New Kriegsspiel Facebook page

Hi all

Many of you will have seen the revamped Kriegspiel website.

To assist with signposting to the website and this forum a Kriegsspiel Facebook page has been created.

https://www.facebook.com/Kriegsspielorg/

For those of you on Facebook feel free to like the page.

It gives Kriegsspiel another window on the world and will hopefully bring more people to all aspects of the genre.

To provide some reassurance there are no plans to close this forum or seek to replace it or divert people from it.

Cheers

Steve

Shouldn't "Kriegspiel" have only one 's'? This has always puzzled me.

No, it has two.  Like many German words, it's a compound of two shorter ones.  I think the single 's' krept in when Avalon Hill produced a board wargame of that name back in the 1960s, and someone mispellt it.

Martin J

Hm, but the two words are "krieg" and "spiel" aren't they? Is the extra 's' a German grammatical thingy?

The two words are kriegs and spiel.  From memory this is the genitive case, strictly-speaking game of war, rather than wargame.  You add the 's' to reflect possession.  In German, you could alternatively say spiel von krieg - ie the dative case.

Another example would be kriegsschiff - ie ship of war, rather than warship.  Or kriegsschauplatz - theatre of war.

All that said, I'm rapidly getting in over my head here.  My school German is over 50 years old

Martin J

Thanks for the clarification, this has not been in vain Martin and has answered a question that's been lurking in the deep recesses of my brain since at least the early 1970s! You're doing very well, apart from a some basic words and phrases my schoolboy German faded from memory long ago.

That's very sweet of you, Diggers. Any minute now, someone who actually knows German will doubtless turn-up and refute all the above!

Martin J

I have borrowed from a half dozen or so game systems to build a Corps and Division level 1862 Maryland Campaign for about 30 players. All on same side (Union).   We are testing it as an element of our leadership curriculum. The thing is we have to assume the vast majority of our students will have not done anything like it before yet the goal is to get them up and functioning in a role (army commander, quartermaster, ordnance officer, chief medical officer, chief of staff, multiple aid de camps, 6 corps commanders and like 17 division commanders) in under 30 minutes. So a lot of dynamics are abstracted and as referee I must work and decide fast on a map. Total scenario is 4 hours long with 25% of it set aside for specific reflection and discussion of specific dynamics in leadership and decisionmaking. Students also get a pre reading and video to prep. To date we have run a half dozen pilots to test different dynamics with faculty. So far so good. Next week I am running two “full up” pilots.

I have done simple abstraction of supply dynamics but account for rations/fodder, different ordnance requirement and medical/hospital. It is interesting to watch logisticians scramble to keep the supply trains up while division commanders forge ahead and find themselves too far ahead to resupply.

Intel reports come in daily. Many Mimic exact reports that McClellan saw. And of course the army commander gets a copy of SO191 on 13 Sept. Not having cigars handy we wrapped it around 3 dry erase markers.

Combat is very simple. Choose a tactic (based on a stance held while marching) to get a modifier (based on matrix with defenders choice) and compare odds. Results might be exacerbated by previous supply choices.

I have also found that card-based random events with an associated point allocation a la GMT games series (like COIN) or a game like Twilight Struggle are nice adds.

If anyone is interested and wants to provide comment and/or compare notes on the design I will be happy to share and chat in coming weeks.

“Version 2.0” of this will be to add in SOW as a follow up on the tactical end.

The British obsession with the letter S has always fascinated me. What is it about the letter? The sensuous shape, the fact that it's the 19th letter and therefore a prime number, what is it exactly? You even go around replacing Zs with it and thereby deliberately misspelling words. Is it a result of overindulgence, or any indulgence for that matter, of marmite or stilton cheese?

Surely you mean ztilton? Bah........I'm off to eat a colonial.

I read that as "I'm off to beat a colonial". Which we are also good at, as long as they only have pointed sticks and we have maxim guns.

Back in college I read a book called "The Social History of the Machine Gun" and it had some interesting insights relative to attitudes towards colonials.

I do not know German, but do know Danish which is often based on German.

The Danish would be 'Krigsspil', spil being a game, and Krigs being a qualifier, meaning a game of war - so yes, the genitive case. There is a Danish wargame forum called 'krigsspil.dk'

A very common construction in the Germanic languages - another Danish example off the top of my head would be 'arbejdskollega', meaning work colleague.

Hope this helps, Mr Digby! Would be interested in Borgenmark, incidentally, but am yet to get set up on Facebook - though the creation of the Kriegsspiel group (correctly spelt) might be another incentive to do it.

Borgenmark might be taken.... a few other states are free.