The Tactician
Warning: Turns may take several hours.

 

 

Tacticians are your generals, conquistadors, masterminds. Be it on the battlefield or in the boardroom, they live for that moment when their plans come together and victory plays right into their hands. Approaching each game with laser-like focus and dependable strategies, they use every game session to hone their skills and advance their tactical know-how. The end result is often a payoff that only they saw coming.

Games involving careful resource management or lengthy military campaigns are perfect for Tacticians. Willing to devote numerous turns to achieving a single payoff, these players will stack modifiers onto modifiers until their infantrymen become Bionic Assassins of Certain Doom and they can launch a sweeping assault across the table. Where Aggressive and Social gamers can be derailed by a carefully-timed distraction, Tacticians are not so easily foiled. Approaching each scenario like an ever-moving jigsaw puzzle, they’ve crafted their plans well, and they’ll follow them until there’s a benefit to changing course. Careful Tacticians avoid dogmatism – after all, over-adherence to one strategy is often itself an extremely poor strategy. And when their plans fail, which they occasionally do, the savvy Tactician does not despair for long: there are lessons to be learned even from failure.

Of course, none of the above applies if the game is heavily luck-based. Typically American in development (as opposed to German/European), luck-based games use dice rolls or card draws to move the players along. In these, there is little room for strategy, and winning depends more on fate than it does on skill. While a sprinkling of randomness can add tension to a game, Tacticians are left bored and frustrated when chance trumps their careful planning. Likewise, if a game is too light on rules, as are most party games, Tacticians may find it difficult to stay invested.

 

Recommended Games:

• Twilight Imperium
• Magic: The Gathering
• Pandemic