She would have gladly taken the axe, but she had neither disposable equipment nor a free equipment slot in her inventory. But whatever, it's a good idea! It's not 100% safe for Asteros to throw his axe when Natalya is around.

I did 2 additional Asteros vs. Natalya games using Natalya (Cmb), Zor'ka (Sta), Irishka (Sta) and 2 Voivodes (10 MP, Repair). As you see, I only changed Natalya's pack because I wanted a better weapon for her to avoid the drawn-out game I had before. Well, it kind of worked. In the first game, Asteros (Sta) was supported by MacNeal (Cmb), Brown (Sta) and Alpha (Cmb). Team Asteros lost again, but the game was shorter and Asteros managed to bring down Natalya only to be killed by Zor'ka (the only survivor), who had again grabbed a Flash gun. After that, I switched Asteros' support to a Reich team using Artemus Maximus' team as an example. The team was: Asteros (Sta), Hoss (Cmm), Zermann (Sta), Schock (Sta). They could do out-of-path attacks on anyone who tried to back away from Asteros and had 2 First aid kits to bring Asteros (or each other) back to health. This time, team Asteros won with Asteros himself and Hoss surviving. Asteros himself brought down both Natalya and later Zor'ka while his support mainly killed the enemies' support and backed up Asteros.

After these games, I've got the impression that the outcome of Asteros vs. Natalya matchups depends on the players' ability to heal or repair their main characters (so it depends on the ability to quickly dispatch the opponent's support) and it depends heavily on having lucky or unlucky dice rolls. Especially a single unlucky shock roll can lose you the whole game. Concerning equipment packs, Natalya of course has a better chance to hurt Asteros if she has her Combat pack equiped, but Asteros also has a better chance of knocking her down. I think that's why Natalya seems to be more balanced than Asteros. Not only do her stats degrade when she gets damaged, but she either has a very powerful weapon (Combat pack) or a very powerful defense (Stamina pack) while Asteros has both.

Asteros with Reich support won again against Natalya and Zor'ka. I switched Natalya's equipment pack back to Stamina to give her better survivability against Asteros, but it didn't work. With some help from Hoss's Reichdoktor, Asteros overwhelmed every enemy he could reach, attacking of couse as often as possible and also using his special Bull Rush against weaker characters. When he and Hoss stood against a lone wounded Natalya in the end, I waited for a good attack roll and improved upon it with Reichdoktor, bringing Asteros to his last row but killing Natalya. Now I think that a team including Asteros (Sta), Hoss (Cmm) and Heizinger (Sta) could work even better because Heizinger can heal a character up to the top row.

I played yesterday my first game using natalya.

Asteros was not playing in the opposing team, it was an all Matriarchy fight:

-Oksana, Natalya + 4 voidoves (Natalya using 2 hero slots to try to limit her team)

- Zorka, Gorgei, Irishka, Matriarchy troop pack.

Natalya killed Gorgei after 2 consecutive shots, was wounded by Zorka and then repaired right away. Zorka's team lost by far. The fact that she can be repaired even though she rolled only 4 dice made the difference.

One question, in the booklet it says that natailya may spend an action to repair herself one row, but that is not reflected in any token, this means that on top of all her abilities she has the ability to repair herself by expending an action.

Can she also be cured by medi-kit? I could not find a place where ir says she cant.

I think that even though netalya is not as powerful as Asteros, she still cant be played against a team without an epic. In matches with 2 epic characters like the ones you described, the game evolves around the epic having the other figures as mere sidekicks which IMHO is just a less fun game. :-(

Katsuyori said:

Totally disagree.

While on the surface it seems like a good idea it is actually a freaking terrible idea.

What introducing a massively powerful character like Asteros does is inevitably make him the central focus of any strategy. He is you killer and your tank. You can send him in alone to do as much damage as possible and if he happens to die well you still have a whole team to clean sweep what he didn't murder. Or just bring in the support behind him and dominate.

When you then level the playing field by introducing a power house like that to each faction what you end up with is the same scenario for everyone. All plans get diminished into how do you support your power house instead of which of my balanced characters will act as my focal point. If you even have that.

With the basic 5 characters of each army in Tannhauser the only one who suffers at all from this kind of effect is Zorka and that is because the vanilla Russian army is built around supporting her and the Viovodes. With the trooper pack alone it becomes an entirely different story.

If you introduce Asteros class characters to every army and you go out and purchase them all you can just expect the game to degrade into nothing but Asteros class fist fights with the other characters making minimal impact on the game.

That was exactly my point lance!

Moebius said:

I saw!

What actually needs to be done is a discontinuation of anything even like Asteros and get back to make interesting regular power hero characters and trooper variations so you can continue to have INTERESTING CHOICES. Any Asteros class character only eliminates choice and variation. You feel good because your powerful but the games interesting diversity will plummet instantly.

Lance845 said:

I think that the epics should be FAQ'ed (that sounded worse than intended when I read it....) what I mean is transform them into good heroes nerfing them a bit, BTW if I recall correctly this is exactly what FFG did with Hoss, he is the best caharacter by far in the reich but still can be taken down.

I am using Hoss "game impact power" as a comparison to level her.

A proposal Natalya Hero Version:

- Natalya only takes a Hero slot but keeps the -1 command point trait to balance out her powerful Tokens.

- The KBA suit counts as a Bonus token (she can't get any other bonus token and her team can oly use 2 BT instead of One)

- Due to her mostly mechanical nature as with the Voivodes, Command points cannot be spent on behalf of Natalya.

- Remove first health row and -1 to every stat then she would be:
6 6 4 6
5 6 4 5
5 5 5 4
4 4 6 4

Suddently we got an interesting character, Really though (sta 6 and rerolling two dice) but not unkillable,If we go down to numbers the difference is huge, a 6 sucess roll (possible with any faction) would get her 2 wounds no matter what, also she is like barry, slower than the others (which should be normal regarding her bulk), she can still be repaired but to offset that she cant shake off wounds. I just came up with this, But I think it is worth playtesting.

Applying a simmilar treatment to Asteros, a proposal Asteros Hero Version:

- Asteros takes only 1 hero slot, keeping the -1 to CP plus an additional -1 to CP to a total -2 CP. Basically I am using the Shame of Minos effect on asteros.

- Asteros goes down to 4 Rows:
6 6 6 6
6 6 6 6
6 6 6 6
5 5 5 5

-Labrys couns also as a Bonus Token.

- Optional: My last modiffication (not exactly related) I would remove the Mercenary affiliation and make him shogunate. We got ana Matriarchy/Union ex-epic, Reich has Hoss, this way Shogunate gets another Hero (HtH focused which suits the theme), If you go a bit further on that line drop the "asteros" fluff and call him "Red Oni" :-D

Now asteros is really good, but the multi bullrush exploit gets toned down (stamina 6 instead of 7) and having him on the roster means losing 2 CP, in a 2 cp game this is really harsh, no overwatches, no counter attacks, no wounds shaking of...

What do you think? with some feedback and playtest we could create alternate character sheets and get to reuse these two mostly unused minis!

That's all well and good M., but completely pointless, FFG will never nerf the Epics that they created.

I think they do have their place, Epic are to help lees experienced players have a chance to actually win a game, they are far from invincible, I've seen Asteros taken out in 2 turns by Iroh, and Natalya is easily bested by well planned attacks by Zor'ka. I also feel that the current penalty for using an Epic is sufficient, somtimes having that extra trooper makes all the difference, especially in an objective based game.

One last point Hoss was hardly nerfed himself, he just lost the Legendary trait, which does not really compare with the newer Epic trait.

I really don't care if all factions get an epic or not, they have their uses, but they're not for everyone.

Miah999 said:

I think you missed my point Miah. I certainly dont expect FFG to react. My proposal is about experienced players to be able to use a miniature that they might have bought and then shelved as its not balanced/fun to play with. In other words customer created content intended to make more/better use of their product.

I dont know exactly the story about hoss, you probable know it way better than I do, But I do think that he is on the top 3 most powerful Heroes in the game, and a good measure to try to level the epics while nerfing them.

If with these rules Natalya and Asteros get to be played more often then I was successful in my intent. I am also posting them here to try to have people playtest the idea and get to know if they are better balanced as heroes now.

Both of them still are really powerful, but with these rules we might avoid having the game evolve all around them.

I dont agree with you, in an objective based game the troopers usually dont have the skills to get the objectives which makes them the best choice for combat rather than objective capture, on CtF or domination they do way better (specially voivodes). But Natalya (combat pack) kept rolling 6 success attacks throught the game, enough to kill a trooper in one shot (a trooper normally has 2-3 successes on the shock roll on average).

She got a trooper insta killed and gorgei killed in 2 consecutive shots (I won the initiative for the second).

Pehaps I did miss your point, but I still don't think these changes are needed.

And remember Troopers can roll a die to solve an objective, I actually have a lot of luck with it.

Oh well. Have fun however you like that's the point in the end.

Miah999 said:

Agreed, its about having fun.

My impression is that Asteros and Natalya are not being used as widely as other characters, the main reason for that? As they are right now, they are not fun for the reasons already stated, thus my proposal. I need to change them in orther to have fun with them, and I wonder how others feel like, thanks for your views Miah.

I know troopers can roll a die to solve half an objective, but they dont have to roll anything to pick a flag, or capture a location, thats why I think they make more of a difference in the other two modes.

I actually think that the best team for CtF or Domination involves Oksana and 2 pairs of voivodes, twice as many troops and a pair that can be activated twice, thats an advantaged that can't be outweighted by any other faction IMHO.

I agree that it's about having fun and I also agree to each their own. Everyone will play how they want and people will buy the characters they want to use.

My issue with epics is again the balance thing. It's not about whether the team becomes balanced because you loose a trooper or if 2 heroes have the right magic combo to bring them down. It's that before there was 2 classifications of characters with not a lot of gap in their individual power. A troops could be a huge advantage played right and is the only type of character you can bring back. In a power scale they are just barely below the heroes and that ONLY because they have 1 less life.

The epics are not like that. They are a power tier all their own. Opening the door by setting that precedent changed the playing field. troopers are no longer almost or Just as good as a heroes. Now they are expendable crap with heroes acting like troopers did for this new power tier with the very important difference that the power gap is much larger.

Without epics a trooper could, on their own, kill a hero. It was not a strait up even fight, but it was possible. A hero does not, on their own, kill an epic. And lets not even think about a trooper vs an epic. It redefines the value of any single unit. It completely changes what the game was. Who cares how good your strausstruppen are now that Asteros is in the field? Are you really going to send a shin agent after Nataya?

The VALUE of every unit changes when you introduce these characters to the game. THAT is the problem.

I have rescued this thread after sharing some thoughts on "Power Creep" effect in Tannhauser in Miahs blog

In case anyone want to playtest my proposal above (Hero version of the epics) here is some print & play help