Stratego Rules

These are original restatements of the common classic tabletop rules this site uses. They are not a copy of any publisher’s manual. Where tabletop printings disagree, the chosen judgment is written out instead of pretending to be official text.

Play them on the online board, skim the 40-piece list, or start from how to play Stratego.

Board

The field is 10 files by 10 ranks. Two lakes sit in the middle: each lake is a 2×2 block of squares that no piece may enter or cross. Red sets up on the four nearest rows, Blue on the four farthest rows. The two middle ranks are empty except for the lakes.

Armies

Each side has 40 pieces: one Flag, six Bombs, one Marshal, one General, two Colonels, three Majors, four Captains, four Lieutenants, four Sergeants, five Miners, eight Scouts, and one Spy. That is twelve ranks, not forty invented types. Ranks on this site use the modern European numbering: Marshal 10 down to Spy 1.

Turns and movement

Red moves first. You must move one piece each turn. Most movable pieces step one square orthogonally, never diagonally, never onto a friendly piece, never onto a lake. The Flag and Bombs never move. A Scout may slide any number of empty squares in a straight orthogonal line, like a rook that cannot jump, and may attack at the end of that slide. Older boxed printings sometimes forbade a Scout from attacking after a long slide; this site uses the later common tabletop judgment that a Scout may move and strike in the same turn.

Attacks

You attack by moving onto an enemy square. Both ranks are shown. The lower rank is removed and the winner occupies the square. Equal ranks both leave. Special cases:

• A Miner attacking a Bomb removes the Bomb and occupies the square.
• Any other piece attacking a Bomb is removed; the Bomb stays.
• A Spy attacking the Marshal removes the Marshal. If the Marshal attacks the Spy, the Spy is removed.
• Attacking the Flag wins the game.

Winning

You win by capturing the enemy Flag, or when the player who should move has no legal move. Bombs and Flags do not count as movable pieces. A trapped army behind its own bombs can lose without the Flag being touched.

Anti-repeat movement

Two-Squares (this site, matching the common boxed anti-oscillation): the same piece may not move back and forth between the same two squares for a fourth consecutive move. After A→B, B→A, A→B, returning to A is illegal. Wikipedia’s restatement of the published movement rules describes that two-square limit; we did not copy a publisher manual.

More-Squares on this site is a browser variant, not a claim of official Jumbo, Hasbro, or tournament wording. Public summaries of “more squares” talk about ending an endless chase; they do not give one numeric rule we could verify from a primary source without using Google Search. This browser therefore uses a specific house rule: after five consecutive non-capturing moves by the same piece that stay inside a set of at most three squares, a sixth consecutive non-capturing move inside that same set is illegal. A capture resets that clock. The live board names this as a variant and links here.

What this site is not

There is no live room, no matchmaking, and no published pass-and-play URL in this release. Setup notes continue on Stratego setup. Strategy notes start at Stratego strategy. The homepage keeps a first-screen board.