is also very useful. It lists marching rates, lengths of columns etc. for various formation in different time eras, even up to the 1940s. A very good source for kriegspielers, since most of us hobbyists lack the insights and professional experience to 'wing' these things when trying to conduct a game.

I still have plans of running a Kriegspiel game one time. One of the things that are needed are maps, of course. An excellent publication in that respect is the Atlas Ferraris, a tome of over 600 pages, detailing Belgium in 2nd half of the 18th century, and based on so-called Cabinet Maps commisioned by the Austrian authorities that were in possession of Belgium at the time. The book, which is a magnificent publication, is quite heavy and large, but the above link provides an on-line version of the atlas. Scanned version of the maps are also available on CD-ROM, and that migh be a very good buy for wargamers interested in 18th century wargaming.

Free Kriegsspiel

I have always been interested in Kriegsspiel, the wargaming exercises developed by the Prussian Military in 19th century.

For several years, I did own a copy of a translation of the original kriegsspiel rules, but I never used them, since I didn't have appropriate maps. However, last year I bought the mapsets from Too Fat Lardies. Alas, we didn't find the time yet to try them out. One of the reasons for that is that the rules of Kriegsspiel themselves are somewhat arcane and complicated, and it wouldn't pay off to invest time in learning a game with a steep learning curve.

So, I was very much interested to see that John Curry has republished the 'Beitrag Zum Kriegsspiel by the Prussian General J. von Verdy du Vernois. Published after Von Reissewitz' version of kriegsspiel, the booke xplains why playing kriegsspiel with a minimum of rules - and more in a freeform manner - makes a lot of sense. I haven't read the book yet, but will do so the coming days.

In some way, free kriegsspiel is very much related to gamesmastering, something most wargamers are familiar with through roleplaying. We also employed the concept in a demonstration game at Crisis 2005, and of course matrix games are also based on the same idea.

To the members of my gaming group: be prepared for a kriegsspiel scenario!