Maudlin Jack Tar https://pampersandp.blogspot.com flagged up this interesting scenario he had spotted within the download of Baden Powell’s 1910 Scouting Games.
Two sides of French and Prussians? This sounds like Franco Prussian War of 1870 rather than 1910.
It could be a great little wide games or tabletop scenario.
In reality, scout casualties would get bored, so Scouts knocked out by a ball or pine cone ‘hit’ could return to an ambulance base to be restored to life.
This indoor wide game of Scouts Chess is in some ways similar to what I am trying to do in recreating Scout Wide Games as a ‘Tabletop Game’ or ‘Garden Game’.
The whole Scouting Games book is available free here:
“With these [maps or boards], various kinds of Scouting Games can be played” – Interesting to have a permanent map or game board or tabletop etc, mapped “on a very large scale” with marked in and restricted terrain, along with other game mechanisms of how to capture the runner scout (two cubs required) as well as movement rates.
Two scouts to catch one seems to be fairly standard form of capture in many Wide Games.
Suggested movement rates are: 1 inch per Scout each turn so if running, other scouts would presumably move 1/2 inch walking. Alternatively it could be 2 inches per runner and 1 inch walker per walker “or other distance according to the scale of the map”
I’m sure a Bob Cordery chessboard gaming board variation could be worked out. However Scout’s Chess seems to get its name from its chess piece scouts (or flags), rather than a chessboard, as the naturalistic map element of roads and tracks seems to be the important part, rather than the grid.
It reminds me a little of an old cornering Chessboard game called ‘Fox and Hounds’ that I used to play with my late cubmaster Dad.
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN (1970s Cub Scout, Bronze Arrow, Retired).
Man of Tin blog 