by Paul LaFontaine, 18 October 2026
Last year I visited Prague and used that as a base to visit the battlefield of Königgrätz, a trip that bordered on a spiritual experience for a Kriegsspiel Umpire. To prepare for the visit, I created an AAR of the historical battle using my Kriegsspiel pieces and iPhone, and wondered what it would be like to play a scenario of the battle while on the battlefield itself. Inspired, I brought the idea back to the US and went on to organize a trip this year to Shiloh, site of the 1862 Civil War battle in western Tennessee.
I wanted to start with a friendly audience. I invited nine friends for the weekend of Sept 17th. I did one reconnaissance to the area in May and arrived early before the weekend to set up. Once we had everyone gathered, we had sessions that built on each other over the course of three days. We did a terrain walk, then played a Kriegsspiel of the battle, then the following day toured the battlefield. There was plenty of time to socialize and discuss military history between the sessions.
The sequence mattered. Seeing the terrain for real made reading the map in the Kriegsspiel more informed. Having then made decisions about how to solve the problem of Shiloh in the Kriegsspiel made walking the battlefield the next day more informed. Each session changed how we experienced the next one.
The cost was shared equally and ended up when all the receipts were tallied at $450 per person, excluding each participant’s travel cost to the area. Traveling to a battlefield, organizing a walk and a wargame, is achievable and cost effective. Here are a few lessons I learned.
Solve the Logistics First
The first thing a wargamer thinks when scoping a project like this is which battlefield to visit, which game to play and who to invite. This is a natural consideration for a host wanting to create a superb experience for attendees. By the end I realized it is more efficient to flip the priorities around. The primary consideration is the practical suitability of a particular battlefield: the availability of Airbnb’s nearby, and the condition of the park or area where the battle took place. If you solve for these first, everything begins to take care of itself.
The hardest part of organizing the experience is housing and feeding everyone. If you lay out a plan for everyone to arrive, be assigned a room, have food they can eat several times a day, and sufficient transportation to move around, the battlefield portion will organize naturally. The group has already self-selected for people who are going to be interested in the topic.
Battlefields that are well maintained, like Shiloh, Gettysburg, Pea Ridge and others, are often not in areas where accommodation is plentiful. Shiloh has the lakeside community of Counce nearby, which has Airbnb’s for families to visit in the summer months. I was able to secure two high quality Airbnb’s that were 25-minute drives to the battlefield.
Most Airbnb’s have four bedrooms and additional beds are squeezed into various corners and common areas. This works for families, but for strangers who need a bit of privacy, it can be awkward. Despite the glitzy listing, there are not really six beds with privacy in the house. As a host, you will need to be on top of that.
Leaving items like a lunch or dinner to be figured out at the last minute is a recipe for things to go wrong. I organized 7 of the 8 meals ahead of time, as one of the participants volunteered to organize the final meal. For reasons not in anyone’s control, we had to organize that eighth meal at the last minute, and that was the one that caused the headaches.
most images can click to enlarge
Reconnaissance
I wanted the battlefield tour to fit the Kriegsspiel rather than simply follow a route designed for visitors in cars. I used the same battlefield map for both the game and the tour, which connected the two experiences. That meant making the game map first, then using it to plan the battlefield tour.
I did a cursory reconnaissance of the area and spent most of my time scouting the battlefield. When I do this again, I will devote one reconnaissance to the battlefield and another to the surrounding area: accommodations, restaurants, supermarkets and transportation. This experience is not just organizing a battlefield tour. It is hosting a group.
Terrain Walk
On the first day we did a terrain walk, which included the sights and sounds of battle, the distances, and then the physical geography of the battlefield. I got the idea late to use YouTube examples of cannon firing and muskets being fired at the brigade level, and we cobbled something together very quickly on the day. I would prepare this more effectively ahead of time in the next one.
Examples of videos that were enjoyed by the participants were drum and bugle calls, an example of the real Rebel Yell, a brigade firing their muskets, a Napoleon cannon firing, and the sound of incoming Civil War artillery. If this was packaged into a video that was easier to show on an Airbnb TV, it would be easier to share and feel more professional.
This is the terrain map we used and the stops for the first day’s terrain walk. The hourglass shape comes from a book on Shiloh, and we explored that shape on the battlefield. This was very effective. I think in the future I would add in more walks across fields where certain charges took place. We were a little too conservative staying near the cars. But overall, this was well received and set up the Kriegsspiel nicely.
The Kriegsspiel
I set up the Kriegsspiel in the main living room of the largest Airbnb. I brought a folding table to augment a dining room table and used the kitchen island as the umpire station. We had three Confederate command tables and two Union. The setup was very effective, and given the nature of a vacation home like this, I don’t think it could have been any better.
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.
During the planning phase, the Airbnb had enough room that the different command groups could use different rooms in the house. You see in this picture below the Union players planning their defense. The Confederate players were in an upstairs TV room planning their attack. This was very effective.
I created a custom set of pieces and a custom map for this experience, which is not necessary, but it was a nice touch that I wanted to add. You can use a standard Kriegsspiel set and maps, and the experience would have been good as well.
The Confederates attacked on a line of march that was similar to the historical, and the Union players also took the historical line. All of the participants read the advanced materials and are military history enthusiasts, so they were well schooled on the Shiloh battle. It is not surprising that they started with a setup and first moves that looked like the historical.
Deviating from the historical, the Confederates emphasized the Western Avenue as their main effort, and you can see here how they began to shape the battlefield toward cutting off the Union forces at Pittsburg Landing, while the reinforcements from Lew Wallace in the north were separated from their parent command.
The session ended with the Confederates still having combat capacity surrounding a largely exhausted Union force, and a heavy concentration of artillery slowing and stopping an early arrival from Lew Wallace in the north. We called the game here and had a discussion about the outcome. The fact that the outcome was not historical led to a very spirited discussion about the potential of whether this could have occurred, and all of the participants were very engaged in comparing the Kriegsspiel to the historical.This picture shows the discussion after the game.
With five command tables and nine participants, I needed an additional umpire. The turn timing was sufficiently fast at 8 minutes per turn, but the dispatches were piling up. As coordination between players is critical in a Kriegsspiel, I would have liked to have had a smoother dispatch process. This is important for a battlefield visit session because the availability of an additional umpire is not easy to solve. All the participants who come want to play in the Kriegsspiel. This is a problem that I have to solve in a future session by either having a qualified umpire who lives nearby join for the Kriegsspiel, or agreeing with one of the participants ahead of time that they will umpire.
Dinner with Expert
I was fortunate in that I invited historian Timothy B. Smith, who is an expert on Shiloh, to join us for dinner, and he was available. We had an excellent meal together and a spirited conversation about everything from the Battle of Shiloh to Jomini and Clausewitz. Tim is a fascinating and knowledgeable guy and an excellent dinner guest, particularly for a group of military history enthusiasts. We ate at the General’s Quarters in downtown Corinth, which was one block from where Albert Sidney Johnston had his headquarters prior to the battle, so it tied in nicely to the event. This was an added cost and not necessary for anyone who wants to run one of these events. We were fortunate to have Tim join, and he’s shown here on the left with the group.
Battlefield Visit
We spent about five hours walking the battlefield on Saturday. At various stops, participants gave short presentations on commanders they had studied, which led naturally into discussions of the battle and comparisons with decisions made during the Kriegsspiel the day before. Temperatures approached 100°F, so we adapted the route and spent less time away from the air-conditioned cars without sacrificing the major points we wanted to cover.
Group at Shiloh Church:
Closing Out
On Saturday evening, we had an informal dinner at the Airbnb and did a short closing ceremony of sorts, thanking everyone for their participation and getting feedback. One of our participants is an expert painter of miniatures, and we created little giveaway tokens of our appreciation that are quite nice. This also was more expensive and a bit more detailed than you really need. The point is that it was a nice touch to have something at the end that you could give everyone as a memento of their experience. This can be a plaque, a challenge coin, or something like a miniature, as shown in the photo below.
Cost
Tallying the costs of the excursion, the result is $450 per person excluding participants’ travel to the battlefield. That travel could be $150 to $500 depending on where they started.
The elements per person:
- Accommodation (Airbnb) – $250
- Food – $170
- Commemorative Item – $30
Total – $450
This is rural Tennessee, in the off-season, and I negotiated discounts on the Airbnb’s of 5-10%. This does include dinner for our guest historian. It does not include adult beverages, which are not insignificant if you purchase those individually.
As a host, you will spend money doing recon of the battlefield and rehearsing the route ahead of time. Add at least one extra night stay to your budget. With ten participants the total event cost including reconnaissance was $4,500 which was split between all, including the host.
Conclusions
I think the combination of battlefield terrain, simulation and sustained social time works. Each is readily available separately; together, they create a distinctive way of studying military history.
The sequence matters. Walking the terrain first makes the Kriegsspiel map real. The simulation then forces participants to make decisions about that terrain, giving them intellectual ownership of particular places. Returning to the battlefield afterward changes the experience again: you are no longer simply looking at the ground where someone else made a decision. You have wrestled with the decisions about that ground yourself.
Social time matters too. Roughly half the weekend involved the battlefield and Kriegsspiel; the other half was meals, conversation, watching football and simply being together. Three days and ten people seemed about right. The weekend had enough structure that no one had to figure out what to do next, but enough space that it never became a seminar.
Doing this is achievable. Our cost was about $450 per person before travel. A typical golf weekend can easily cost more than that. For the money, we spent three days with a group of like-minded people, studied a battle on the actual ground, fought it ourselves in a Kriegsspiel, and then went back onto the battlefield understanding it differently.
That is why I wanted to report the details rather than simply tell you we had a great weekend. Pick a battlefield, gather some friends, and try one. I am already planning my next one!
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