W Von Tschischwitz 1872 Rules for the Conduct of the War-game (The War-game Library Supplements, No. 5)

One of a numbered edition, this being No. 82.  48pp stapled booklet in printed light card covers.  Folio.  Covers are soiled and spotted, with a curling crease over the lower rear corner.  Previous owner’s blind embossed stamp on the front cover, twice, and on the title page, else internally neat, clean and tight.  Three folded, loosely inserted appendices reproduce Baring’s original combat reference charts.

Wilhelm von Tschischwitz was a Prussian army officer who published an influential Kriegsspeil (Prussian wargame) manual in 1862, incorporating modern military technologies and simplifying the rules of earlier Prussian wargames, making them faster, more accessible and better for the wider training of the Prussian military.  An English language translation was compiled by Captain Evelyn Baring and published in 1872.  The manual was endorsed by the Commander in Chief and made mandatory across various British military units.  Baring’s manual sparked widespread interest in tactical gaming and led to the formation of dedicated warming groups, crossing the Atlantic and heavily influencing early American military simulations.  This is a facsimile reproduction of that publication.  The exact 1872 rules are rarely used today but its core framework is popular among the historical hobby and wargaming communities. Leeson’s production of the this exact reprint of Captain Baring’s English translation revived interest in Baring’s rules, rescuing them from obscurity.  

This copy from the library of the late George R P Gush.  Gush  was head of history at West Kent College but is perhaps better remembered as a key contributor to the development of early wargaming, and as an active wargamer especially in Renaissance wargames.  His Renaissance Armies (1975) has become a classic work on the topic.  He founded the Tunbridge Wells Wargames Society in the late 1960s, remaining its chairman until 2007.  A regular contributor to various wargaming and modelling magazines, he authored with Andrew Finch  A Guide to Wargaming (1980) and the well-regarded Wargames Rules for Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries.  Gush’s Guide to Wargaming contains a chapter tracing the history of professional Kreigsspiel and how it transitioned into the table hobby, referencing the research done by Leeson in reprinting the rules.