It’s the one game I still play with my grandson. He’s never beaten me yet.
Starting with all of the pieces icons-up would result in a completely trivial game. But you could still remove the memory aspect by turning a piece icon-up once it’s revealed.
Well, most of the memory aspect, at least. It wouldn’t help with “He’s never moved that piece, so it might be a bomb, but he’s moved that one, so it isn’t”. But that’s not much of the game.
You can jack up the secrecy portion with Electronic Stratego. In that version, you do not show your attacking piece to the opponent; you rely on the computer to inform you the result of the attack. There is a bit more twist, too. From the Boardgame Geek link above:
An electronically enhanced version of Stratego from back before personal computers were commonplace. Game play is the same as the classic board game except for a few interesting twists:
· When you attack an opponent’s piece, the computer tells you whether you have won, lost, or tied. So you do not know the exact strength of the opposing piece, only its strength relative to your own piece (and so too your opponent does not know the exact strength of the piece you used to attack with). This feature makes the game quite a bit more interesting than standard Stratego.
· Instead of moving one of your pieces on your turn, you can “probe” an opposing piece to find its strength. You will not be given its exact strength, but instead what “class” it is in (8-9, 5-7, or all else)
· Bombs are no longer playing pieces but are hidden features on your side of the board that are programmed into the game. You secretly select six spaces in which to place the bombs. Your own pieces can move through these spaces unharmed, but any enemy pieces (except a Miner) landing on these spaces will be destroyed!
· Scouts can move and strike diagonally, and can strike from a distance.
The player who finds and captures his opponent’s flag first wins the game.
There is a similar game in China, Army Chess. Your pieces are hidden from your opponent, there is the showdown when attacking an opponent’s piece, there is the special long move for one piece, and the goal is to capture the opponent’s flag. And there is also an electronic version of this in which the computer tells you the result of an attack.
No more trivial than chess or checkers. It becomes a game of movement and blocking, rather than probing and memory. Although, I think we allowed bombs and flags to move.
FWIW, a quick Google search reveals several online versions of the game.
One gambit in the endgame would be to have a scout (which you have been careful to not move more than 1 space) following the enemy Marshal around, and make the enemy think that is your Spy. Meanhoo your actual Spy is pretending to be a Bomb. When the Marshal finally makes a beeline for your flag, your Spy can ambush him.
I used to do it in both corners without the flag, putting the flag somewhere out of the way in the middle but not obvious (and next to a 2, not a bomb). It was quite successful in wasting the other player’s time and pieces.
Yep, the ol’ scout bluff. I would also keep at least one scout that I wouldn’t move more than one space. It worked great as a higher-piece bluff-- if my opponent picked one of my pieces off with say, a 3 (in the old numbering system, where a 3 was the third-highest) and was heading in a dangerous direction with none of my high number pieces in the immediate area, I’d come at him aggressively with a scout as if it were a 1 or 2 and back him off, possibly toward one of my actual high-number pieces and get him.
Ah, the ‘hide in plain sight’ gambit with the flag. I had opponents try that on me and it did make things tricky; almost lost a few times to that gambit. But I was hesitant to try it myself-- just seemed too easy for a low-skill player to blunder onto my flag that way. Also, if you use a 2 to protect the flag you’re taking a key piece out of the action-- I’d use my 2 to mow through a swath of my opponent pieces and get their 1 to show. When a piece started coming at my 2 I’d hit it with a scout to determine it was the 1 and not a bluff, then retreat my 2 away from their 1…right past my waiting spy.
It just arrived!
On the cover it says, “Wonderful father-son game… GREAT FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY.” Gotta love the sixties. 
That was my first set. That box and cover. Very cool.
Wow, seeing those pictures just triggered nostalgia. I always loved how shiny the silhouettes on the game pieces were.
See also: Battleship
Holy shit! That makes the Stratego cover progressive by comparison since the mom and daughter are shown playing the game instead of washing the fucking dishes. Jesus Christ.
EDIT: I zoomed in as far as I could and it kind of looks like the mom is also barefoot while washing those dishes. And pregnant, arguably.
Our Stratego board and pieces looked just like that, but the box cover c. 1974 or so was slightly more modern.
Mine is the one with the smiling field marshal guy on the cover:
Yours too?
Those are the plastic pieces, the classic gray box had the wooden ones.
Field Marshal on the box with plastic pieces is the one I grew up with. Such nostalgia seeing that picture.
Close up of a wooden piece, Red Bomb
The Predecessor to Stratego: L’Attaque
That doesn’t look very uniform. I don’t think I would have been able to resist cheating if I grew up with wooden pieces like that. That picture makes it look like it may as well be a deck of marked cards.