Kriegsspiel Pieces Too Small?

I am a little worried that the Kriegsspiel pieces will be too small and fiddly.  Is there a photo on your site with something to compare their size to (like someone’s fingers picking them up – 13mm seems pretty small…are they wide and tall enough to get a good grip on them, or will I be battling against knocking them over and pushing them out of place?


We got this great question via email today! We have lots of great photos on our website but it is hard to get a sense of the scale of these pieces. How big are they? One half inch by one quater inch. That’s tiny but how tiny? Are they going to be too much of a hassle?

A picture is worth a thousand words. Check these out:

Regular 8 sided die. The others are standard 12mm & 16mm rounded corner dice.
Metric Scale up.

Hopefully these pictures will give you a good sense of how the scale translates into the real world. Ok, so back to the question, how fiddly are they?

First of all, let me say that these Kriegsspiel blocks were designed long ago by the Prussian military to be easy to use. They are.

My personal experience is that these Kriegsspiel blocks, though small ARE indeed easy to grab and move around. -even for my Jimmy Dean sausage fingers! Much easier than standard wargame counters for comparison. We tested them extensively for this before deciding to go into production.

They are small. Half the size of standard wargame counters. What makes up for this is the thickness or depth. This makes them very easy to grab even though they are half the height.

These are standard half inch wargame counters.

We actually have plans for a hex, corps scale WW2 game. You can easily stack 4 blocks per hex on a ETO or A3R map. We found them easier the move around a look at than regular counters.

Kriegsspiel blocks on a standard hex and counter wargame.

Now, all that said, are they just as easy as Pub Battles blocks to push around? No. Those are like mini Jenga blocks or maybe half a Domino.

Pub Battles pieces vs Kriegsspiel.

So, bottom line conclusion? Pub Battles blocks are the least fussy and easiest to see and adjust. Our wooden Kriegsspiel blocks are second easiest. They are taller / depth wise than the regular Kriegsspiel blocks. This makes them much easier than regular Kriegsspiel blocks and standard wargame counters.

We’ve found them to be the best fit if you want fine detail but also something relatively easy to manipulate.