Stratego

Stratego is a strategy board game featuring a 10 by 10 square board and two players with 40 tiles each. One player uses red tiles, one player uses blue tiles.

Tiles are colored on both sides, so players can distinguish between their own and their opponent's. But the ranks are printed on one side only, and placed such that players cannot identify specific opponent's pieces. Players may arrange their 40 tiles in any configuration on a designated 4 x 10 section of the playing board.

Such pre-play distinguishes the fundamental strategy of particular players, and largely determines the outcome of the game.

Each player can move one tile per turn. If a tile is moved onto a square occupied by an opposing tile, their identities are revealed; and the weaker tile is removed from the board. Ties result in both tiles being removed.

From highest rank to lowest the movable tiles are:

• Marshal,
• General,
• Colonel,
• Major,
• Captain,
• Lieutenant,
• Sergeant,
• Miner,
• Scout,
• Spy.

The immovable tiles are the Bomb and the Flag.

The object of the game is to find and capture the opponents flag piece, or to capture so many pieces that the opponent cannot move any more.

For most tiles, the rank alone determines the outcome, but there are special tiles: The Bombs (which only Miners can defuse, but are unable to move) and the Spy (which wins an attack against the highest ranked tile, the Marshal, but loses when attacked by any piece, including the Marshal).

Stratego's origins go back to a game called "L'attaque" that appeared in Europe before World War I. Thierry Depaulis writes on Ed's Stratego Site (link below),

"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 - still to be identified - was selling the game as L'Attaque as early as 1910... "

Depaulis further notes that in 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, and was licensed by the Milton Bradley Company for American distribution, and first published in the US 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 2-player game with fewer pieces) and Reserves (reinforcements in the 3- and 4-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 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.

Tiles were originally made of printed cardboard; after World War II, painted wood became standard, but starting in the late 1960s all versions had plastic tiles. The change from wood to plastic was not made so much for economy, but because the wooden tiles tended to fall over, but the plastic tiles could be designed not to. European versions introduced cylindrical castle-shaped pieces that proved to be popular. American variants introduced new rectangular pieces with a more stable base and faces determined by 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 is dominated by players from the Netherlands (as of 2001).

European versions of the game show the Marshall rank with the numerically highest number (10), while American versions give the Marshall lowest number (1) to show the highest value. Recent American versions of the game that adopted the European system caused considerable complaint among American players who grew up in the 1960s and '70s. 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.

There have been two official releases of software version of Stratego, both of which played weakly against human opponents.

In the TV series The X-Files, Mulder's sister Samantha is abducted whilst the siblings were playing Stratego.