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Made in gb
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Killer Klaivex







A small piece of history/research for those who might be interested.

Miniature wargaming has been a thing for as long as small boys have had toy soldiers and imaginations with which to craft imaginary rules to dictate their engagements. The existence of miniature wargaming (as opposed to miniatures or wargaming separately) as a commercial product however, is of fairly more recent vintage. H.G. Well's Little Wars is commonly perceived as the first such game in 1913. For those with an interest, Fred T. Jane's naval wargame, although originally played with markers instead of models, is oft considered to predate it by a good half a decade (published officially in 1906).

Well, I believe I might have something to change that. Whilst doing research in the Admiralty papers in the National Archives, I've found reference to a previously undiscovered naval wargame, circa 1900, invented by Admiralty Officer George Fowler King-Hall.



Information is scarce. What I have is a set of internal Admiralty documents pertaining to development of strategy. In it however, a dozen odd mentions are made to 'Captain King-Hall's Tactical Naval Wargame' in various contexts by such luminaries as the Director of Naval Intelligence upwards. They discuss how the Admiralty Board 'are convinced that it is inadvisable in the highest degree to attempt to lay down definite rules as to the tactics to be followed in action', mentioning elsewhere that 'the majority of men will probably misapply them' in real life scenarios.

More interestingly however, the documents mention how despite this, it is still believed that the wargame and its models would be of use to younger officers in visualising, considering, and asking questions relating to Fleet movements and battle actions. Consequently, the decision was taken and approved to purchase a large quantity of sets of King-Hall's game and distribute them to warship captains across the fleet for that purpose. No less than 210 sets of King-Hall's Naval Tactical Wargame were procured from his stockists, the Army and Navy Co-operative Society (who initially panicked on account of the fact that they only had 27 boxes of the things to hand at the time).



The above is likely the first proper invoice for a miniature wargame ever produced (I speculate that any other copies would have likely been purchased individually by officers).

I'll be making more of a thorough trawl of the appropriate Admiralty documents over the next few years, and have just acquired permission to access King-Hall's diaries from the Ministry of Defence. So I hope to uncover more details on this rather interesting find. If I get lucky, I might even find some rules or photographs of what would appear to be the world's first proper miniature wargame!

EDIT:-

From further into the thread:-

Success! Here are the extracts I managed to find in a transcript King-Hall's diary:-

Spoiler:

10th February 1900 wrote:
Dind with C-in-C. Olga with me. 26 to dinner. C-in-C took in Olga.

The C-in-C, Admirals Noel and Lord Charles Beresford enraptured with my tactical Game. Sir John Fisher had me up and gave me the secret papers regarding the French plan of attacking our fleet and has asked me to devise plans of meeting it.


19th February 1900 wrote:
I am painting ship grey. C-in-C has written to Admiralty, forwarding my letter, which he states gives very clearly, advisability of the fleet being that colour and if their Lordships approve, will have the whole fleet done gradually.

Milne called on board and we had a long yarn. He told me French Fleet were in very good order. He was a month alongside of them last year. C-in-Chief ordered a dozen of my Tactical Games.


30th March 1900 wrote:Did some speed trials running 10 knots, reducing to 5 knots and seeing how far she ran before reduced to 5 knots.

A lot of officers to dinner, after which more came in, to whom I explained my Naval Tactical Game.


31 March - Saturday wrote:
A great paper chase. Joined the party for tea.


2 April - Thursday wrote:

Took up the appointment of Chief of Staff.

Olga and I this morning asked that wisdom might be given me to carry out the duties and with a single eye to God’s glory.

Gave a lecture before Sir John Fisher and Captains on my Tactical Games.


With all the talk of the RUSI earlier in the thread, it stirred a memory from one of my article dives. Acting on a hunch, I went through the RUSI back catalogue, and lo and behold! King-Hall actually gave a full description of his game there. So without much further ado:-

Spoiler:







As can be seen in the article, the models are:-

'small painted metal shapes fitted with a pin for convenience of moving them. The unpainted metal ones (or in the earlier issues, the partly-colored ones) denote that they are flagships. The black and white represent battleships and the red-green cruisers.




This message was edited 11 times. Last update was at 2018/06/27 20:56:26



 
   
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Fixture of Dakka





Southampton

Did it have Dwarf submarines though?

   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

Neat! Be interesting if you can turn up any more info on the game or even just on its use in the military.

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Killer Klaivex







I'll be honest, it's something of a 'throw darts at various historical sources and hope you hit something' approach. Given that not a single copy appears to have survived that I can locate, the finer details are likely to be lost to the sands of time indefinitely. His 'models' may well have been nothing but little metal game pieces of varying size/shape to represent ships; certainly I doubt they would be proper detailed miniatures.

Either way though, it would be the first known synthesis of a deliberately designed wargame with models packaged up for sale and played en masse.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/06/17 13:27:36



 
   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




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Aye, you might get luck searching out company records or even trying to find employees - you never know trace the family trees and you might find a copy someone knows of hidden in a loft

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Warwickscire

Oh, beautiful find. Fingers crossed you discover more.
   
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Canada

That was the best edition before Codex Creep ruined it!



Cool find!

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Stealthy Grot Snipa






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Fascinating stuff - congratulations on turning up something lost to history, that's a real achievement!

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Fresh-Faced New User




Durr. Naval game, not little wars. Never mind me.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/06/18 02:53:43


 
   
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Fresh-Faced New User




London, England.

This is really interesting, I can imagine the practice of using some sort of tokens/models/stones to help visualise strategy is ancient but the fact that this was apparently produced en masse for naval officers is fascinating.
   
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Awesome find and best of luck tracing that lead.

Personally I found the Prussians were completely overpowered.

 
   
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I wouldn't be surprised if there was still a copy of this buried away somewhere in some museum's archives. The problem would be finding it, as it may not even be cataloged under the right name.

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Gone-to-ground in the craters of Coventry

I had a poke around the Battleship "You sank my battleship!" boardgame, whether this would get a mention as an inspiration, but no mention so far.
Not likely, if this is as unknown as you are finding.

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MN (Currently in WY)

Since everyone was into modelling the Prussian General Staff at the time, and they really were into Kreigspiel using wodden blcoks it is no surprise to me that Naval versions started popping up around the turn of the centruy when people (even civilians) were starting to go looney over all things Naval.

Good luck tracking down more information.

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Fixture of Dakka





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Came across this which mentions a 1898 introduction to Jane's in The Engineer.

http://www.wargaming.co/recreation/details/articles/fredjane/reviewbyronlarnham.pdf

May or may not lead somewhere......

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Surrey, BC - Canada

Very interesting. As a formal naval officer I like the research you are doing.

Cheers,

CB

   
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Killer Klaivex







Easy E wrote:Since everyone was into modelling the Prussian General Staff at the time, and they really were into Kreigspiel using wodden blcoks it is no surprise to me that Naval versions started popping up around the turn of the centruy when people (even civilians) were starting to go looney over all things Naval.

Good luck tracking down more information.


The German Staff rides and general planning from this point were popular amongst those Army officers who looked to Germany as an example; but the shoe was something on the other foot when it came to the Navy. The Royal Navy was supreme and everybody watched and copied what they did in maritime scenarios more or less (the abortive French Jeune Ecole notwithstanding).

Furthermore, the Navy was not large on the concept of general staffs and advance planning; it was mooted as a possibility by the likes of Fisher, Beresford and few other forward thinkers at about this time, but otherwise ignored. Then Fisher became First Sea Lord in 1904 and on account of being a massive control freak and hating Beresford (who saw it as a way to attack Fisher), shut it down for his tenure as a possibility. Then Wilson was just as bad, etcetc.

That's what makes this more surprising than you might otherwise think. Admittedly it seems to be being pushed primarily by the DNI, who was still regarded by many as nothing more than a damned nuisance who assembled newspaper clippings and interfered at this stage, but still. The Board agreed, which is a bigger deal than you might think.

Tannhauser42 wrote:I wouldn't be surprised if there was still a copy of this buried away somewhere in some museum's archives. The problem would be finding it, as it may not even be cataloged under the right name.


Aye. I saw a Boer War game in the IWM from a few years later some time back that I meant to look into; but I can't remember the name of the blasted thing.

Orsino wrote:This is really interesting, I can imagine the practice of using some sort of tokens/models/stones to help visualise strategy is ancient but the fact that this was apparently produced en masse for naval officers is fascinating.


Chess, Shogi, and Go are the classics there, but none of them really represent an actual military unit in any meaningful tactical or strategic sense. I would surprised if the German general staff didn't also push tokens around on a map representing units to show appropriate battle formations and deployments; but it's the apparent existence of the paired ruleset that would mark this one out (even if it is the bit the Admiralty Board are the least keen on).

 monkeytroll wrote:
Came across this which mentions a 1898 introduction to Jane's in The Engineer.

http://www.wargaming.co/recreation/details/articles/fredjane/reviewbyronlarnham.pdf

May or may not lead somewhere......

Fred Jane had a great biography written by Richard Brooks (you can read about Fred kidnapping politicians in the most English way possible - not many such people use pub lunches), and given his game was in development from about 1898, I would be heavily surprised if the two creators hadn't met and discussed these things at some point. Jane's game relied on paper templates and tokens at this stage originally though; and the ruleset changed literally from game to game, as opposed to being codified. It was very much an ad hoc improvised affair at the turn of the century, and nowhere near a finished product.

Captain Brown wrote:Very interesting. As a formal naval officer I like the research you are doing.

Cheers,

CB

My research is actually into pre-war naval armament procurement, and I can honestly say I didn't expect it to veer into wargames at any stage when I started.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2018/06/18 20:18:32



 
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut





Germany

You are off by 30+ years. I'm pretty sure the first actual miniature wargame is "Kriegspiel", see here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel_(wargame)

It was developed during the napoleonic war and by the late 19th century there were versions for land and ship warfare.

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Chess doesn't quite count old bean, and neither does Prussian wargaming.

We're talking about miniature wargaming, that is to say, having artistically representative models (however bare bones) representing specific military units in a codified wargame with rules of engagement. Kriegspiel (regardless of the variant) doesn't quite tick that box. The wooden blocks pushed around a geographic map by the German staff aren't quite what we have in mind.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2018/06/19 16:22:07



 
   
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MN (Currently in WY)

You are researching an obscure niche all ready, but branching out into the history of Naval, Miniature wargaming is even more obscure and sounds like a ticket to publication!

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Good find! Always liked Jane's Naval Wargame.
   
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TN/AL/MS state line.

Eagerly awaiting more information from what you find.

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Excellent stuff. Well done. I know the National Railwau Museum has some excellent 19th century models in its collection.

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MN (Currently in WY)

As I think more about this topic, I know that the American War College made extensive use of model-based Naval wargaming. However, I am most familiar with their work int he inter-war years. I will have to dig around a bit to see what I can find any pre-WWI reference to the technique in a few of my sourcebooks.

Again, with the explosion in popularity of all things Naval at the turn fo the century triggered by Mahan's work (an American) I wonder if the US might have actually gotten the jump on the Brits in this aspect of Naval intelligence. Or for that matter other Naval powers such as the Japanese, French, etc.

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Ramsden Heath, Essex

Well done Ketara!

I’m sure this made your day in an otherwise dry slog of researching dusty records. I expect to see an article in Wargames Illustrated before year end!

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/06/21 02:54:08


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This is absolutely fascinating!

I had thought that Kriegsspiel was the first proper wargame, but it used simple blocks for units and wasn't a commercial product.


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Oh wow. That is so cool. I thought the Prussians were 19th century Wargamers though. Am I wrong? I will be following your progress. Thank you so much for your post!
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Very cool, it's made me wonder about the Ancient Greek D20 die in the MET, about 2200 years old. I hope they discover the rules manual that goes with it!

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There are a load of games from the 19th century. Although most were various kriegspeil variants (some commerical for recreation, most for military training purposes). Even from before photography was common and newspapers sent artists to sketch what they saw.



That's from 1888. It's a game called Polemos and was a commercial product that first went on sale in 1883. Illustrated there is a game played at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

More information on that game and many others can be found in John Curry's history of wargaming publications. I don't think much of what he produces is free as it's all books, but that's where to look if you're curious.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2018/06/25 13:07:30


Balance in pick up games? Two people, each with their own goals for the game, design half a board game on their own without knowing the layout of the board and hope it all works out. Good luck with that. The faster you can find like minded individuals who want the same things from the game as you, the better. 
   
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Killer Klaivex







 frozenwastes wrote:
There are a load of games from the 19th century. ...


Polemos pieces were originally played on a chessboard and looked/packaged/were sold like this:-



The fact that the RUSI scraped together a collection of toy soldiers to play a few games of the later canvas sheet version isn't quite what I'm talking about.

I'm referring to a commercially available boxed set of representative models/miniatures with a corresponding ruleset designed to replicate a tactical battlefield wargame. Not chess/shogi/Go,
not kriegspiel, or even a cross of the two (aka, Polemos), and not individual toy soldiers. All of those things were doubtless combined at some point by someone in their back room. Robert Louis Stephenson was writing his own rules and playing games with toy soldiers before the game I'm referring to above, as was (I believe) Winston Churchill. I'm well aware of those.

This is essentially about the combination of everything in one big package. If I didn't make that clear before now (since people keep dropping in to refer to Kriegspiel variants), I apologise for the miscommunication, but that's what I'm getting at.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/06/25 14:52:23



 
   
 
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