Stratego is a two-player board game requiring strategy and memory. The objective is to be the first player to either capture your opponent’s Flag or all of their mobile pieces. You accomplish this by using your own army pieces to assault your opponent’s army pieces. Each army piece has a unique rank, and some have unique skills. You have two options during your turns: moving a piece or attacking one of your opponent’s pieces. You can play Stratego once you have the game and have learned the rules.
The current game, which features iconography from Napoleon, was created by Jumbo in the Netherlands and distributed in the United States under license from the Milton Bradley Company in 1961. Milton Bradley released Electronic Stratego in 1982. The game is particularly famous in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium, where regular national and world championships are held.
As the game begins, both players place their 40 playing pieces in any desired starting formation while remaining initially concealed from one another. One of the pieces in Stratego is the Scout. Here in this blog, we will elaborate on how to use your Scout in Stratego.
Scout rules you must know
An avid Stratego player would know that the scouts are the weakest moveable pieces in the game. However, they have the potential to move many spaces as they choose in a straight line and can even fight during the same turn. Furthermore, a scout could only attack pieces in earlier iterations of the game if it started its turn next to them. The Scout can move over many squares in more recent iterations of the game, with the goal of attacking an opponent’s piece.
Some basic Scout Rules in the Stratego Board games are-
- Scouts can be used for 4 different and varied tasks. These are scouting, bluffing, flag scouting, and spy scouting.
- The identity of the scout is exposed whenever it moves more than one space on the board. Additionally, the players must move one scout one square at a time if they wish to conceal the identity of their scout.
- A player can move their scout backward, sideways, and forward. This can be done for any number of open spaces. However, the only constraint here is that it should only be done in a straight line.
- The scouts cannot move diagonally. The rules of Stratego state that these pieces must only be moved in a straight line.
- Scouts in the game are the only pieces that can move and attack in the same turn.
How many spaces can a scout move?
As stated above, the scouts are powerful in the way which they can move in all directions, except moving diagonally. This means a scout can move forward, backward, and sideways across any number of open squares. Furthermore, they can also attack as they move. But, if it moves more than one block, the opponent can easily get to know the identity of the piece.
Here are some other crucial things you must know about scouts in Stratego:
- Despite their moves and actions, Scouts are the weakest moveable pieces in Stratego.
- Scouts can be used to catch spies. These are the pieces that enter one’s area while positioned on the other side of the board. But, this can be done only by moving in a straight line.
- Scouts can move any number of spaces in a straight line and even attack the same turn.
- As soon as they move more than one space, they are recognized as a scout, therefore moving them one space at a time until necessary maximizes their effectiveness.
- Although they are weak, when the board is more obvious toward the end of the game, scouts are particularly helpful. They can be used to spot back-row explosives, expose bluffs, or even win the flag.
Conclusion
Players may initially find the rules of board games like Stratego to be a little confusing. The rules are actually quite simple to understand once you begin playing and become accustomed to the game. Unlike chess and go, where players can see the names of their opponent’s pieces up close, stratego is a game of imperfect information. It’s a game of bluff and strategy, of accumulating information and cunning movement. Furthermore, because the game is zero-sum, any advantage one person may have is comparable to a disadvantage that may be experienced by an opponent.