So I used to love Tannhauser and was excited about the new rules. Now that I've played a few games, I've got some serious balance concerns. My buddy and I have been playing core rules only, no bonus tokens and in Deathmatch (Union vs Korps) just to get a feel for the capabilities of the teams. It's my finding that the Obscura Korps doesn't stand a chance. I'm not sure if we are doing something wrong or the game is seriously out of balance. So, I figured I'd ask some things here.

Questions:
1) Counterattack & Flash Guns: If I'm reading this correctly, the Flash Guns work as normal on a Counterattack. If that's the case, playing Obscura Korps seems like a losing proposal right away. The Flash Guns easily compensate for the lower attack value because they get enough dice that they are likely to roll a 0 and get additional dice. Since the Korps has no Flash Guns, my experience is that I attack with my piddly weapons, which do little to no damage, and then get killed by counterattacks.

2) The Patmos Amulet: Can Heizinger target his own team members? I got into a situation where Eva jacked up a Union minion pretty well and just missed finishing him off. I wanted to make Heizinger target her so she would potentially attack again and then run to safety from Barry's gun. We both were unclear on this. My buddy things it's wrong and I think it's sketchy, but since the Korps are the bad guys, they'd be fine with doing something sketchy. What's the official ruling?

3) Patmos & Overwatch: If Heinzinger uses his Patmos attack on a character with Overwatch, does it end that guy's Overwatch?

Any help you can provide on these questions would be valuable. Things seem ridiculously skewed toward the Union right now and while I don't mind losing, I do mind never having a chance. When Barry can take out three named characters by himself, it feels like there is no chance.

Thanks,

- netgeist

First to answer your questions.

1 yes the Union gets all it's natural 10 bonuses on a counter attack.

2 Heizinger may target anyone even his own team mates.

3 I believe it was rulled that a character does NOT loose their OW status, but I'll have to double check.

As for the ballence issues, I have to say I think they only exsist in the Core Deathmatch, but I will also say that just as many people complain that the Union never wins. To be Honest I have never beat my wife when she plays Reich, I almost always play Union.

Some tips:

Use Bonus Tokens

Use Heizinger's and Karl's Command Packs

Make sure your Hand-to-Hand Characters have Movement Points to use after an attack before making it, that way you won't always risk facing a counterattack and a regular attack from the same character.

If you must play Deathmatch, focus your attacks on a single character at a time, using Heiziner to sheild your path, and Karl to fire from as far away as possiable, and the Stoss to and Shock to do the clean up. Eva shoud stay in the rear with her Stamina Pack to provide support.

Hope some of that helps.

In case your wondering my wife never uses the same Reich setup twice, or at least it seems that way, but she does favor a combo of Stamina and Command Packs.

Miah is of course right on all answers, even number 3. You'll find that answer in the "Rules questions, and answers from FFG" topic.

To add some tips to Miah's:

Heizinger and Karl both with Command Pack are indeed great: Heizinger makes it really difficult for Union characters to enter the path he's on, and Zermann can target characters out-of-path (so no counterattack) and rolls 5 dice. You'll always have the first shot! If someone manages to enter your path, have a Shocktruppen near (maybe even on overwatch) to gun him down rolling 6 dice (Mad Minute!). If the enemy succeeds in damaging one of your important characters, Eva heals him. If the enemies aren't able to enter your path, Zermann can attack as he likes and Heizinger can use the Patmos amulet to disrupt the opponents tactic. Great setup!

You should also consider Heizinger's Combat pack because your characters can roll an additional die on their combat rolls with it. That's 6 dice if Zermann has his Command pack equipped AND he can targets out-of-path. He'll gun down everybody. Though I don't exactly like Heizinger's Sha-Na-Na because it's a "Once per game" item, once I killed an uninjured Barry Brown with it. The Union lost that game of course. With Heizinger's Combat pack, a Shocktruppen on overwatch will roll 7 dice if it has his Stamina pack equipped or 4 dice if it has his Combat pack equipped, but then it can make as many overwatch attacks as it likes. If an enemy enters your path and announces an attack, you'll do 2 overwatch with 4 dice each attacks before he attacks - that is, if he survives the 2 attacks.

In short, you should try: Zermann (Command), Eva (Stamina), Heizinger (Combat or Command), Shock (Combat if Heizinger has Combat, Stamina otherwise), Stoss (Stamina, it essentially gives you an additional character).

One last thing: Get Hoss Harbinger, he's a cool Reich character and my Reich teams win a lot since I use him!

1. the Flash Guns technically dont work as normal when counterattacking, unless that character has something to use his best combat value. but yes, they work better than many other characters/weapons when counterattacking. The Reich is not a faction that is particularly strong in counterattacks - i'd normally never counterattack with Heizinger, Eva, or Hoss - their lowest combat values are too low to reliably wound on the lowest level and there's usually a better use of a command point (unless something is allowing them to always use their best combat values of course). When Ozo & Stosstruppen have Supernatural Strength, there may be a good opportunity to counterattack though - but Ozo only gets 4 dice w/ combat w/o other help and Stosstruppen must be adjacent, so this has limited use at best. Schocktruppen may be a average to good candidate, depending on how many extra dice they get in the particular situation. Lastly, Yula is sometimes good to counterattack with - while she'll likely get no successes that follow through as wounds, the counterattack gives her another opportunity to roll a natural 10 to destroy a weapon; but of course she must be adjacent to the attacker.

My advice to avoid the Union's Counterattacks when playing the Reich is Prevention: I'd suggest using out-of-path attacks as much as possible and keeping your distance - they can't shoot what they can't see. Also, the Blutsturm agents can pop in & out of paths to make poking pistol attacks with their lugers that prevent counterattacking. And then there is Hoss with his Command Pack that will make your Union opponent think twice about spending all his CP in most cases to counterattack.

in my opinion, the Reich is more powerful (with their mental abilities), but harder to win with sometimes - i think they require more 'finesse' in movement than the Union does.

2. Patmos Amulet can target any character with a mental value

3. Patmos AMulet causes its target to lose its activation - which is already skipped with OW, so i'm *pretty* sure OW is not lost...but it's still good to move that OW character off its path and sometimes make him irrelevant for that turn.

i'd avoid Deathmatch; while the simplest mode, it focuses on attacking (and stamina, movement etc) which is only one factor factions/characters seem to be designed to be balanced by...Their preset skills seem to balance things out better when taken into consideration as in Objective mode or some Story Mode scenarios.

sorry for redundancies - ninja'd at work

I subscribe previous answers.

Hoss all the way, either mental or combat pack (the teleport ability can make a difference in CTF for example) his dice passing ability can be really good as well.

Against Union Reich won all my games in deathmatch, there was just no chance to counterattack. Heiziner with command and eye of horus, Hoss with command or combat and Helm of diomedes and Karl with command and Mask of shamhain, 2 shocktruppen with command is my default setup against Union. I think it is very unbalanced against union not in its favor. (In one game barry didnt even get to shot a single time)

The game is way harder for reich instead against Matriarchy as voivodes (and most time also zor'ka) ignore mental. This is a game that has been usually won by matriarchy (zorka in deathmatch and Oksana in CTF , Objective or domination).

Eva or Yula are no good at all against union, too soft.

The main critic in my group for this game is that is a kind of rock paper and scissor game, union beats matriarchy, matriarchy beats reich and reich beats union. (Shogunate kind of watches from the side).

Good observations by everyone.

One other note the UMTOMA and Nippon Accords really change the balence of the game...

Team combos like Zor'ka, John, and Barry, can be hard to beat.

But then again super melee teams like Itami, Mizu, Yula, +Stoss x2, can make for interesting play.

Moebius said:

Wow! This is hardcore! I bet there are Union players that concede the game as soon as they even see this team!

And to netgeist: You should also consider getting the Reich troop pack that includes another Shocktruppen and Stosstruppen as well as the great command packs mentioned here!

??! said:

LOL i played almost this exact team today....after 8 games of Tannhauser since Christmas, I was yet to win one! So I figured I'd give my brother a harder challenge than eva-yula type teams, so I went with this on a CtF game on the labrynth as the last game -

Heizinger (eye of horus for pistol), Hoss (combat w/ glyph of enoch instead of the crown), Ozo (but w/ curse of ozo for rank), as above, with 2 stosstruppen - one 'Hosstruppen' with stamina (my flag-runner) and one 'Oztruppen' with command (my defender) and brother went with a high-movement Union team w/ Wolf, Hoax, MacNeal, w/ Alphas.

I pretty much just sat back ... Union lost brutally - the Oztruppen found a knife in a crate and took out an Alpha & MacNeal easily with his 7 attack dice and healing. Hoss transported an alpha cornered in by Heizinger, who Patmosed him to death. Hoax managed to get a flag, but was hunted down by the Hosstruppen, then finished off by Ozo & Hoss in one turn. Then Heizinger got a hold of Wolf who desperately tried to enter Heizinger's path - a critical choke point - and almost killed the other Alpha. Wolf & the Alpha were easily finished off by Ozo & Hoss.

I realized: Hoss w/ Glyph of Enoch: CP to +1 your mental value (when at full health) - you roll successes no matter what for aethon & chronothingy. pretty cool. Reich won by elimination - only one Reich character was wounded at end of game - the Hosstruppen with 1 wound (the one that couldve been able to enter as a Reinforcement for free). Not to be boastful in winning, but it I had a MUCH harder time deciding to use Hoss w/ Helm of Diomedes, Glyph of Enoch, or Combat Pack, Curse of Ozo or Mask of Samheim for Ozo, and which packs to use for Stosstruppen than trying to win...it really wouldnt have mattered much in the end really though, i think (in this particular matchup!)

Against union it is way better to drop the Prescience instead of the crown. Prescience is good against H2H teams (as he is just unkilllable by H2H with prescience) but crown works wonders against hard types like barry. (assuming that you enter the path). An average roll has 1 or 2 rolls below 4 that means barry gets to roll effectively 2 o3 dice... while Hoss (at his peak stats) makes regular 4 hit attacks.

I love Helm for hoss, as he is on mental 7 and against unions he just walks into overwatches, says hi and then fries someone with the aethon.

Against Matriarchy the baroness token is wonderful, as frying a voivode (which is quite usual) means insta health!

I have to say that in my last 2 games I stopped using hoss upon erquest, as he tends to be too good. Specially in domination and CTF.

I dont like curse of ozo, for Karl I favor either obscura korps band or the helm/mask.

The game I lost with this setup was a CTF against matriarchy with Oksana, oksana didnt have to do anything in the game but activate voivodes and have FAS equipped. The **** things kept coming! Voivodes are inmune to chronograph, and heizinger hermetica occulta, plus they had 2 guys moving 10 circles that activated twice per turn. They got 2 out of 3 flags in turn 1.

Matriarchy also ran with Irina with bonus pack and mask of shamhain instead of martyr. (she made my guys move less, that is a bad hindrance in CTF) and Gorgei with combat and the x5nr so he had on average 4 or 5 successes every time.

The ideas for different teams and equipment pack / bonus token combinations described here are great! Thanks to everybody!

Moebius said:

Hi i'm a new player, i've some question:

- for the helm, can it be used also in overwatch attack, also if the rules state: before declaring you as a target of an ATTACK ACTION...

- can voivodes enter in the heizinger'path with hermetica occulta? (...the voivodes can't participate any mental duel). I don't understand if voivodes can enter or not.

Thank you for help

1. An overwatch attack is "resolved as a regular attack" page 27, so I'd say yes, but that's not official.

2. I'd say yes because there is nothing to prevent the Voivode from entering, but a strict interpitation of the rules would lead me to say no because it cannot preform the duel. Either way, it's up to how strict you want to be. The safest bet is probably no. Did that help?

Thank you,

the helm seems to me too storg if used by heizinger or hoss; if helms starts also in overwatch probably they can be wounded only by grenades or voivodes if they can enter in the path of heizinger with hermetica occulta...

The reich is very vey strong imho

Unknown said:

Concerning the helm, I'm with Miah. It's not spelled out clearly in the rules, but it should work similar to its effect on a normal attack. But both the helm and the Mask of Samhain do NOT work on a counterattack, so that could be a possibility to damage Hoss or Heizinger. Otherwise, you are right: Heizinger or Hoss with helm or mask are difficult to damage. Possibilities include grenades, flame grenades, anyone who is immune to mental duels (Voivodes for example), anyone who wins the mental duel (Zor'ka for example, who also has a token that changes her mental value to --) or any effect that doesn't attack or target them (Oksana for example, who can also damage characters out-of-path). You can also increase your MV using Command points.

Concerning the Voivodes, I already mentioned their immunity to mental duels. The revised rules state that anyone with a mental value of -- "is not affected by efffects that would cause such tests or duels" (page 12, Null characteristics). So Voivodes and sometimes Zor'ka (see above) can enter Heizinger's path and attack him without problems even if he's wearing the helm.

I found the game rather balanced. Reich is annoying because many of their characters abilities to target opponents on other paths, but this is just good as long these characters have space to retreat. This option is reduced when outmanouvered, and chances to evade direct attacks from Unions heavy damage dealing "artillery" is fading in the course of the game. Additionally, this guerillia tactic is not the best option when you have to fulfill quests or missions. Union can beat Reich easily in direct confrontation, so it is the Union players job to force it upon the enemy. I therefore argue that the Reich is not superior over the Union nor vice versa, but the game depends on the players abilities to control another players movement and actions buy moving own characters in fitting positions and the use of special items or special manouvers like Overwatch, the correct timing of counterattacks, and a wise use of Cps . And, not to a low degree, luck with the dice!

There are some great replies on here...thanks folks. I'll be giving them another run soon and in the meantime, I've also picked up Yula, Hoss and Hoax just to shake things up.

Next up - the Hinhasho faction!

- netgeist

netgeist said:

Those are great buys - at least most of them. Hoss and Hoax are power characters that are always included in my teams if I play Reich or Union. Yula is - well let's just say there are different opinions about her.

Well, now the trully last one xD

sorry for my 3 answers…

The Reich with Hoss, Heizinger and Karl, can be beaten by the Union if they use Ramirez and Hoax right? (if you tell me the Union is still on disadvantage i just will play with my basic game! or won't play with Hoss xD)