I've had Tannhauser and the revised book for a while now, but we've only played it once. We played Deathmatch per the book's suggestion, and my wife hated it. I want to give it another crack with a friend of mine who I play games with and was interested in seeing what modes everyone here likes to play. It seems like Deathmatch is the most maligned, and I personally felt that when the game got down to the last two guys on the board, it totally dragged.

Obviously this is a very subjective question, but when you guys bust out Tannhauser to play, what modes do you gravitate towards and — if it's not too much to ask — why? With five or so modes out of the box, I'm a little overwhelmed by the options. Thanks!

We tend to play deathmatch most of the time.

We created our own mode of play for trying out new heroes in 3 player matches:

3-man mode: choose 1 hero and 2 troopers for your team. 2 bonus tokens, 2 CP per turn. You may not spend CP to reinforce in this mode.

Beyond that, we try out each of the scenarios from the expansions in turn, be forewarned that some of them are brutally hard for one team or another- and we often modify them until they come back into a balance. (The 2 I can clearly recall like that are Thunderstruck (from Novgorod) and the one from Ramirez) Iroh had a really fun scenario, and I look forward to trying out many of the other ones.

I have not enjoyed the campaigns because while the individual scenarios are fun, losing the first match just makes it more likely you continue to lose which is lame.

If you and your wife like the lore, I highly recommend using the scenarios as they are very cool.

Story mode, I like writing scenarios and working on "one-time-use" mechanics for custom storytelling.

I usually use deathmatch only to teach the game mechanics. After I tend to prefer playing Story-mode games ast hey provide more tactical diversity.

Deathmatch Lite: (pre-set teams of 2 heroes & 1 trooper) for quick 2-player game, 3-4 player game

Deathmatch/Domination/Capture the Flag: (as normal) for friends who like FPS video games

Scenarios: about 75% of the time as they have a story behind them and usually not just about killing the enemy as primary objective

Story mode. I hate the video-game-esque modes.

Having scenarios with real objectives (not just some lame objective tokens) is what I enjoy. For that you really need to get the Novgorod expansion.

Although I have played death match so far, it seems to me that the other scenarios can provide greater variety. I like this game very much but it is not for everyone. I do suggest that you start with one hero and 2 troopers in death match as it allows you to get an understanding of the game without being overwhelmed. Once you are comfortable with the pieces, go to the 5 models per side. Adding in different heroes or playing a scenario will just provide a greater range of options.

Since the game involves dice, it can seem that things are dragging on occasions. Dice games are like that. A glass of wine or a pint of beer will make it that much more enjoyable but perhaps such suggestions are not permissable!!!!!

Everything but deathmatch and king of the hill. I like both Domination and capture the flag, but my fav is Mission Mode (the necessecity to use the abilities like engineering, explosives etc gives a nice flavour to the different characters, and justifies the heroish-ness of not to strong chars like Tala over damag-strong troopers).

I really like Mission (objective) Mode - even if we have changed the rules a little bit.

We shuffle all of the objectives (separated by "small" objectives and "large" objectives) and each player puts one objective on each of his objective circles, so that the players themself doesn´t know wich objective is on wich circle.

If one figure is next to an obj-circle, he looks at the objective and can try to solve it, but the other player does not know for sure, which objective it is.

We have never played death match - since all of the other modes can lead to a death match ^^

Azanael said:

True, true...

...burn, Zor´ka, burn... ;-)

But the good thing when not playing Death Match is, that you have at least two different ways to win (complete X objectives, capture the flag... or killing your opponent ) ^^

I've been playing an on going campaign/objective mode with my friend from work. We play by standard objective game rules, but add a few special things. In the catacombs and castle if the Union was able to destroy the generator then for a full turn the board was blacked out. Only melee or nightvision equipped characters could attack. So far this is how our campaign has gone so far.

Our first battle revolved around the Union Infiltrating the reich castle to retrieve a code cider , while the Reich tried to reclaim and escape with an artifact. The union discoverd the artifact and the Catacombs underneath along with the code ciper

Our second battle involved the exploration of the Catacombs and the setting of explosives to destroy the Cardinal point. Union forces were successful.

Our third battle revolved around the Union troops evacuation the Catacombs before the destruction of the Cardinal Point. Reich troops were able to repair the cardinal point and capture the Union Troops before their escape.

Our fourth and most recent battle composed of a group of Mercenaries led by Hoax to rescue her compatriots from a Reich Outpost. Reich attempts to execute or move POW's failed as Merc/Union forces successfully rescued all captives under flames and machine gun fire.

Awsome, you should think about typing up an actual campaign.