Setup strategy

Hide your flag, preserve your Engineers and place bombs where they can meet strong attackers. Choose the starting squares with the routes you want to open after setup in mind.

Start from the flag

The flag goes in one of your two headquarters, B or D in your back row. Both are equivalent on the board, so the question is which one the opponent will guess, and what you do about the other one.

The opponent sees occupied positions but not piece identities. During play, the pieces you move and the ones you leave guarding the back rows can provide clues. Two possible approaches:

• Fortress. Put the flag in one headquarters and three landmines on its approaches: the square in front and the two neighboring squares in the back row. An Engineer can clear them and survive; other ranked pieces or bombs can open a route through mutual removal. Concentrating your mines may also suggest which headquarters holds the flag.
• Decoy. Guard both headquarters with mines, two on one side and one on the other, and put a strong piece or a bomb in the headquarters without the flag. The opponent has to break into two corners to be sure, which costs them Engineers and time.

Whichever you choose, remember that a piece placed in the headquarters without the flag can never move. It is a pure defender.

Landmines are a wall, not a fence

Landmines stay in your back two rows, outside headquarters, and never move. They make the attacker bring an Engineer or lose a piece to clear each one. Place mines so that:

• every road into the flag's headquarters crosses a mine or a bomb;
• the second-row railway, which an Engineer will use to arrive, is interrupted;
• at least one mine sits where an enemy piece sliding down the outer railway would stop.

Mines are also traps for impatient high officers. A Field Marshal that charges down a railway and lands on a mine is gone. Many games are won by a mine in a surprising square.

Bombs punish the piece that breaks through

Bombs cannot start in your front row, and they should not sit in it anyway. They are strongest where the enemy's best pieces will arrive confident:

• Behind the mines. The piece that clears your mines, usually an Engineer, is worth little, but the big piece that follows it in is worth a lot. A bomb one square inside the mine line meets it.
• Behind a station. A piece that crosses the front line by rail often stops on the first square past the bridge. A bomb there ends an attack before it starts.
• Beside a high officer. A bomb next to your General looks like an escort, and a piece that captures the General and then moves on walks into it.

Do not put a bomb where you would never want to move it. Bombs attack too, and a bomb on an outer railway can be driven into an enemy Field Marshal that has been identified.

Keep the Engineers alive

You have three Engineers. Preserve at least one to clear mines without losing a piece. Spread them out so a single enemy sweep cannot remove them all, and keep one deep in your half. Engineers in the front row are tempting because they move so freely on railways, but every corner they turn announces their rank, and a Captain eats them.

Place one Engineer near the front for scouting and railway work, and keep another farther back near your mines, where it can also obstruct enemy Engineers. After play begins, you can move an Engineer into a middle-row camp for protection. Camps must be empty during setup.

Where the Field Marshal goes

The Field Marshal beats lower-ranked officers, but trades with the other Field Marshal, bombs and mines. Starting it in the front row risks early contact with unknown pieces. You can instead start it farther back and move it into a third- or fourth-row camp during the opening. From there it is protected while it waits to respond to an advance.

The General can be a little more forward. Having both your top pieces hidden in the middle rows, behind a screen of mid-ranks, is a sound default.

The front row

Your front row touches the river and sits on a railway, so whatever stands there will fight first and move fastest. Fill it with pieces you are willing to lose and pieces that gain information: Lieutenants, Captains, a Colonel or two. Put something sturdy, a Brigadier or Major General, at the stations' landing squares in columns A, C and E, since those are where enemy pieces arrive.

All 25 noncamp positions are occupied at setup, including every front-row square. In the opening, move a piece into an empty camp or onto a station to open space for the pieces behind it.

Camps

Each half has five camps where pieces cannot be attacked. They start empty. During the opening, move waiting pieces into useful camps: a Field Marshal, a bomb or an Engineer you want to preserve. An enemy that reaches your camp is also protected, so consider those routes before leaving them open.

Mistakes to avoid

• Every mine around one headquarters. If the opponent infers the mines’ positions, the concentration may suggest where the flag is. It does not prove the flag’s location.
• Bombs in the front row. The rules forbid starting there, and a bomb exposed early is traded for a Lieutenant.
• Every Engineer in the front row. This exposes all three to early combat. Other pieces can still clear mines through mutual removal, but losing every Engineer makes mine clearing cost more pieces.
• A frozen piece in the headquarters without the flag that you later need. Only put a piece there if you are happy for it to stand still all game.
• The same layout every game. Opponents who play you twice will remember.

Hidden Front deals a random legal layout each game, which is a fine starting point. Drag pieces around in the placement phase until the setup follows these principles, and try the setup lesson to practise the rules on a live board.