Choose your army and the calibre of your opponent on the opening sheet, then press Lay the board. Nine terrain squares are drawn and laid, and both armies deploy.
Each army has 8 orders a turn, and the two armies spend them alternately: you give one order, then your opponent gives one, and so on until both allowances are gone. No piece may take more than one order in a turn. The initiative — who gives the first order of the turn — changes hands every turn. The action lasts 24 turns.
Click one of your pieces to take it in hand. The ground it may occupy is shaded, and the enemies it may strike are ringed. Hover any shaded hex and the route is traced hex by hex with a chip quoting what it costs against the piece's allowance. Click to send it.
Ground costs movement to enter: open ground and roads are quick, wood is slow, marsh is slower still and closed to horse, and water may only be crossed at a bridge or a ford. A piece that moves next to an enemy must halt there.
With one of your pieces in hand, click an adjacent enemy to attack it, or — if you have artillery in hand — any enemy within reach and in view to bombard it. Hover the enemy first and the card prints the whole sum before you commit. There are no dice: add the attacker's number, what its arm gains or loses on that ground, and one for each friendly piece already beside the defender (up to three); set against it the defender's number, the cover of its ground, and less two if it is in disorder. The difference decides it:
The full working of every attack is entered in the ledger beside the board.
Musketeers march 2 attack 3 defence 3
Grenadiers march 2 attack 4 defence 3
Jäger march 3 attack 2 defence 2
Dragoons march 4 attack 4 defence 2
Hussars march 5 attack 2 defence 1
Artillery march 1 attack 1 defence 1
Pontoniers march 2 attack 0 defence 1
Miners march 2 attack 1 defence 2
The same three conditions run against you. If your fortress is occupied, or you lose 5 pieces, or you hold the poorer of the field at nightfall, the day is lost. An equal count at nightfall leaves the field disputed.
The action is saved automatically after every order, yours and the machine's,
in this browser's own storage under the single key tronsoft_hellwigs_wargame_save. Nothing is sent
anywhere. Close the page whenever you like and press Resume the action
on the opening sheet to pick it up. If your browser refuses storage — private
browsing will — the game still plays; it simply will not remember.
Reload the page and press Lay the board for a fresh action on new country. Finishing an action clears the saved game, and the closing sheet offers New action directly.
Drag to pan, wheel or pinch to zoom, or use the buttons at the corner of the
map. Arrow keys scroll, + and - zoom, 0 fits the whole plate,
N takes up the next piece that has not moved, space stands fast for the
rest of the turn, R opens the rules and Esc puts a piece down.
The left side of the desktop board now carries a compact command summary: mission objectives, the active army and initiative, losses toward the break point, villages held, field points, and the remaining daylight. Quick commands repeat the most-used controls: next piece, fit map, rules, and stand fast. On narrower screens this panel folds away so the battlefield keeps priority.
The header shows the autosave state. The Menu button pauses the action and returns to the opening sheet; use Resume the action to continue from the saved position.
The left panel now includes a miniature battlefield. Click it to recenter the main map. Selecting a piece shows reachable ground and currently available attacks.
Display controls can hide movement shading, the hex grid, terrain names, or terrain-square seams. Tempo controls the speed of animations and machine play.
Keys: C center selected, F full screen, L terrain names, G hex grid.
The left panel now keeps a local running view of recent action notes. Use Copy Log to place those notes on the clipboard, or Clear View to empty only the on-screen history.
The quick-reference panel summarizes the most useful keys. Keyboard focus is now visibly indicated, and the battlefield overview can be focused and activated from the keyboard.
Every action is generated from a numeric battlefield seed. Enter a seed on the opening sheet to reproduce the same terrain and initial deployment, or use Randomize for a fresh field.
The active seed appears in the Scenario panel during play. Copy Report creates a compact text summary of the current action, including the seed, losses, villages, field points, result, and recent action notes.
The Tactical Analysis panel summarizes the local situation and, for a selected piece, shows the distance to the nearest enemy and nearest village. Use the panel buttons or the H and V keys to jump to those locations.
After an action you can replay the same battlefield seed for a direct rematch, or generate a new field immediately.
The Order of Battle panel lists the active player’s units by arm of service. A unit is marked Ready, Spent, or Lost. Click a living unit to select it and center the battlefield on it.
Use the All, Ready, and Spent filters to narrow the roster. N moves forward through unmoved pieces and P moves backward.
The Commander’s View can now show an enemy-threat overlay and highlight village objectives. These overlays are optional and can be toggled with the checkboxes or the T and O keys.
Battlefield Snapshot saves the current canvas view as a PNG. The filename includes the active battlefield seed so screenshots can be matched to the correct scenario.
The Combat Staff panel lists attacks that are presently available to ready pieces. Close attacks show the calculated attack-versus-defence values before commitment, while bombardments show the firing distance.
Use Army mode to inspect all available engagements or Selected mode to look only at the piece in hand. Click a row to select the attacker and center the battlefield on its target. The A key moves keyboard focus to the attack browser.
The After-Action Review panel records the field score over the course of an action. It also tracks losses and village control at each recorded turn so you can see when the balance of the battle changed.
Copy AAR exports the timeline as plain text. Reset Chart clears only the review history; it does not restart or alter the battle. Press J to jump to the review panel.
The Operations panel can export the current action as a JSON file. Import that file later to restore the battle state, player side, AI setting, display preferences, and After-Action Review history.
Scenario codes are smaller: they reproduce the battlefield seed and basic setup, but not the current turn or unit positions. Use them for fresh rematches or sharing a scenario.
Press S to export the current action.