Editing Wargame (section)

===Early Prussian wargames (1780–1806)===
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The first wargame was invented in [[Prussia]] in 1780 by [[Johann Christian Ludwig Hellwig]]. Hellwig's wargame was the first true wargame because it attempted to be realistic enough to teach useful lessons in military strategy to future army officers. Hellwig was a college professor and many of his students were aristocrats destined for military service. But Hellwig also wanted to sell his wargame commercially as a recreational item. Hellwig chose to base his game on chess so as to make it attractive and accessible to chess players.<ref>In a letter from Hellwig, dated 26 September 1801, quoted in {{harvp|Heistand|1898}}:<br />"The first thought which presented itself to my mind was that the learning of my game ought not to be burdened with too many details if it was to fulfill its mission.  I judged from the first that I should achieve my object in the quickest way if I took for its basis the game of chess, in favor with so many distinguished persons of all ranks. My idea was to adapt, as far as possible, the game of chess to my own game, in order so to interest amateurs that they would at least give mine a trial. [...] experience confirmed the wisdom of my expectations, for chess players were the first to welcome my invention [...]"</ref> Hellwig published a second edition of his rulebook in 1803.

As in chess, Hellwig's game was played on a grid of squares, but it was a much larger grid, and the squares were color-coded to represent different types of terrain: mountains, swamp, water, trenches, etc. The layout of the terrain was not fixed, which allowed players to create their own custom battlefields. The pieces in the game represented real military units: cavalry, infantry, artillery, and various support units. As in chess, only a single piece could occupy a square, and the pieces moved square by square, either laterally or diagonally. Over normal terrain, infantry could move a maximum distance of eight squares, dragoons could move twelve squares, and light cavalry could move sixteen squares&mdash;intuitively mirroring the speed at which these units move in the real world. But terrain could impede movement: mountains were impassable, swamps slowed units down, rivers could only be crossed with the help of a special pontoon unit, etc. A player could only move one piece per turn, or one group of pieces if they were arranged in a rectangle. A piece could capture an enemy piece by moving into its square, just like in chess, but infantry and artillery pieces could also shoot enemy pieces, at a maximum ranges of two to three squares. Unlike chess, the pieces had orientation: for instance, an infantry piece could only shoot an enemy piece if they were facing it and flanking it.<ref>{{harvp|Peterson|2012}}:<br />"Infantry and artillery units may discharge their firearms instead of advancing on an enemy; if an infantry unit destroys an enemy with gunfire, that enemy is removed from the board but the infantry unit does not advance to occupy the vacated position. The efficacy of rifles rests largely on the orientation of the opposing unit: infantry units facing one another enjoy effectively immunity to one another’s gunfire, so only flanking fire had an effect."</ref><ref>{{harvp|Nohr|Böhme|2009|p=50-58}}</ref> Hellwig's wargame could also simulate the fog of war to limited degree: while the players were arranging their pieces in their starting positions, they had the option of placing a screen across the board so that they could not observe their opponent's arrangement until the game started. Once the game was in progress, however, there was no hiding anything.

Hellwig's wargame was a commercial success, and inspired other inventors to develop their own chess-like wargames.<ref>{{harvp|Heistand|1898|p=240}}</ref> In 1796, another Prussian named Johann Georg Julius Venturini invented his own wargame, inspired by Hellwig's game. Venturini's game was played on an even larger grid.<ref>{{harvp|Peterson|2012}}:<br />"Although Venturini replaced the wargame board with a map, he still imposed a one-inch square grid over that map, and he imagined each square of the grid to be two thousand paces (Schritte) across, which if we assume a German military pace of rough thirty inches, means his game employs a scale around 1:60,000, or a bit shy of one mile per square."</ref> Venturini's game also added rules governing logistics, such as supply convoys and mobile bakeries, and the effects of weather and seasons, making this perhaps the first operational-level wargame.<ref>{{harvp|Peterson|2012}}: "Venturini increases the variety of terrain, takes into account seasons and weather, vastly increases the sorts of entrenchments and fortifications that combatants might construct, and adds significant, but not necessarily exciting, detail to the feeding, equipping and support of forces in the field."</ref><ref>{{harvp|Creveld|2013|p=146}}</ref> In 1806, an Austrian named Johann Ferdinand Opiz developed a wargame aimed at both civilian and military markets. Like Hellwig's game, it used a modular grid-based board. But unlike Hellwig's game, Opiz's game used dice rolls to simulate the unpredictability of real warfare. This innovation was controversial at the time.<ref name=Schuurman2017>{{harvp|Schuurman|2017}}</ref> Hellwig, who designed his wargame for both leisure as well as instruction, felt that introducing chance would spoil the fun.<ref>{{harvp|Hellwig|1803|p=iii}}:<br />'''trans.''':"A secondary intention was to give a pleasant entertainment to a person who did not need such instruction through a game in which nothing depends on chance but on the direction of the player."</ref>

A criticism of the chess-like wargames of Hellwig, Venturini, and Opiz was that the pieces were constrained to move across a grid in chess-like fashion. Only a single piece could occupy a square, even if that square represented a square mile; and the pieces had to move square by square, their exact location within a square being immaterial. The grid also forced the terrain into unnatural forms, such as rivers that flowed in straight lines and bent at right angles.<ref>{{harvp|Peterson|2012}}:<br />"...the grid imposed on the wargames of Hellwig and Venturini significantly limited the capacity of these systems to represent the position of troops realistically. Effectively, in a board wargame divided into squares of a scale mile across, there is only one position that troops within a mile’s range could hold."</ref><ref>{{harvp|Reisswitz|1824}}: "In these early attempts the landscape had been forced into squares and triangles, with rivers, seas, villages, mountains, valleys and so on pushed out of their natural shapes and into straight lines. In the same way movements of troops, the representation of troop types, the effect of firepower, were also severely modified in such a way that a realistic picture of events failed to be produced."</ref> This lack of realism meant that no army took these wargames seriously.