I recently finished kind of a Tannhäuser tournament. Every faction played against every other faction in Objective mode on the new Research center map from Operation Hinansho. Neither characters nor equipment packs were changed between the games. I talked about several things I’ve noticed in another thread, but wanted to post a complete overview using a matching topic.
First thing is, the choice of entry points is really important. Two entry points really are better than the others because they are closer to several objectives. One is near a Command primary and a Command secondary objective as well as near a Strategy primary objective, another is near two Mechanics secondary objectives and an Engineering primary objective. If a player has the right entry point and characters with matching skills (or luck with the dice), he can win before the other player can even react. When my Matriarchy team started near the two Mechanics secondary objectives, it managed to win on the second turn.
As you see, you can have short games with almost no interaction between the teams. This is even enforced by the locked doors. Because all the entry points are separated from each other by several doors, it takes long for a team to make its way towards the enemies, sometimes too long to stop them. Games on this board tend to become a race to complete objectives as fast as possible – a very short race often enough. Speaking of the locked doors, they can have quite an impact on game play. As you have to spend MP to open them, your range if effectively reduced. Okay, everybody knew that already. But you really often have a situation where a character has the MP to open a door, but none left to enter the room to actually do something. Or you have wounded a character and would have killed him in your next activation, but he retreats and closes a door behind him, blocking your line of sight and your shots. This is especially effective because closing some of the doors costs less MP then opening them again, thus allowing characters to escape their enemies for a turn – which can be critical of course. When dealing with locked doors, you really have to think different about the order in which you activate your characters. You will often choose to open a door with one character coming in from behind, so on your next activation, a character can move through and actually do something. Both Hoax and Alpha are quite good for opening locked doors. One invisible Hoax spends MP to open the door, the other moves through to attack someone. Alpha with "Go!Go!Go!" is nice because he can use the extra MP to open a door and then throw a grenade through it or move in to accomplish an objective.
Characters with the infiltration ability are powerful too. Not because of their ability to open locked doors, but because they may enter at a different entry point and thus are near objectives that the rest of your team can’t reach. Infiltration is an advantage you really should use when playing Objective mode on this map.
The tournament ended with the Matriarchy team winning against every other faction because it could accomplish missions faster than anyone else. Because of the Voivodes, they have more characters to move towards different objectives and quickly accomplish them if they have the matching skills or just roll more dice than their opponent. If Oksana is present to activate the Voivodes again, the Matriarchy can try to accomplish objectives eight times a turn while the opponent can only try five times.
To come to a conclusion, I started a similar tournament on the Crash site map and experienced a lot more interaction between the teams. There are of course no locked doors on the map, and several objectives are located in the center of the map so the teams have to move there instead of staying near their entry points. The Matriarchy team has nevertheless already won two games. If anybody knows how to stop them, please tell me!

sounds like the research base map may actually be good for deathmatch? or a scenario with a combination of CtF, domination, and or objective modes? Also, you were playing 2-player games? how would barricading 2 of the entrances work as far as preventing the 2-turn win?

as far as matriarchy....hmmm think we need a Water Grenade...

You mean an energy dampening device.

ah thank you, that definitely sounds more threatening than a water balloon/grenade

also, was wondering how are the action circles set up in the research base map? would placing secret door tokens add or take anything away from the reinforced doors situation?

Artemus Maximus said:

Good idea! Everyone who plays a 2 player game in Objective mode should probably block the 2 entry points I mentioned above. The resulting game would be longer and have much more team interaction. And you'd better not play a 3 or 4 player game in Objective mode on the Research center map.

I finished the tournament on the Crash site map yesterday, and the games had a lot more team interaction because of the objectives located in the center of the board. Still, there are again 2 entry points that are slightly better, and that's the one near the weaponry primary objective and the one near the sangfroid primary objective. For those who want to know, Oksana's Matriarchy team won again, but at least they were beaten in one game by the Union that came in second. Two Deltas with flame grenades can make it quite hard for opposing characters to get to their objectives if the grenades are used properly. I can only recommend using them! Still, it was a very close game since both sides had completed three objectives and a half and had a character in position to accomplish the last half. In the end, it came down to winning the last initiative roll.

I want to try the Research station board in a tournament of Deathmatch games next. Right now I'm thinking about the teams I'm going to use. The rules for team building are: Although tokens are refreshed between games, neither characters nor equipment packs may be changed. Neither mercenaries nor bonus tokens are allowed.

I'll certainly play my favorite Reich team: Hezinger (Combat), Hoss (Command), Zermann (Command), 2 Schocktruppen (Command). The Shogunate team will of course include Iroh, Itami, Mizu and the two troopers because that's all they have, but I'm unsure about the equipment packs. I'm also still not sure who to pick from the Union and Matriarchy characters, although I really want to try Natalya. Anybody has an idea for a team that can possibly take on any faction?

i'd probably go smoke-heavy w/ union and zor'k/oksana, natalya, irishka, voivodes for matriarchy. not sure about packs but i'd probably let each player choose

on a tangent, when the matriarchy troopers arrive and i can get 6 players together, we're going to do a swiss-style tournament (that will likely take all day to play the 6 games ):

6 preset squads :: home map for each one

42nd MSF: MacNeal / Ramirez / Brown or Aponi / Alpha / Delta :: Gevaudan

Oscura Korps: Hoss / Heizinger / Ozo / Stoss / Stoss :: Catacombs

Matriarchy: Zor'ka or Oksana / Natalya / Irishka / Voivodes :: Priory

Shogunate: Iroh / Itami / Mizu / Shin / Ashigaru :: Research

Blutsturm Division : Eva / Yula / Wolf / Schock / Schock :: Castle

Phantom Division: Gorgei / Hoax / Irina / Alpha / Beopripacy :: Crash Site

Since Oscura Korps & Matriarchy will probably be the easiest teams to win with, we'll probably just assign those to the least-experienced players. Or do random selection...not sure yet. Probably will have bonus tokens assigned to characters as well to try to achieve a level playing field. That along with Domination Mode (that requires objective completion to plant a flag, Action to remove one) should create a good balance between combat and skill strengths, i think.

For each match-up, loser has "homefield advantage"; if records are tied, winner of set-up roll chooses which map.

After the 5 preliminary rounds, the 4 teams with the best win-loss records go on to play the final free-for-all Battle Royale on the Labyrinth Map!

I'm thinking we'd keep track of the # of surviving characters on the winner's side after each match, to break ties for the final battle...

Thanks for your input. I was thinking about using either Zor'ka + Natalya + Voivodes + X or Oksana + Natalya + Voivodes + X myself, but never about a Smoke-heavy Union team because Hoax is one of my favourites. But Smoke sounds great too, I think I'll skip Hoax this time. And if I lived anywhere near you, I'd definitely join your cool tournament, no matter how long the games would take. Great teams and great rules!

re: smoke team: just one game of a so-called 'dice fest' game, but today i played an "old-school" Union squad (as was my favorite Union team pre-Revised Rules, and because no Hoax or Matriarchy relations to be found, as has been normal lately) of MacNeal (Com), Ramirez (Com), Aponi (Com), Alphas (Com). the "Smoke Bombers" Unfortunately, Kev chose that uber power reich team...

The Smoke really only affected the Stosstruppen in practice (which as a defensive tactic, i played to success in preventing some 7-dice melee attacks). And Heizinger and Hoss' Chronograph were the only things immune on the other side (still big threats). So I kept everyone close together as long as possible (which i could afford to do since the Reich was as well). Hoss didn't want to teleport because of that. When he finally did, his Helm of Diomedes didn't prevent the 4 wounds from the TNT grenade. Once that happened i felt ok to split up...Hound DOG also got a work-out, breaking though Heizinger's Hermetica Occulta defense with ease and then helping to also gun down Ozo in the end. More than anything, the Smoke was a tool, and helped control the map somewhat - opponent's instinct is to avoid the smoke with everyone except Heizinger because Hoss & Ozo's attacks get pretty weak. So I managed to funnel them where I wanted by being aggresive with smoke combined with Overwatch (since out-of path meant little chance for Counterattacks I figured I wouldn't need to save CP for that). kev & I both agreed that better tactics couldve been used by the reich and he couldve won easily still though.

Even though Smoke may have won the day by being a 'surprise' tactic to my opponent, I still celebrated in True Smoke Bombers tradition with a Partagas...a tradition started before Revised rules when smoke was more powerful

4 of the 6 games in the Deathmatch tournament were already played using the following teams:

Union: MacNeal (Cmb), Brown (Sta), Ramirez (Cmb), 2 Alpha (Cmb)

Reich: Heizinger (Cmb), Hoss (Cmm), Zermann (Cmm), 2 Schocktruppen (Cmm)

Matriarchy: Zor'ka (Sta), Natalya (Cmb), Irina (Sta), 2 Voivodes (10 MP, Repair)

Shogunate: Iroh (Cmb), Itami (Sta), Mizu (Sta), Ashigaru (Sta), Shin (Cmb)

In short, Union and Shogunate look like the big losers this time. The smoke-heavy Union team managed to completely destroy the Shogunate team, but was no match for either the Reich or the Matriarchy. Hoss and Zermann just moved out of the smoke to do their out-of-path attacks, Zor'ka moved through the smoke and went into melee when she was out of the smoke again, Natalya just stood in the smoke and blasted everyone adjacent to her. Smoke's really not what it used to be!

The Shogunate team was obliterated twice. The melee-heavy characters often don't get near the enemies before they are gunned down or severely damaged by out-of-path attacks. I tried to cover their advance in smoke, but it seems like they hinder themselves more than their enemies with that tactic. Does anybody have a suggestion how to play them?

I finished the tournament yesterday. The Reich team won because it managed to destroy the Matriarchy team in the last game, overwhelming both Zor'ka and Natalya with powerful out-of-path attacks and Schocktruppen on overwatch. Harbinger's Reichdoktor ability proved very useful to bring in much needed extra successes. The Matriarchy came in second, the Union third and the Shogunate last without winning even a single game. I still don't know what to do with them.

in regards to deathmatch/combat & shogunate:

to be honest, ive found the best way to play shogunate is to run straight at them and attack, attack, attack. double coverage. counterattacks. still at a disadvantage somewhat since they have to move in close to be of mortal threat - they have higher than average combat and movement values but average stamina values. So it helps that they move slightly faster on average (across all wound levels) but i dont think it's enough to overcome ranged attacks 1 on 1, so target isolated characters and pick them off 1 by 1 by overwhelming that 1 enemy with all you have - multiple activations to their 1. of course, if they stay all clumped together like the Reich tends to do, it's trickier... In 1 on 1, your guys will take wounds likely by the time they get close - so using their top combat row is more rare, relatively speaking. But if 5 on 1, you're more efficient. Also, you can flank in some cases, which can prevent that character from endlessly retreating and firing with ranged attacks all the while while you sit there as target practice. And when you're obviously taking all your characters at a lone enemy, try to draw attention with the more 'staminous' Itami, elusive Mizu, and disposable troopers - activate them first to announce your intent and opponent will likely focus on them more than their backup.

that's all i can figure out...think it would be cool if Shogunate's analog to Hoss/Hoax/Zor'ka is someone who can effectively isolate characters/divert/distract/disorientate - would be much more fun i think.

digression - about 50% of the time i play with an additional melee rule that makes this combat disadvantage really a non-issue and imo more fun/fair in us, the payers' eyes. and as by product, pistols relevant and even unarmed attacks happen...all bonuses to me

SMOKE: just a suggestion, but let's say that the Union were to develop a new formula for their smoke grenades - more noxious and affects the nervous system temporarily. it really slows down EVERYTHING...anything that doesn't ignore it...

in addition to existing rules,

- each smoked circle has a -1 movevment penalty (in addition to any existing ones)

- any character on a smoked path rolls 2 fewer dice for attack rolls, shock rolls, duels, and tests

(can only still attack adjacent unless the weapon doesn't require LoS). Everyone now fear Union's so-called 'true' core strategy - smoke

BUT rules being unaltered, just have to hope to out-maneuver and outsmart your opponent with tactics with said smoke team to take him.

Artemus Maximus said:

This really is brutal! MacNeal and Ramirez will simply gun down everyone in one attack!

Your suggestions concerning the Shogunate are great, I'll definitely try them. Move into melee as fast as possible and try to isolate characters while drawing the enemy's attention elsewhere sounds fitting. Additionally, I'll try to cover Mizu's and Shin's advance in smoke as both partially ignore its effect

My own dissgression: I am often wondering about the shogunate too, if Hoss was shogunate teams would be way more even, that would give them the flexibility they currently dont have. I was thinking of creating a custom using hoss rules but shogunate themed (red Oni?). This would complement the team greatly by giving them their own out of path capacity, a good mental character and more tactical possibilities which in the en adds more fun.

If I do a tournament I am thinking about Rolling Randomly which Heroes to use (not the troops) and even randomly rolling the packs every character has. That levels the field as better teams cannot abuse their superiority. Another option is that dead heroes miss next game (again trying not to allow abuse). Also allowing Epics to the teams that are losing in the tournament may help to make it more interesting and give them a push to be back on.

Disgressions appart; playing shogunate is a challenge indeed, my thoughts:

I usually drop Itami for Wolf to have at least 1 hero with ranged attack, he is the one to be on overwatch. I dont use the shame of minos so no drawback here.

Mizu is very good for CtF and Domination games as she is fast and hard to kill. I only used her so far with Stamina pack, the idea being that she can try to trigger overwatch and walk away or drop the happo. Her problem is that her weapon is crap (4 dice dont bring you anywhere), I try not to have her too far from Iroh, if he dies she goes for his sword, if she finds an automatic weapon thats good as well.

On the troop side i give the Shing agent the NX5R bonus token and the Ashigaru weapon on the first game turn, she gets then to roll 7 dice rerrolling 2 of them wich is quite a punch. If playing with reinforcements I go Kamikaze with the Ashigaru and spend all his equipment early so I can bring him back fully equipped.

Iroh always with command, having the opponent roll 1 less shock dice is what gives him the edge.

Last point, I would like to join your tournament too! if you are willing to play some games with the Tannhauser Online I created (version 3 coming this week by the way) we could do that :-)

I'd be up for the tournament

Just let me know when you have version 3.0 available and how to download it?

Regards

-Nhoj

+1 for a TH online tourney

Moebius said:

You are right, the Shogunate really needs a powerful characters that somehow breaks with their melee theme to get them to the same level as the other factions.

While Mizu with her Stamina pack is great to dodge attacks, I'll try out her Combat pack the next time I play Shogunate. That way she'll roll one more die with her weapon and her attacks will be immune to smoke. I'll pair her with a beefed-up Shin that is not only powerful when equipped with an automatic weapon but also has a weapon that is unaffected by smoke.

On Iroh I think you are only partially right. While having the enemies roll 1 less shock die is indeed great and the equipment I always play, it's part of his Combat pack, not Command.

You are right, I meant Combat.

Tannhauser Online 3.0 will be up this weekend,it has lots of goodies... Ill update about it in its own thread :-)

how about Hoss with the rest as melee characters (iroh, itami, shin/stoss?) - use Hoss with combat pack + helm of diomedes to transport their guys 1 at a time right into the middle of 4 melee attackers. kill, repeat until hoss is eliminated, and by that time you'd have an advantage on # of Activations that should make taking out the rest easier by using flanking & isolation tactics ... maybe

Artemus Maximus said:

Thats exactly the type of tactics I meant. Also Hoss has out of path attack, and can give 0s to iroh is rolling and sharing a path (Iroh 0s count as 2 successes when attacking).

You just convinced me, I need to find time to create the "Red Oni" custom using Hoss rules (I like re-fluffing hoss as it makes the custom a "legal" character to use with shogunate using umtoma).

Any suggestion on possible minis I could use? (other than repainting Itami) ;-)

Moebius said:

just some ideas from Okko minis (unpainted) - probably hard to find these though...

EVIL:

images.frpgames.org/products/product_52131.jpg

EPIC!:

images.frpgames.org/products/product_57551.jpg

Hoss i think is an excellent template for an Oni character imo

Red Oni ideas -

[RED Oni are typically more emotional, brutal, wreckless, vengeful, defiant than their BLUE counterparts. They tend to focus on people rather than goals, in general]

- Circle exchange a la Hoss OR win mental duel to PULL an enemy towards you 10? spaces (as opposed to away from + attack like with Patmos Amulet) [Oni can often fly or magically traverse vast distances quickly in folklore]

- backwards combat values: starts at 5 at top health row and increases as Oni takes wounds (as he's wounded, rage increases). Ability to wound himself for advantage? 1 wound = +1 die for attack?

- blood lust - eliminating can heal his wounds (like elizabeth bathory)

- helm of diomedes/mask of samheim ability [Oni have been known to be able to shapeshift]

- firestorm! his path is engulfed in flames: 3 successes to each char. on it + burn tokens like zazigag.

- sumo oni: no weapons but +dice to unarmed attack. if unarmed attack wounds (or maybe natural 10), can knockdown enemy - +1 auto wound, skips Action of next activation (stunned) ...? plus really high stamina.

sorry for going completely off topic from OP

Artemus Maximus said:

No problem - just keep those great ideas coming!

just found bushido-thegame.com for a source of some nice-looking Oni and other custom Shogunate heroes