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Stratego

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Stratego
Stratego board
Initial set up of Stratego, from the Milton Bradley edition with plastic pieces.
Players2
Setup time3 to 5 minutes
Playing time30 to 120 minutes (player dependent)
Chanceminimal
Age range8 and up
Skillsstrategy
This article is about the board game. For the Stratego programming language, see Stratego/XT.

Stratego is a strategic board game featuring a 10 × 10 square board and two players with 40 pieces each. Pieces represent individual officers and soldiers in an army, though the game is in all other respects an abstract strategy game. The object of the game is to find and capture the opponent's Flag, or to capture so many pieces that the opponent cannot move at all. Players cannot see the ranks of each others' pieces, so misinformation and discovery are important parts of the game.

Gameplay

Computer software version of Stratego

One player uses red pieces, and the other uses blue pieces. Pieces are colored on both sides, so players can easily distinguish between their own and their opponent's. Ranks are printed on one side only and placed so that players cannot identify specific opponent's pieces. Each player moves one piece per turn. If a piece is moved onto a square occupied by an opposing piece, their identities are revealed, the weaker piece is removed from the board, and the stronger piece is moved into the place formerly occupied by the weaker piece. If the engaging pieces are of equal rank, both are removed. Pieces may not move onto a square already occupied by the same team.

Two zones in the middle of the board, each 2 × 2, cannot be entered by either player at any time. They are shown as lakes on the battlefield and serve as choke points to make frontal assaults less direct.

Setup

Players may arrange their 40 pieces in any configuration on a designated 4 ×10 section of the playing board. Such pre-play distinguishes the fundamental strategy of particular players, and largely influences the outcome of the game.

Pieces

For most pieces, rank alone determines the outcome, but there are special pieces. The most numerous special piece is the bomb, which only Miners can defuse and which immediately eliminate any other piece that strikes them, but which cannot move. Each team also has one Spy which wins when it attacks the highest-ranked piece (the Marshal). The Spy loses if it attacks any other piece, or when attacked by any piece, including the Marshal.

From highest rank to lowest the movable pieces are:

10 or 1 : one Marshal
9 or 2 : one General
8 or 3 : two Colonels
7 or 4 : three Majors
6 or 5 : four Captains
5 or 6 : four Lieutenants
4 or 7 : four Sergeants
3 or 8 : five Miners (the only piece that can defuse Bombs)
2 or 9 : eight Scouts (the only piece capable of moving more than one space in a turn)
S : one Spy

There are special conditions that can be agreed upon by the players of the game. Any combination of these rules can be used, if any.

  1. Silent Defense - Only the attacking piece's rank must be revealed. The defending player either removes his piece or informs the attacking player that he has lost the engagement.
  2. Attacker Advantage - If two pieces of equivalent rank become involved in an engagement, then the attacking piece wins the engagement.
  3. Rescue - If any non-scout piece makes it to the back row of the opponent's side, the player may opt to retrieve a lost piece to gameplay. The opponent need only be informed that a rescue is taking place, not of the rank of the rescued piece. The maximum number of rescues per player per game is two.

There is one Flag piece and six Bombs, typically labeled 'F' and 'B' respectively.

Some versions (primarily newer versions released since 2000) have higher ranks with higher numbers, while others (versions prior to 2000, as well as the Nostalgia version released in 2002) have higher ranks with lower numbers.

All movable pieces may move only one step to any adjacent tile vertically or horizontally. The exception is the Scout, which may move any number of steps vertically or horizontally in a straight line (such as the rook in chess), however it may only engage an enemy adjacent to it. No piece may move diagonally, or back and forth between the same two tiles for three consecutive turns.

The Bombs and the Flag cannot move once placed on the board.

Rule confusions

The instructions of the game are unclear about the difference between movement and attack. This lack of clarity has resulted in an ungoing confusion regarding bombs and scouts. While the bombs can not move, it remains unclear as to whether they are allowed to attack. A further confusion revolves around a bomb's fate after it encounters another piece; does the bomb disappear after it explodes? The absense of a clear bomb rule has brought forth an ongoing debate between players. The move/attack confusion issue also raises questions about scouts: Can a scout attack at the end of a long move, or must he stop first and attack in the next move? The rules never clear up this confusion, and here again the issue remains an ongoing debate. It is quite ironic that a game which has been around as long as Stratego has never bee able to clear up these uncertainties in its instructions booklet.

Variants

Release versions

Official Modern Version
Redesigned pieces and game art. The pieces now use stickers attached to new "castle-like" plastic pieces. The stickers must be applied by the player after purchase, though the box does not mention any assembly being required. Ranking order is reversed to adopt European play style (higher numbers equals higher rank).
Nostalgia Game Series Edition
Traditional stamped plastic pieces, although the metallic paint is dull and less reflective than some older versions, and the pieces are not engraved as some previous editions were. Wooden box, traditional board and game art.
Library Edition
Hasbro's Library Series puts what appears to be the classic Stratego of the Nostalgia Edition into a compact, book-like design. The box approximates the size of a book and is made to fit in a bookcase in one's library.
Ultimate Stratego
No longer in production, this version can still be found at some online stores and specialty gaming stores. This version is a variant of traditional Stratego and can accommodate up to 4 players simultaneously. The Ultimate Stratego board game contained four different Stratego versions: "Ultimate Lightning", "Alliance Campaign", "Alliance Lightning" and "Ultimate Campaign".
Stratego CD-ROM
No longer in production, this version can still be found in many online stores. Produced by Hasbro Interactive this game combined Classic and Ultimate Stratego to give a choice of five different versions.

Promotional

Hertog Jan, a Dutch brand of beer, released a promotional version of Stratego with variant rules. It includes substantially fewer pieces, including only one Bomb and no Miners. Since each side has only about 18 pieces, the pieces are far more mobile. The scout in this version is allowed to move three squares in any combination of directions (including L-shapes) and there is a new piece called the archer, which is defeated by anything, but can defeat any piece other than the Bomb by shooting it from a two-square distance, in direct orthogonal directions only. If one player is unable to move any more of his pieces, the game results in a tie because neither player's flag was captured.

Commercial

These variants are produced by the company with pop culture themed pieces.

Produced by Avalon Hill

History

The origins of Stratego can be traced back to traditional Chinese board game "Jungle" also known as "Game of the Fighting Animals" (Dou Shou Qi) or "Animal Chess". The game Jungle also has pieces (but of animals rather than soldiers) with different ranks and pieces with higher rank capture the pieces with lower rank. The board, with two lakes in the middle, is also remarkably similar to that in Stratego. The major differences between the two games is that in Jungle, the pieces are not hidden from the opponent, and the initial setup is fixed.

A modern, more elaborate, Chinese game known as Land Battle Chess (Te Zhi Lu Zhan Qi) or Army Chess (Lu Zhan Jun Qi) is a descendant of Jungle, and a cousin of Stratego - the initial setup is not fixed, one's opponent's pieces are hidden, and the basic gameplay is similar (differences include "missile" pieces and a Chinese Chess style board layout with railroads and defensive "camps"; a third player is also typically used as a neutral referee to decide battles between pieces without revealing their identities). An expanded version of the Land Battle Chess game also exists - this adds naval and aircraft pieces and is known as Sea-Land-Air Battle Chess (Hai Lu Kong Zhan Qi).

In its present form Stratego appeared in Europe before World War I as a game called L'attaque. Thierry Depaulis writes on "Ed's Stratego Site":[1]

"It was in fact designed by a lady, Mademoiselle Hermance Edan, who filed a patent for a 'jeu de bataille avec pieces mobiles sur damier' (a battle game with mobile pieces on a gameboard) on 11-26-1908. The patent was released by the French Patent Office in 1909 (patent #396.795). Hermance Edan had given no name to her game but a French manufacturer named "Au Jeu Retrouvé" was selling the game as L'Attaque as early as 1910... "

Depaulis further notes that the 1910 version divided the armies into red and blue colors. The rules of L'attaque were basically the same as the game we know as Stratego. It featured standing cardboard rectangular pieces, color printed with soldiers who wore contemporary (to 1900), not Napoleonic uniforms.

The modern game, with its Napoleonic imagery, was originally published in the Netherlands by Jumbo, and was licensed by the Milton Bradley Company for American distribution, and first published in the United States in 1961 (although it was trademarked in 1960). The Jumbo Company continues to release European editions, including a three- and four-player version, and a new Cannon piece (which jumps two squares to capture any piece, but loses to any attack against it). It also included some alternate rules such as Barrage (a quicker two-player game with fewer pieces) and Reserves (reinforcements in the three- and four-player games). The four-player version appeared in America in the 1990s.

Other themed variants appeared first in North America: a Star Wars version, a The Lord of the Rings variant, and a "Legends" variant with fantasy pieces arguably inspired by Magic: The Gathering. The Legends variant added more rules and complexity, giving the players choices of pieces with special attributes, collectible "armies" from more than a hundred individual pieces offered in six sets, and varied boards with terrain features.

Pieces were originally made of printed cardboard. After World War II, painted wood pieces became standard, but starting in the late 1960s all versions had plastic pieces. The change from wood to plastic was not made so much for economy, but because the wooden pieces tended to fall over and the plastic pieces could be designed not to. European versions introduced cylindrical castle-shaped pieces that proved to be popular. American variants later introduced new rectangular pieces with a more stable base and colorful stickers, not images directly imprinted on the plastic.

The game is particularly popular in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, where regular national and world championships are organized. The international Stratego scene has, in recent years, been dominated by players from the Netherlands.

European versions of the game show the Marshal rank with the numerically-highest number (10), while American versions give the Marshal the lowest number (1) to show the highest value (i.e. it is the #1 or most powerful tile). Recent American versions of the game which adopted the European system caused considerable complaint among American players who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. This may have been a factor in the release of a Nostalgic edition, in a wooden box, reproducing the Classic edition of the early 1970s.

Electronic Stratego was published by Milton Bradley in 1982. It has features that make many aspects of the game strikingly different from those of classic Stratego. Each type of playing piece in Electronic Stratego has a unique series of bumps on its bottom that are read by the game's battery-operated touch-sensitive "board". When attacking another piece a player hits his Strike button, presses his own piece and then the piece he is targeting: the game either rewards a successful attack or punishes a failed strike with an appropriate bit of music. In this way the players never know for certain the rank of the piece that wins the attack, only whether the attack wins, fails, or ties. Instead of choosing to move a piece, a player can opt to "probe" an opposing piece by hitting the Probe button and pressing down on the enemy piece: the game then beeps out a rough approximation of the strength of that piece. There are no bomb pieces: bombs are set using pegs placed on a touch-sensitive "peg board" that is closed from view prior to the start of the game. Hence, it is possible for a player to have his own piece occupying a square on which a bomb has been placed. If an opposing piece lands on the seemingly-empty square, the game plays the sound of an explosion and that piece is removed from play. As in classic Stratego, only a Miner can remove a bomb from play. A player who successfully captures the opposing Flag is rewarded with a triumphant bit of music from the 1812 Overture.

Strategy

In contrast to chess, Stratego is a game with incomplete information. In this respect it resembles somewhat such chess variants as Kriegspiel or dark chess. Collecting the information, planning, and strategic thinking play an important role in Stratego. Psychological aspects are very important too.

Overall strategy in Stratego involves:

  • placing one's pieces initially so as to protect the Flag, while possibly misleading the opponent as to where it is
  • making strong pieces available for attack
  • identifying patterns in the enemy's movement during game play that give clues as to the distribution of his or her forces

Placing the Spy too far forward, for example, makes it more likely to be captured early on, but placing it too far back may make it inaccessible when the enemy Marshal is identified. Likewise, Miners are weak, but their ability to defuse bombs may be needed early (although some players prefer to leave Bombs "unexploded" as long as possible, particularly if they hamper an opponent's movements). A cluster of Bombs around empty space may deceive one's opponent into thinking that the Flag is there when, in fact, it is on the other side of the board. The placement of "reserve troops" in the rearmost row and deployment of Scouts, which can move in an unimpeded straight line, is also a strategic point.

During game play, players must identify Bombs without sacrificing too many troops, determine the probable location of the enemy Flag, and form an attack plan that takes into account the likely ranks of the troops and exact location of the Bombs that usually surround the Flag. Misdirection plays a role, as well. For instance, if the opponent's Marshal wins its first battle (and is thus revealed), and a player immediately moves a piece near the back row on the other side, the opponent will probably assume that this piece is the Spy when, in fact, the Spy is on the other side of the board (and already close to the Marshal). Luring the opponent's Marshal next to the Spy so that the Spy can attack first is a common tactic. Bluffing is also important. One could threaten a known Colonel (rank 8) with an unrevealed Sergeant (rank 4) to convince the opponent to retreat.

Another popular misdirection play is the Shoreline Bluff (also called "the Lakeside Bluff"), i.e. placing the flag directly adjacent to one of the lakes[2] where the opponent may not think to look for it.[3]

Unofficial rules

While the rules mentioned above are given by the manufacturer of the game, players have spent time creating their own special rules. Some examples are listed below.

  • Spies kill any piece when they attack first, but they are killed when attacked.
  • Called the 'ninja spy rule' Spies are able to move and attack as Scouts can making the Scouts great bluffs once the Marshall has been revealed.
  • A piece of a designated value is allowed to move through the water squares with each lake counting as one square. Time limits have been placed on the time a piece may remain in the water squares.
  • Bombs can move, but are removed from play once they attack. Miners (3s or 8s, depending on the version of the game) are still able to disarm the bombs.
  • Flags can move, but not attack.
  • When two pieces of equal rank battle, the outcome is decided by a dice roll or other random device.
  • A piece of a designated value can move diagonally.

Shameless Self Promoter Marek Gehmann Rules

A more dynamic way of playing stratego, and in many ways more fluid, is the Marek Gehrmann version under the following rules:

  • Pieces can also move and attack diagonally.
  • One can either move or attack. But one can not do both. An attack is not a move.
  • Bombs can attack (But not move).
  • To attack, a player points at the attaking piece and the defending piece and says "This unit attacks this unit." After an attack, the losing piece(s) is/are removed but the attacking piece does not move (and does not take the place of the losing piece in this turn).
  • The scout can move up to 3 spaces and it does not have to be in a straight line as long as he does not jump over another piece (and they can not attack right at the end of a move).
  • Bombs are removed after each encounter. Which means they can only explode once.
  • The spy always beats the Field Marshal even if the spy is attacked by the Field Marshal.

References

  1. ^ http://www.edcollins.com/stratego/stratego-message-3.htm
  2. ^ http://www.edcollins.com/stratego/stratego-piece-setups.htm
  3. ^ http://www.edcollins.com/stratego/stratego-tips.htm

Trivia

  • Mayor Adam West in the TV show Family Guy makes a reference to this game on the episode "You May Now Kiss the...Uh...Guy Who Receives".
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