Solitaire TacOps: Ortona

As discussed in the first part of this series, the framing for play in Solitaire TacOps: Ortona, both for standard scenarios and the open campaign, revolves around expanding allied control to clear the individual maps. In the last part of the series we saw this play out through an example using elements of the Loyal […]

In the previous installment of this series we talked about some of the influences that went into the framing of the Solitaire TacOps campaign system. This connects operational planning with tactical decision making. The impacts at both scales directly affect the player’s ability to win or lose the campaign. This article will use an actual

In the previous articles in this series, I discussed the high-level concepts behind the Solitaire TacOps system and how they are represented in the components of the game. In this article, I will walk through how players interact with those components to play out their own strategic approaches to historical engagements.

As promised at the end of my last blog post, today we are diving into the way that the maps and components in Solitaire TacOps: Ortona impact the game play.  As discussed in the second part of this series, the system builds off of the ideas from classic hex and counter games, but it does

Last week, we started off with by talking about the design principles and scale behind Solitaire TacOps: Ortona. This week we will be talking about the design behind the series system. The Solitaire TacOps system, as a design idea, entered the formative stage while considering the map of the 1977 SPI game Cityfight by Joe Balkoski and Stephen Donaldson. It

At first blush, the connection between my first GMT game, Cross Bronx Expressway, and my next, Solitaire TacOps: Ortona, might seem tenuous. However, the connection is quite simple – I have an affinity for urban settings and how they serve as representations of human modernity.  Cross Bronx Expressway explores this through the social, political, and economic domains.