I was genuinely saddened to see today's FFG announcement that Tannhauser development would cease for the foreseeable future. I am a huge fan of FFG board games and I never would have discovered the company if not for my first encounter with Tannhauser. I love this game, which has been greatly improved with the revised FFG rules. The tactical depth, loadouts, and pathfinding system aren't found in any other board game. It is so very cool that FFG has continued developing content for the game and expanded its world, however I am deeply sorry to learn that additional content will not be developed beyond this year.

I am greatly looking forward to Edison, Frankenstahl, and the two book projects, however I will *really* miss this franchise.

FFG, please know that I would purchase any projects set in the Tannhauser universe sight-unseen. Please don't fully abandon this deep and engaging world.

Given the two forthcoming books this announcement surprised me as well. On further thought though FF has their current hotness ,Dust Warfare ,to fill the ranks of their "weird" war gaming. Given how well Dust seems to be doing I'm sure that's where much of their focus lies. What Fantasy Flight will do is put Tannhauser to bed for a few years and if/ when interest in Dust cools then they'll pull Tann out of the vault(provided weird war gaming is still a thing). In the meantime there are plenty of expansions to keep everyone busy.

If they are not considering further development (as Dust takes all the fame and glory) why not re-sell the franchise, maybe back to ToY?

I would support any moves that keep the game (or the universe, eg. with a LCG. Wouldn´t that be extraordinary grand?) alive with all my humble resources.

Moebius said:

I'm afraid TOY does not exist anymore.

Updated signature says it all!

Your signature speaks from the bottom of my heart. I adore it.

Thanks. I just thought if anyone in charge would read it over and over again, perhaps it would change anything. I know of course that there's only a small chance, but I had to try.

That´s the spirit! Let TH live, in one form or another. The setting is wonderful. LCG, board game, whatever.

Mind if I copy the signature for the reason of unity of the community against TH breakdown into my own?

Katsuyori said:

Same question !

Feel free to copy it. The more the better!

Thank you, it's done !

phineusphule said:

What books are you speaking of?

I will be so glad to have missed a future release

The two books in questions are the two novels: Rising Sun , Falling Shadows and Operation: Night Eagle .

While I'm sad that Tannhauser will stop receiving new products for some time, I'm happy with what we have got 'till now. I sincerely hope that FFG will continue to develop the IP maybe as a RPG, a LCG, a novel or even a Deckbuilding game.

I don't think that Tannhauser suffer from the comparison with Dust Tactics, the games and the universes they're set into are much different. However I think that despite FFG spending resources into the game, they never did much to communicate on it.
News about the products were few and rapidly lost in the flow of more popular game news, support was almost inexistent with questions taking so long to answered while other games had multiple FAQ iterations and it was never really supported in events making it difficult to popularize.

If the IP is to be resurrected in later date, they will have to rethink their communication strategy. And if they return to the game, they should start with something else, not the board game we know: maybe some new novels, a simpler card game with the 4 factions vying for resource control on the theater of war map, anything that would help expand the public knowledge about the IP without requiring prerequisite knowledge.

There is one thing i'm very sad of and is that the new faction doesn't get any possible variations, Shogunate has a full squad but nothing more, that's bad, if they went dropping the franchise with two shogunate character instead of Edison and Frankenstahl i would have been more pleased.

But after all i think that a good think can do forever remaining good and i appreciate suspending the game without resorting to publishing ridicolous thing trying to catch people.

Only a suggestion, i ever wondered how a campaign would be very good for this game. A structurized tree of games where the ending of a game influence the others.

Example: Union and German fight in castle ksiaz, if union win the next play they have an extra choice of character or additional crates on the new map or a bonus to another battle or an automatic turn initiative win, anything…. In a structure simila ro this:

O

/

O O
/ /

O O O

And so on until you get the lenght of the campaign, five step lead to five different resolution, every step increse by one the resolutions.

This type of expansion can be published in electronic form by rpgnow/drivethrurpg and don't require so much an effort like manifacturing miniatures or maps and, in my opinion, will be wonderful to play.

Anyway, this has been a good ride, i hope it hasn't ended but in any case, good work so far.

I agree on the shogunate lack of characters. They tend to lose more than other factions as well, they are more predictable among other things.

There are 2 home rules we use to make them level with other factions and give them more variety.

1- Hoss: Hoss has the shogunate faction loyalty symbol in addition to previous symbols (so if not using umtoma rules which we dont, shogunate can still pick him). This mimics Oksanas and Natalyas dual faction allegiance. From a background perspective he is also the ideal choice.

2- Shame of minos token does not affect shogunate: (So shogunate makes easier use of mercenaries than other factions).

I have played a couple of games with a Shogunate + Hoss team (dropping usually Itami), IMHO it gived them the edge they lacked, a very resilient character (helm of diomedes or mask of shamhain are a must for him), with good tactical abilities (either teleport or reichdoktor).

Other team I use is shogunate + wolf, I tend to use him for overwatch (as he gets 2 shots), he is much better at it than the Ashigaru. Again this gives them some needed ranged firepower. Again dropping Itami.

I usually drop Itamy by elimination, I sure wont drop Iroh, the best shogunate has, and Mizu is the flag carrier/dominator by excellence; moving 8 and either infiltrating or with shadowflash which makes her much harder to kill (and eventually may make her move 11)

As a sidenote,I also use Artemus melee home rule to give h2h weapons some edge over automatics.

Rontules said:

I absolutely agree with your thoughts on the Shogunate. Before we knew about the end of TH, I always hoped for the release of a new Shogunate character to further develop that faction. Not only do they have nothing more than a full squad without any possible variation, but they are lacking a powerful ranged fighter to support their melee characters. Way too often, the Shogunate characters enter melee only to be gunned down by enemies from a distance, sometimes even from out-of-path.

But as much as I liked to see new Shogunate characters, I can understand FFG's decision to release a Union and a Reich character. These will be useful for more players and thus be bought by more players, simply because everyone who owns the core set can play Union or Reich and will probably buy powerful characters for these faction, where Shogunate characters will only be bought by those who have already invested in the Shogunate. Additionally, there weren't any Union or Reich releases lately, so the fans of these factions maybe are getting angry.

Last point: Whatever character or faction anyone of us would have liked to be released, FFG releases two characters that seem to be cool and that every TH player will be able to use. So if everyone actually buys these characters and thus some profit is generated, maybe FFG will reconsider their decision to end TH.

??! if that was the case why not releasing more mercs? or a dual Reich/Shogunate character as Oksana (or my home rule for Hoss)…

By the way your nik is… difficult to pronounce

I don't know about FFG's actual reason to announce Edison and Frankenstahl instead of other characters, I just posted what I supposed to be the reason. But you are right of course, dual faction characters would be a good idea to generate more sales. Same goes for mercenary characters, which I included in my new signature although I generally rather dislike lots of mercenary characters because they take away the unique flavor and playstyle of the different factions. This could be a reason for FFG to announce two new affiliated characters instead of mercenaries, but again I don't know. That said, of course I'd buy and play any mercenary character if the alternative is getting no characters at all. A powerful new mercenary hero or even a mercenary trooper pack would be useful for every player, so it could be a way to go for FFG …

A lot of the reason for the choice of a Reich and Union character, has to do with how much of those figures was already finished.

TOY had already done some of the development work for both Edison and Frank back in 2008, so they just took less work then new Shogunate or Mercs that exsists only as art or even less.

They just took less time and money.

Miah999 said:

I didnt know that, now it mkes much more sense :-)

Neither did I! They really had these finished or half-finished characters lying on their desks for years but didn't finish and release them yet? Why? And even more important: How many great, ready-to-be-released characters will they find if they actually start looking around in their drawers?

As I understand it and of course I may have been misslead: when FFG purchased TH in 2009 literal boxes of material for TH was sent from TOY and it took over a year just to sort and translate it. After that they tried not to releasse thing so fast as to overwhelm the market.

I imagine that many of the characters seen in Field Ops are complete art wise, but if TOY did any development work it would be TH 1.0 and of not much use Mechanics wise. Who can say how much work was done on the Shogunate before TH was sold.