The Prussian war game that trained staff officers for a century, and why its one limiting constraint — a skilled human umpire per table — just dissolved.
Kriegsspiel (1812) was not a board game with dice and a rulebook players argue over. Officers wrote orders in plain language and handed them to an umpire, who adjudicated with judgement, kept each side’s picture incomplete, and handed back reports. Fog of war was maintained by a person, not by rules. The free-form school — Free Kriegsspiel — trusted the umpire entirely, which is what made it trainable realism and what made it impossible to scale: every table needs its own expert referee.
For the actual rules history, the Kriegsspiel literature is the right place — this page is not a rules reference. It is the lineage claim behind one design decision: The Lattice is Free Kriegsspiel with the umpire’s chair filled by a model. Plain-language orders, a judging umpire, fog kept by the referee — at a scale of two full command trees on one front, with a war open to anyone in a browser.