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A REVIEW BY JON FREEMAN
from the 1979 book The Playboy Winner's Guide to Board Games

 

Stratego (Milton Bradley Co.) may remind some of you of the outdoor game capture the flag, but it is more directly descended from an old board game called the jungle game. Each of the two players involved has a set of forty pieces, consisting of a Flag, some Bombs, and an army of men, ranking from a Marshal down to a Spy. The pieces are upright and shielded so that their identifying face is visible only to their owner; since the initial setup is left to the players' discretion, they have no way of knowing the identity of any of the opposing pieces until contact has been made.

Most pieces move one square orthogonally in any direction; in a turn, a player either moves a piece or, if one of his pieces is adjacent to an opposing piece, he may "strike" or "challenge" that enemy piece. At this point, the identities of the two men are revealed, and the "combat" is resolved simply: A higher-ranking piece removes a lesser-ranking piece (e.g., a Major captures a Captain; a Captain captures a Lieutenant) and takes its place; if both are of equal rank, both pieces are destroyed. There are two exceptions: a Bomb (which cannot move) destroys everything but a Miner, and the lowly Spy can assassinate the mighty Marshal if he strikes first. Quite often, the Spy is recognizable as the fellow tagging along behind his Marshal, being protected and awaiting his chance to strike; against a player familiar with this habit, the substitution of, say, a Scout for the Spy can provide a ruse whereby an unsuspecting Marshal can be exposed to a Spy lying in wait elsewhere.

The object is to find and capture the other player's Flag; this, however, inevitably follows a long period of mutual slaughter. If, at any time, one player can gain a one-man superiority in any of the higher-ranking pieces, he can usually force a victory by exchanging the other equal-and-higher-ranking men. Since the only remaining threat is a Bomb, which cannot move, all he has to do is destroy those pieces which do move, one at a time, until nothing but Bombs and the Flag are left; at that point, a Miner takes over, and the game is won. In such an instance, of course, the opposing player should long since have surrendered.

While there are more interesting other-service and mixed-service versions (notably Tri-Tactics) available in England, in its American incarnation Stratego suffers from a slow pace (the game can last hours) and limited scope for strategy and manuever alike. It has its adherents but I find it dull.

 

My comments:

Jon, if you don't enjoy the game because it "can last hours," then reduce the number of pieces in the game or play with other variations that reduce the playing time. (Have you ever played Barrage Stratego?)

If you find the game dull then use your imagination and liven it up a bit! See my Rule Variation section for dozens of different ways to alter the game to suit your own individual taste!

 

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