What is... Stratego?

Stratego is a strategy board game played on a square grid which represents a battlefield, and like actual battlefields, there are sections that aren't traversable. The game is played by two players, each having an army made up of a number of troops and some bombs. Each player also has a flag to defend, the aim of the game is to capture the opponents flag. Each troop has an individual rank, in a conflict the piece with the highest rank wins. At the start of the game, each player places their pieces anywhere they choose onto their side of the board, arranging their troops and bombs to protect their flag. Unlike games such as Chess, although both players have the same amount of pieces, neither player knows where their opponents pieces are placed as the backs of them are blank.

The most interesting thing with the game is that, quite like an actual war, each player has no idea where their opponent has deployed their troops and quite like a leader of an army, they have to decide how to arrange their ranks of troops, whether that be having the lower ranks leading the charge, or putting their strongest soldiers up front. Although the game clearly took influence from chess, it built upon it to reflect the thing it was emulating. I like how the player is able to position their own troops how they see fit and use different tactics and strategies to try and defeat their opponent.

Although the modern version of the game was released originally in 1946, there were earlier games with similar rules and gameplay that clearly influenced the now classic Stratego. There are a number of similarly playing games originating in China, and whilst often considered old games, their date of inception is unknown. There was however an early predecessor designed by Mademoiselle Hermance Edan in France. The patent for the game was filed in 1908 and released in 1909. Although Edan had not given the game a name at the time, a manufacturer started producing and selling the game as "L'Attaque".