The Battle of Hegra Fortress saw 250 Norwegian volunteers holding off a Wehrmacht battalion for the better part of a month. It was a comparatively minor engagement in the grand scheme of the Second World War, but the unexpected success of the defenders against overwhelming numbers, artillery and air bombardments, and the weather itself became a symbolic victory for Norway.

Petter Schanke Olsen’s version of the battle, Halls of Hegra, turns to modern mechanisms and systems to immortalize the battle. The result is exceptional craftsmanship, a depictin of warfare that goes far beyond the customary in its portrayal of courage under fire.

Nazis. I hate these guys.

There are countless ways to portray a military action, but it’s no surprise that most designers default to a geographical representation. There’s something reassuring about maps and chokepoints, making an easy shorthand for certain decisions made by commanders on the field.

Olsen goes in a different direction, and in the process creates a representation that’s less about lines of communication than it is about labor allocation. Hegra was strategically important for its proximity to Trondheim, which the Germans had seized without resistance, but it was one rail stop among many, and the old fortress had been mothballed years prior. When Hans Holtermann decided to dig out the fortress with his crew of volunteers, it provided an unexpected bottleneck for the Wehrmacht’s efforts to expand their beachhead. The fighting was initially limited to the village and rail bridge; later, after a fighting retreat, both sides settled into a protected siege.

In a surprise turn, most of that is background noise in Halls of Hegra. Instead, Olsen focuses on the stuff that most representations leave out of their depictions of military history. There aren’t units in the traditional sense. Nor is there a map — at least not the kind of map any self-respecting field marshal would pore over. Instead, Olsen divides the battle into three rough periods. The game concludes with the big one, the siege and the valiant stand made by Hegra’s defenders. And before that, there’s the rolling fight for the surrounding territory.

But even before that, Olsen focuses on quieter, more human moments. When the game opens, the Germans have yet to arrive. As the depersonalized commander — one presumes you’re Holtermann, although the game doesn’t spell it out — your task is closer to the building momentum and suspense of an older war film. You have a handful of volunteers: soldiers from the surrounding area, returnees from the Winter War, a few brave locals. With only this handful of volunteers, your task is the stuff that usually gets excised from the story altogether. You talk with the locals, reassuring them that there’s hope. You assign men to dig out the snow that has buried the fortress’s facilities. You establish supply bases around the mountain, and look for men who know the area and can bear those supplies to you once the enemy arrives. You look for medical professionals to treat your injured. You spend a whole lot of time fixing and maintaining your weapons.

Shoveling snow and tending to the wounded.

In game terms, Olsen leverages the language of worker placement. Squads are represented as discs, each with their own specialization. Volunteers are all-purpose laborers, not great in a fight but perfectly serviceable at hoofing supplies. Doctors will spend nearly all their time in the infirmary. If you’re lucky, perhaps you’ll recruit some local foresters, burly men who are great with a shovel or picking their way through the forest after dark. Soldiers, of course, are your lifeblood, the men who will hold the line.

As the action grows more dire — and it does so rapidly, with the Germans first trickling into the area and then rushing in with planes and artillery — the game never deviates in its focus. There are bullets to count and rations to, um, ration, but these are abstracted into all-purpose supplies. Similarly, there are machineguns to fire and enemy positions to scout. But these are always examined first and foremost through the human lens. Even though the game abstracts its individuals into discs, they’re imbued with just enough personality that the loss of a comrade is felt right in the gut.

Along the way, Halls of Hegra celebrates a wider spectrum of combatant than most board games bother to observe. This is a worker placement game, but each spot gets its due, often as a sort of minigame that emphasizes the importance of a particular role. I’ve mentioned the infirmary, where doctors perform triage in order to pull injured soldiers back toward health. Soldiers in beds will gradually heal; those in the waiting room slowly waste away. So there’s an aspect of allocation and prioritization that’s devastatingly true to the setting. Electing to save one life over another is a choice that’s made a thousand times a day in battle, but it’s usually far away from a board game player’s command-level perspective.

The same goes for other roles. Artillery and machineguns jam when fired and defensive positions become damaged by aerial bombardment. So, then, some of your volunteers must spend a portion of their time maintaining and repairing those implements of war. Elsewhere, much of the fortress remains snowed in; thus it behooves your troops to perform that age-old task of soldiers, digging. By contrast, the portion of the game that sees you rolling dice to kill and suppress the advancing Wehrmacht comes across as almost perfunctory.

As enemy patrols fill the forest, supply runs become difficult.

Olsen even takes care to show how much of the battle is fought beyond the actual lines of engagement. The game’s map exists solely to allow the movement of supplies and manpower across the increasingly occupied countryside. This is the most extensive representation in Halls of Hegra. German patrols and eventually artillery emplacements scatter the foothills at the base of the mountain. Volunteers can be sent out to retrieve supplies or even raid enemy positions, alleviating some of the pressure on the fortress. Skirmishers and logistics rarely get their due; here, they’re ignored at your peril.

Taken together, Olsen has created something uncommon. Scratch that: this is downright rare. This is a game that celebrates the involvement of a nurse as much as a company of soldiers, that sees nobility and essential work in hauling rubble and delivering comforting speeches. It’s abstract in a way that, say, Dan Bullock’s work is not, but it’s no less impactful.

The word is deserved. Far from being dull, Halls of Hegra flourishes in its moments of mundane labor. There is so much work to be done and never enough volunteers to do it. The entire game functions like triage. The sun is out today — should you send out men to gather supplies and raid some artillery, or take advantage of the low snow to hopefully dig out something useful? Your morale is waning — would it be better to spend your officer’s time raising spirits or manning the field telephone to coordinate defensive fire? There are too many Nazis coming up the hill — should your artillery beat them back or hammer the nearby airfield to gain some leeway? There are no easy options. Only a seeping failure that might resemble a success if you hold out long enough.

Along the way, it sometimes veers into unfairness. More than once, a single card flip scuttled my chances. Halls of Hegra is punishing. So it goes. Difficulty befits a solitaire game, especially one that only lasts an hour plus change. It also befits a game about a battle that ended in negotiated surrender. If anything, I wish the victory track hadn’t included spaces for truce and German retreat. This is a game about being on the so-called losing side of a Pyrrhic victory, about finding dignity in defeat. To presume that the defenders could actually win against the Wehrmacht cheapens their conduct. Halls of Hegra is rare, but it isn’t quite rare enough to present the player with a truly unwinnable scenario.

For a game that covers so much ground, Halls of Hegra runs smoothly.

On the whole, though, that’s a small complaint. Halls of Hegra is one of the finest solitaire wargames I’ve played in a long while. By sidestepping the usual language of battle, it speaks in forgotten tongues, covering and honoring a far greater portion of valor than it would have otherwise. Historically, although the defenders of Hegra Fortress were taken as prisoners of war and set to forced labor, they were released over the course of the next two months in recognition of their bravery. In Halls of Hegra, Olsen exhibits how, sometimes, the better part of valor is fighting the losing fight. Along the way, it speaks of the nurses, the diggers, the men bearing supplies. This one is magnificent.

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A complimentary copy was provided.