allboardgames.com
Black Ops: Tactical Espionage Wargaming box art
2015 Ranked #15,785

Black Ops: Tactical Espionage Wargaming

A tactical espionage skirmish game has teams recruit specialists and complete missions from covert extractions to overt raids. Card-driven activations keep everyone engaged, while factions offer advantages that can also create crucial limits.

Book Miniatures Variable Player Powers Dice Rolling

Players

2-6

Play time

Not listed

Age

?+

Complexity

2.5/5

Rating

6.70

Harder to teach Highly interactive Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.4/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 3.9/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.7/5

Highly interactive

Player scaling 4.0/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.5/5

Deep strategy

See all 3 specifications

How it plays

How does it play?

Black Ops is a skirmish wargame of tactical espionage combat for two or more players.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

Black Ops is a skirmish wargame of tactical espionage combat for two or more players. It recreates on the tabletop the tension and excitement of modern action-thrillers such as the Bond and Bourne films, The Unit or Burn Notice TV shows, and the Splinter Cell and Modern Warfare series of video games. The fast-play rules use regular 6-sided dice and a card-driven activation system to keep all players in the thick of the action, while the mission generator provides a wide range of options for scenarios, from stealthy extraction or surveillance missions to more overt raids or assassinations. Stealth, combat and technical expertise all have a role to play, and players may select from a number of different character types – spies, mercenaries, criminals, hackers, special forces and many more – to recruit the best possible team for the job. Players may also choose to join a faction – powerful organizations, intelligence agencies, criminal syndicates, militaries or rebel groups, each with a stake in international affairs. By doing so, their team may receive certain benefits, but may also find itself limited at a crucial time. With the variety offered by the characters, factions and scenarios, no two games of Black Ops should ever be the same! Although the standard Black Ops setting is an ultra-modern world just a hair removed from our own, the rules are versatile and adaptable enough to suit OSS operations behind Nazi lines, Cold War-era infiltration missions in Moscow or Berlin, or sabotage runs against a rival corporation’s interests in a cyberpunk dystopia, and the rulebook will include a guide to running games in such settings.

Browse all classifications

Shopping

Where to buy

No verified retailer offers are available yet. The references below may still help you continue your search.

Editions

Language and publisher variants currently recorded in the catalog.

Edition Year Language Publisher / Region
No editions imported yet.

Player resources

Rulebooks, player aids, FAQs, and solo resources.

No files imported yet.

Game and edition data

All specifications (3)

Play and group

Players
2–6
Best with
1–4
Complexity
2.5/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

1
Guy Bowers

Artists

2
Dmitry Burmak Johan Egerkrans

Publishers

1
Osprey Publishing

Linked items

No published linked games yet.