A reader wonders: “35 years ago, in my Stratego heyday, I used to use my

Spy to capture the enemy flag. Some one told me that wasn’t legal since the

spy could only take the marshal. The rules didn’t seem to address this

specific question. Any thoughts?”

This was, of course, the main point of contention at the memorable 1979

meeting of the Internationale Vereinigung für Kriegkunstbrettspiele in

Yokohama. The majority view, which the U.S. representatives upheld, was

that the Spy may indeed capture the enemy flag, since the flag, being an

inanimate object with no means of defense, is vulnerable to any mobile

piece. A dissident minority, led by a Polish faction under the disreputable

Wladimir “Wlad the Mine-shifter” Sienkiewicz (whose game books were later

shown to have been forged, probably as part of a broad KGB scheme to halt

the inroads that Stratego was making against chess in the old USSR), held

that the Spy was emblematic of bourgeois-liberal subversion, so that his

underhand methods could not be permitted to play such a decisive part in

victory. The dissidents broke away from IVKB to form a rival governing

body, and their eccentric interpretation of the rules held sway behind the

Iron Curtain for some years. Following the fall of the old USSR, however,

this regrettable schism is now a mere historical curiosity. Only in Cuba,

Laos, and North Korea may the Spy not take the flag, and the IVKB is putting

constant pressure on these nations to conform to international norms of

conduct on the Stratego board.