More thoughts about Tactego.

Memorization: I don’t like having to remember what my opponent’s pieces are. It feels too much like work. When pieces are revealed in battle, they will stay revealed.
Bluffing: On the other hand, the bluffing element of Stratego is neat. Some pieces will be face-down so an opponent doesn’t know what’s coming, and there will be the opportunity to turn more face-down during play (along with the chance to mix them up so it’s not just a challenge for the opponent’s memory).
The Role of Pieces: I do not intend for this game to be “chess-like” or to compete with Chess. However, it has certain similarities: pieces exert a certain amount of power by their very presence, but only one can be moved at a time. Thus, like Chess, having material power on the board is generally good, but having your pieces well-positioned is also important.
The Number of Pieces: 12 to 16 per side seems about right, with 3 or 4 “kinds” and 3 or 4 strengths within each kind.
The Moves: Players alternate turns, of course. On a turn you may move one piece twice or two pieces once each, but you may only attack once. (The attacker already is taking the initiative–we’ll avoid a blitzkrieg effect.) You attack by moving a piece into an occupied square. You may not have two pieces on the same square, but if you move the same piece twice it can move over a friendly piece. (This is a response to the cramped feeling of Stratego, in particular. Chess has a lot of deep strategy relating to the fact that you need to not cage yourself behind your own pieces, but we don’t have a thousand years to come up with good strategies and balance our game perfectly.)
Where’s Defense? OK, this kind of lets pieces run around everywhere. To remedy that we’ll use a “zone of control” rule that I first encountered in Civilization (the computer game) but have seen elsewhere: You may not move from an enemy-adjacent square to an enemy-adjacent square unless you are attacking. This lets you move a unit out to screen units behind it. And it allows for a special unit power to break this rule.
What if that unit is face-down at the time? To avoid confusion and the possibility of inadvertently breaking rules, we’ll say whenever you use a unit’s special power, you have to turn it face-up.
Powers: We’ll need to brainstorm some powers. There will definitely be more here than I would consider using in the game; I expect to use no more than 4 distinct kinds of units, each with one or possibly two powers.

• A unit that can turn itself, and another adjacent unit, face-down. When it does this you get to take the pieces off the board and switch them if you want. As such, this will take two moves, or one if both of the pieces involved have this power.
• A unit that gains power when it is attacking. It might lose power when defending.
• A unit that gains power when it is attacking face-down
• A unit that ignores zones of control
• A unit that can move 3 instead of 2
• A unit that can move directly over an enemy unit without entering combat
• A unit that can reveal the identity of face-down enemy units without entering combat
• A unit that doesn’t die if it loses a combat it starts
• A unit that gains power from nearby friendly units
• A unit that gains power from nearby enemy units (BERSERKER!)
• A totally expendable unit
• A unit that you gain some benefit when it dies
• A unit with no special power that happens to be naturally stronger than other units
• A very powerful unit that moves more slowly
• A unit that can’t be disengaged from (anything touching it is immobile)