Kriegspiel (wargame)

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Kriegspiel, from the German for wargame, was a system used for training officers in the Prussian army. The first set of rules was Instructions for the Representation of Tactical Maneuvers under the Guise of a Wargame, produced in 1824 by von Reisswitz, a lieutenant in the Prussian army, based on earlier work by his father. Today it is considered the grandfather of modern wargames.

Kriegspiel had a surprisingly complex rule set for being the "original" wargame, with various specialised dice used to represent the rules. The scale was very different to the one we know in modern wargaming - the space scale was 6 to 8 inches to a mile, and the time scale was 2 minutes per one turn. Blocks were used to represent units.