page_title: Stratego
section_title: Gameplay
hierarchical_section_title: Stratego / Gameplay
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a screenshot of implementation of Stratego for Zillions of Games engine. The graphics was created by Andreas Kaufmann.
context_page_description: Stratego is a strategy board game for two players on a board of 10×10 squares. Each player controls 40 pieces representing individual officer and soldier ranks in an army. The pieces have Napoleonic insignia. The objective of the game is to find and capture the opponent's Flag, or to capture so many enemy pieces that the opponent cannot make any further moves. Stratego has simple enough rules for young children to play but a depth of strategy that is also appealing to adults. The game is a slightly modified copy of an early 20th century French game named L'Attaque. It has been in production in Europe since World War II and the United States since 1961. There are now two- and four-handed versions, versions with 10, 30 or 40 pieces per player, and boards with smaller sizes. There are also variant pieces and different rulesets.
  The International Stratego Federation, the game's governing body, sponsors an annual Stratego World Championship.
context_section_description: Players alternate moving; red moves first.  Each player moves one piece per turn.  A player must move a piece in his turn; there is no "pass" (like that in the game of Go).
  Two zones in the middle of the board, each 2×2, cannot be entered by either player's pieces at any time. They are shown as lakes on the battlefield and serve as choke points to make frontal assaults less direct.
  The game can be won by capturing the opponent's Flag, or all of his moveable pieces. It is possible to have ranked pieces that are not moveable because they are trapped behind bombs.
  The average game has 381 moves. The number of legal positions is 10¹¹⁵. The number of possible games is 10⁵³⁵.  Stratego has many more moves and substantially greater complexity than other familiar games like chess and backgammon; however, unlike those games where a single bad move at any point may result in loss of the game, most moves in Stratego are inconsequential.
caption: Computer software version of Stratego
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