I am planning on buying this game soon, but due to lack of video unboxings on youtube, I have a few questions.

1. What material is the board made out of? Is it thick, or is it more like a mat?

2. How is combat resolved? Do characters have ballistic skills and weapon skills?

3. My friends and I play Dark Heresy every saturday night, do you think they would like this game?

hi mate, welcome to the forum,

well i think (biased of course )

its a great game and once you get it you will love it, the board is a really thick good quality board, feel the weight of the box in your lgs and see,

like all ffg stuff its made to a very high standard, with lots of tokens as well, there is an upcoming rules revision, but dont let that stop you getting it as you can master the game then when they do come out download here and update the way you play, it wont effect the stuff you bought, no redundancies

RoBro said:

1) The board is a thick cardboard, double sided. It is quite high quality.

2) Combat is resolved by a dice pool, roll and look for successes. Characters' base attributes start at a certain level and decrease as they get wounded (the pain presumably making it harder to fight effectively.) Characters have generic combat skills but not skill with individual weapons, if that's what you're asking.

Edit: It just occured to me that you probably meant BS as "ranged attack" and WS as "melee attack." Everyone has a single combat trait used for all weapons. There's a special ability for fist-fighting (which is either there or not there) and combat knives (iirc) basically give this ability to anyone who doesn't have it. The vast majority of combat in this game uses guns. Even the whip, technically melee, is mechanically treated like a gun with limited range. Proper melee combat can occur, but it's uncommon.

3) Dark Heresy and Tannhauser are apples and oranges, imho. One is an RPG and the other a board game. The settings are quite different, though both dark in their own way. I think it's safe to say the themes are similar enough that they'd try it, but whether they'd like it enough to play twice, it's hard to say.

I would hold off and wait until FFG get their act together. Unless you want to write half the game yourself. That being said, if you are more interested in death match than story mode you will enjoy it. When it all comes together I think this game will kick butt but for now my copy sits on the shelf while I play Arkham Horror.

I Have 3 copies of the game. One of them is still in shrinkwrap. If you want it, make me an offer . Great game, good board, Fantastic minis. and a greatrstory line, i think , for the game. The only problem for me is its not very suitable for solitare play. BOO-HOO for me. I love this game , but play exclusively solitare, so it is mute to me. BOO-HOO again. If you want a sealed copy, e-mail me.

[email protected]

SgtWaka said:

Yeah, I was trying to dig up the vassal mod for tannhauser.. it is no longer on the website!!!

does anyone know if it is hosted anywhere legit?

because i also play often solo that is...

DoctorDR said:

You can access all of Take On You archives by visiting the new version of the Black Sheep Archives ( www.blacksheeparchives.net ). The Vassal module is in "Downloads > Tannhäuuser > Vassal".

This is not a standalone game, you still need VASSAL to use the module. Also there is not automated action, you need a copy of the rules to play the game through Vassal AND it's only in French.

I love you!

Sort of a reiteration of the original post; I'm thinking of picking up this game but I have a few questions. So far I've really enjoyed playing both Doom and Wow: TAG so FFG has definitely become one of my preferred game manufacturers however they don't seem to have very many games one could get through in an hour or so. I'm looking for a shorter simpler game that my wife can get in to ( she really enjoyed Doom but has a hard time with the length of it) and this one seems to fit the bill. Many reviews i've read say the simplicity borders on boring but perhaps they're hoping for too much? So to wrap up this long winded post, is Tannhauser a solid FFG game that's shorter and simpler than most?

J0shjames said:

Well, to start with, Tannhauser is not an original FFG boardgame. It was developped by the now defunct French game company Take On You and the IP was bought by FFG last year. At this time the game mechanics are still those developed by the original authors (V1 rules) but a new streamlined and update rulebook is planned by FFG with no release date set (V2 rules) However all game component will be compatible and the said rulebook will be available for free as a PDF.

Now on the game itself, I guess it all depends on what you will do with your game. In the base set there is four game mode Death Match, Capture the Flag, Domination and Story. Death Match is just that, killing the opposite team. Capture the Flag and Domination are slightly more tactical and Story is imho slightly broken as is. Where the game truly shines is when you start to play scenarios with specific objectives like those included in later Campaign (Novgorod, Daedalus) and in the Single Packs.

The French editor release all the scenarios from the printed products (except Daedalus) as PDF and provided updates when they felt it was needed. A number of scenarios exclusive to the website were also released. All of them featured point-based victory conditions. When FFG started releasing scenarios in 2008, some being translations and some being original creations, the point based victory conditions were discarded over major/minor victory conditions.

From my point of view Tannhäuser is rich game with no game session being like the other. To experience this richness you have to access to the various bonus token and the expansion pack. Also if you want fast action play Death Match, however the gameplay will feel repetitive until you start to play other game type, especially some of the more innovative scenarios.

J0shjames said:

The rules are simple, which makes them easy to learn. IMHO, the only way the game gets "boring" is if you play the same default match every time. One of the beautiful things about Tann is that there are a very large number of special scenarios that change the objectives for each team, and often add new specific rules for that scenario. The simplicity of the game makes it surprizingly flexible when coming up with new ideas and even once you've worked your way through the published special scenarios, I'm sure there are plenty of fan-made ones out there to keep you busy. Each solo figure comes with their own scenario, too, so the game just keeps evolving with every new addition.

I can see how some reviewers would think the game is boring, but I suspect they were just playing the standard "basic game" victory conditions over and over.

Thanks for the opinions guys that helps, it's also nice to know you can play scenarios other than deathmatch as my wife was less keen on those types of games ( she disliked Warcraft the board game because it basically just pit you against the other players and you had to annihiliate each other)

J0shjames said:

Well, in any tactical war game, killing all of the other player's guys will be one option to achieve victory. After all, the opponents can't really claim their objective (or stop you from claiming yours) if they're all dead. Tannhauser combat is particularly brutal, too. Characters can die in the blink of an eye if the enemy gets a lucky shot or a good opening. That also depends entirely on how you guys choose to play, of course, so if you're willing to follow your wife's lead and not just kill each other willy-nilly, then it shouldn't be a problem.

One of my favourite scenarios, and you guys might like it too, is the prisoner exchange. Each of you takes one of the enemy soliders at the start of the game. You must each "escort" the captive to a central meeting place, and once both prisoners are there, they switch to their "own" player's control, and then the objective is to get out without letting your recently recovered friend die. It's fun because there's no shooting allowed at first, and then the **** hits the fan when the exchange is over.