First English edition, first printing (first published in the original German in 1824). xvi, 124pp, with figures and diagrams in text, complete with folding map and other player charts and tables in swatch over the rear pastedown. Black cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering on spine. 8vo. Volume is neat, clean, bright and tight throughout, barring the paper swatch holding the map and cards at rear, which is a little creased and bumped. In its original dust wrapper, lightly bumped on extreme edges, gently rubbed on corners and spine ends.
Reisswitz (1794-1827), a Prussian Army officer, is credited with inventing wargaming. Kreigsspiel was the first wargaming approach accepted as tool for army training and research. His wargaming manual was published in Berlin in the original German in 1824; this is the first English translation of that work.
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.
