In German, the word Kriegsspiel means war game, and that term was applied to a variety of different strategy

games that attempted to replicate the thinking of commanders on a battlefield, including chess

and chess derivatives for most of history across the German-speaking world. But in the early

19th century,

it was more specifically applied to a collection of games

that utilized a grid and game pieces

that were meant to replicate actual military units,

like cavalry and artillery and infantry,

across actual geographies, hills, forests, rivers, and so on.

This game became quite popular, but it wasn't taken too seriously by the top military brass

because it failed to capture the true complexity of strategizing for a real-world battlefield,

and was still in many ways beholden to its ancestor games,

and that all the pieces could only move one space per turn.

The geographic features were limited to what the grid could present, so they were more

angular and rigid than would be the case in the real world, and because they typically failed

to replicate distance and military unit capabilities in any meaningful way.

They were more board game than war game, in other words.

Recognizing these shortcomings, an enthusiast of such games, and a Prussian nobleman,

so a guy with education and plenty of money and time to spend on such an endeavor named George Leopold

von Ryswitz developed an upgraded version of the game that still used little wooden blocks

to represent different units, but those little wooden blocks were moved across a large game board adorned with tiles

featuring different painted terrain, which could be rearranged to change up the battlefield

...