Marine wargames offer a look at the future — and fuel dissent

When Lieutenant Georg Heinrich ­Rudolph Johann von Reisswitz of the Prussian army presented his new game to his military leaders in 1824, wargames weren’t a new phenomenon.

The board game Reisswitz had crafted was an update of a prototype by his father, which itself was indebted to earlier wargames derived from chess, Milan Vego recounted in a 2012 article in the Naval War College Review. Like its predecessors, the junior Reisswitz’s game involved two sides of few players each making decisions about simulated military maneuvers.

Yet the game was revolutionary.

It brought a new level of reality to wargaming: a detailed map as the gameboard, umpires who challenged the players with realistic scenarios and precise calculations of casualties, Vego wrote. Karl von Mueffling, the chief of the general staff of the army, was mightily impressed.