by Paul LaFontaine, 4 October 2026
Moltke Problem 13 is about the preservation of forces. The answer to the problem is to not march your forces back and forth and diminish their strength before you have a chance to effectively oppose the enemy. It is a clean, clear answer. We played this problem with an eye to exploring this.
You can read a Moltke problem, understand it, and get the quick “solution” based on Moltke’s preferred approach. You can also study the problem more deeply by looking at alternatives that support or challenge that solution. And you can play the alternatives on the board to see how the dynamics of what actually happens as units move, commanders make decisions based on a limited understanding of the situation, and clashes occur on unique terrain. The lessons go well beyond the book solution.
Langbart, Lewis++ and Rebelsqurl command the Blue forces. They came up with a different approach to the problem than the one Moltke proposed, and it worked. Jacks and TheMitch commanded the Red forces and did a very nice job adapting to the situation after one of their forces were diverted onto a they did not expect to be on. The player who found himself so inconvenienced created a solution on the fly that was intelligent and could have led to success.
Because the players made two or three important decisions that determined the outcome, the larger structural formulation that Moltke put in his problems was actually superseded by the application of smart tactics. Moltke himself would have agreed that this is the nature of war, as he took a pragmatic approach to solving the problems of it.
The Problem As Stated in Moltke’s Tactical Problems, #13:
Your unit is a Division located at Tasdorf. Your Table of Organization consists of fifteen infantry battalions of 1000 men each, eight Dragoon squadrons of 150 saddles each, and four batteries of 6 pounder rifled guns (24 guns total).
most images can click to enlarge
Your mission is to secure the roads to Berlin, off-map to the west, in order to allow defensive preparations in the city to be completed. An enemy force to your east, which you have previously engaged, has withdrawn.
Your attempts to probe east of Kagel are vigorously repelled, informing you a strong enemy force is there. You receive a report that another enemy force has taken the town of Hohenstein, which lies to the northeast.
You are located with both brigades near Tasdorf. The enemy now occupies the entire area to your east. They now have two avenues of approach to Berlin, one from due east and another from the northeast. What are your orders?
Moltke’s Preferred Solution Problem 13
The division is to remain in place while sending a battalion north to the area south of Strausberg in order to keep that avenue observed.
This solution preserves the strength of your force. Whenever a unit marches, it suffers a kind of natural attrition, as soldiers drop from the formation for one reason or another. If your division marches north, and then has to march south again, it will lose strength needlessly. By remaining in place, your Division prevents this erosion of combat potential, and keeps it fresh for the inevitable march required to intercept the enemy advance from either north or east.
The Game Setup
This is another of a series of Kriegsspiel AARs very similar to the events in our Wargame HQ at the Origins Game Fair. You can find the original article here.
The Moltke Problem makes the Blue challenge clear. They are to react to the approach of the enemy. The Red force’s size is not clearly specified in the original problem, and I decided to make the Red force the same size as the Blue. They can pick their main avenue and try to concentrate. The reason for the force size was driven by the limit of units one player can control and still enjoy the game. All players have around 8 maneuver units plus support elements, which is the largest number we want to have for a good play experience.
The problem faced by each side was one of concentration. The terrain in the middle of the map creates two points that channel movement and present a puzzle for both sides about how to maintain enough flexibility to react to each other. As long as Blue can position forces such that they block or make impossible Red’s march toward the western edge of the map, they achieve Moltke’s desired outcome. If Red can concentrate more of its force against a smaller portion of Blue, defeat it, and then proceed to secure the passage west, which defeats Moltke’s objective conditions for Blue.
Blue Briefing
Your Division Commander has been ordered to protect Berlin which lies to the west, and he has had success. The Division has previously engaged and beaten back an enemy force equal in size to your own on the 3rd of June that withdrew to the east.
Your Order of Battle
Attempts to probe east of Kagel are vigorously repelled, informing you a strong enemy force is there. You receive a report that another enemy force has entered the town of Hohenstein, which lies to the northeast.
Your mission is to secure the roads to Berlin, off-map to the west, in order to allow defensive preparations in the city to be completed. It is the morning of 4 June. You can organize your forces as you wish within your two commands. What are your orders?
Red Briefing
Your unit is a Division moving on the lines north at Hohenstein and south at Kagel. The other division in your Corps lost a fight with the enemy at the ridge between Henneckendorf and Hersfelde yesterday. It has withdrawn east to reorganize.
Your Order of Battle:
Your army is marching to Berlin, which lies to the west. Your higher headquarters intent is to find a way through on either the Strausberg – Alt Landsberg Road or the Hersfelde – Tasdorf Road. After the failure of the previous effort, your commander is ordered to find a way through.
Strong enemy reconnaissance forces have been repelled north of Kagel and east of Strausberg. The enemy force is expected to be close to yours in size.
Identify their location and push past the lakes in order to open a way west for the remainder of your army.
Planning
The Red plan planned to feint from the northern avenue and draw the enemy in that direction, then for their southern force hit the enemy on its eastern flank.
They pulled this together, they overweighted Jacks force in the north to draw the enemy in that direction leaving TheMitch in the south to act as the flanking force.
The Blue plan specifically did not follow Moltke’s teaching. Langbart chose to push his force forward of the defensible terrain in what he described in the AAR as a forward defense. Lewis++ would screen this movement with the cavalry, while Rebelsqurl chose to march his forces northward to position closer to the northern enemy avenue of approach.
This is specifically the reverse of Moltke’s suggestion, in that Moltke’s point is to not march until you know where you need to march. However, our players maintained their flexibility by positioning Rebelsqurl at the intersection on the northern end of the line and Langbart at the southern end, such that Rebelsqurl could react to the enemy in either direction without having to countermarch. In essence, they did not follow Moltke’s specific prescription, but they followed the spirit of his lesson.
0800
Rebelsqurl heads north to the railroad crossing (1), Langbart crosses the bridges at Hinterberg to take its forward position (2). Lewis++ rides east toward Rehfelde (3). TheMitch heads west toward the mountain crossing (4), Jacks thinks the head of his column is farther west and orders it south, sending it down a route to the east toward Garzau (5).
0900
Here we see Langbart continuing to deploy in his forward positions (1) as Lewis++ screens to the southeast (2). TheMitch is well organized and pushing forward (3), while Rebelsqurl (4) begins to cut across on the rail line. Jacks has seen his situation is different than he expected, and rather than trying to reverse his column, he wisely continues to push south to see if he can develop the situation down by Rehfelde (5).
1100
By 1100, Langbart has a solid line from Hersefeld in the south up to the ridge line (1), and Lewis++ has ridden through the gap in two concentrations of Red force and is headed toward the high ground in the east (2). TheMitch pulls his lines up, ready to conduct an assault (3), while Jacks works his way down the ridge line to flank the end of the Blue line (4). The key point here is that Rebelsqurl is still oriented north (5), and if he maintains his orientation in that way, Langbart is going to be outnumbered and on the forward slopes of the high ground in the center of the battle area.
1300
By 1300, Langbart is outnumbered and being pressed back across the front by the combined Red forces (1). He has problems in the south with TheMitch pushing there (2). Lewis++ has worked his way around toward Garzau behind Jacks (3). In one of the key decisions of the scenario, Rebelsqurl has reversed course (4). He’s now coming to help shore up the Blue line as he moves down the rail line.
1400
Rebelsqurl has arrived on time and begins to attack in the enemy flank. Lewis++ comes in behind and attacks from the northeast (1). Jacks is now overmatched which puts pressure on the north and relieves Langbart’s situation. TheMitch has broken through and separated the Red forces in the south (2).
1500
TheMitch has bottled up the Blue forces in the south, though he’s exhausted his units in the process. Rebelsqurl and Lewis++’s attacks in the north have pushed Jacks south, and the Red effort has been contained. Blue is successful in this scenario. Though they did not follow Moltke’s prescription, they were able to use concentration to prevail.
Umpire Analysis
The tendency in playing a Moltke problem is to play the scenario and give the players a go or no-go based on whether they conformed to Moltke’s published solution. Moltke was not simply interested in providing an approved solution. He was more interested in the thinking process that the problem created in the student officer.
The fact that our Blue players, Langbart, Lewis++ and Rebelsqurl, thoughtfully decided to create a forward defense with flexibility in the center demonstrates a process that took into consideration the mission, the terrain, and a unique approach to the problem. They passed the test of flexibly arraying themselves for the defense.
On the Red side, once Jacks discovered that his force had moved south on a road he had not anticipated, he did not countermarch or panic. He simply took that information and continued the mission within a new framework. This is precisely the kind of thought process that Moltke was trying to train. Jacks gets high marks for his handling of the situation in the Moltke problem.
The game being used is Battle Decisions: Kriegsspiel from Catastrophe Games.
On the Red team, TheMitch marched west and attempted a very smart tactical maneuver by splitting Langbart’s forces, using his position to carve apart the enemy defense. This would have worked very well if Rebelsqurl had not appeared on the northern flank, freeing up Langbart’s forces to deal with TheMitch’s tactical move. Given what he knew and what he saw, TheMitch also gets high marks for making decisions on the spot that took advantage of the terrain and the situation.
We never attempt in our after-action reviews to speak on Moltke’s behalf. That is impossible. However, if we put on the table that the teaching point of our scenario was economy of force, and that decisions were to be organized around using forces wisely and husbanding resources well, then we could say that all of our players were adept at executing that idea. Each major move and reaction to the developing situation had the mission in mind, and the tactical decisions arose from attempts to shape the situation in support of that mission.
In that case, who won? On a mechanical basis, Blue was able to achieve its objective and screen the Red force from reaching the western end of the board, denying it the ability to open a march toward Berlin. The Blue force therefore can be said to have been victorious.
Additionally, when you look at the individual actions of the players on the Red team, and at the way all four players constructed their decision-making, you can say, with deeply qualified information: well played. It was a scenario in which all four players demonstrated well formed decision-making and capable play.
From a mechanics perspective, the game used 15-minute turns because we had a large number of pieces on each side, close to the maximum, and I was using the numbers-on-a-screenshot approach, which takes too much time per turn.
I devised the numbers-on-a-screenshot approach to try to mimic the live experience of walking up, pointing to the board, and explaining what is happening. When playing by Discord, you cannot necessarily point, so I was trying to recreate that experience. I think, however, that creating four individual screenshots with numbers at different points is too slow. It was adding multiple minutes per turn, which violates the sanctity of the 10-minute turn.
We cannot exactly recreate the in-person experience through Discord; we can only adhere to the necessity of the 10-minute turn. In the future, I am going to stream a screenshot in Discord where I can draw directly on the map. I will mark each situation on the map as I give the verbal update, which should more closely mimic in-person play while reducing the amount of time required for each turn. This should offset the time problem.
With feedback from the players, I realized that there is an important missing piece when playing by Discord. When we play in person, the pieces on the board are the literal expression of the player’s order of battle. For example, if a player has five infantry units on the board and one routes off the field, the umpire points to that piece, explains that it has routed, and removes it from the board. When it is time for the next turn, the player can see that he now has four units. With a numbered screenshot through Discord, the clarity of those five units becoming four is lost, and the player can become somewhat disconnected from what is actually on the board. This is not a matter of providing min-max information, but of maintaining the general order of battle and status of forces that a commander would naturally have in battle. This has to be rectified.
When taking screenshots with a phone camera of the umpire board and using those to distribute information, players prefer that less than receiving general information about the units and having to construct their own picture of the forces. However, giving general information by pointing on the board loses the clarity of order of battle that helps players remain oriented to what they have left on the field. The answer may be to include that information explicitly in the verbal report: “You have four infantry units left on the field,” rather than simply pointing out more general information about their locations. This sense of order of battle has to be reintroduced to make this specific live Discord format work.
We will reintroduce that, test it, and come back with the results here. Or perhaps you will join us in one of our games, and we’ll be able to test it together. We’ll see you out there.
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