I had a boss of whom it was difficult to say whether she was more deadeningly stupid or cruelly evil. She was a great one for strategy, and it was a big part of an utterly worthless management degree I undertook, so I have long been suspicious of that concept and its contradistinction, tactics. I have never been able to grasp the basis of the distinction, except as amounting to some wooly short-term/long-term contrast.

So I was interested to read, in the context of chess (and felt somewhat vindicated by):

[1] Strategic play concerns planning, manoeuvring, piece exchanges, pawn structures etc. [2] Tactical play is the hand-to-hand fighting.

I take it that [1] and [2] purport to be definitions, but [1] is an unexhaustive list (what are these “others” of which you speak?) and [2] is metaphorical, hopelessly so.

The man who said that tactics are what you employ when there is something to be done, and strategy when there is nothing to be done, could turn a phrase. But I shall continue to regard these words as pretentious except when the winning of wars, or their very close relations, like games of chess, are what is being talked about.