Board Games
How to play Stratego
Hide your army’s ranks, uncover the opponent’s defenses and capture their flag or leave them without a legal move.
What you need
10×10 board with lakes and forty red plus forty blue pieces
Set up the game
- Secretly place your forty pieces in your nearest four rows, identities toward you. Remove the setup screen; Red moves first.
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Playing Stratego
- Move one mobile piece one square orthogonally, or attack an enemy in that direction. Do not jump pieces, enter lakes or move diagonally. Bombs and Flag never move.
- Scouts travel any number of unobstructed straight squares and may attack at distance. A Scout can choose a single step to conceal its identity.
- Reveal both combatants. Higher rank wins and survives; equal ranks remove both. A winning attacker occupies the destination; winning defender stays.
- Bombs defeat attackers except Miners, who remove them. The Spy defeats a Marshal only when the Spy attacks; attacked by a Marshal, it loses.
- Capture the flag or leave the opponent no mobile legal move to win. Do not shuttle a piece back and forth between the same two squares more than three successive times; the sheet also forbids endless chasing.
The Spy must attack
Your Spy stands beside the enemy Marshal. On your turn it can attack and win. If you wait and the Marshal attacks first, the Spy loses. Their adjacency alone does not make the Marshal unsafe on every possible turn.
Information has a cost
An inexpensive scouting attack can identify a dangerous piece even if the Scout is lost. Decide whether that information helps a nearby follow-up before sacrificing; repeatedly attacking far-away pieces can spend the army without creating a useful plan. Keep a mental map of known threats and routes rather than assuming every unknown defender is a Flag.
Use a real hidden setup
Arrange pieces behind a screen or with both players looking away from the other formation. A repeated memorized Flag location can remove much of the deduction. Try several plausible defense patterns while leaving enough mobile pieces free to play; completely surrounding yourself with immobile defenses can also block your own exits.
Beginner decisions
- Remember revealed ranks by location and movement, not just the last fight. A piece that moves is not a Bomb or Flag.
- Preserve a route for Miners when investigating likely bomb defenses. A strong rank cannot solve a wall of bombs by itself.
Common rule mix-ups
- Treating the Marshal as universally invincible.
- Applying an older set’s reversed numbers to this ten-high edition.
Questions about this game
Must Scouts reveal themselves on every move?
A long move reveals the special movement; they may instead take one step.
Does a bomb disappear after defeating an attacker?
No. It remains until a Miner removes it.
Sources and edition notes
PlayMonster/Jumbo Stratego Original 7476, 2019, forty pieces each with Marshal ten and Spy one. Older reverse-number editions differ.
Sources and stated format checked October 14, 2026. This records a document check, not a claim of hands-on testing.
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