Tannhauser release

[Brendan]

Fantasy Flight's going to release an English-language version of a French squad based combat game called Tannhauser that looks absolutely beautiful:

http://www.takeonyou.com/IMG/pdf/tannhauser-presentation-us.pdf
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/25261

The theme is apparently an alternate history of WWI where, 30 years after the war should've ended, the Germans are looking to mystical sources to empower their army (a la Raiders of the Lost Ark, apparently).

If only I could find a decent local group of board gamers.  I really enjoy the social aspect of these games.

[Chaz]

I was really glad to hear that this was getting an English release.  I was watching the French version for a while, and dreading having to get translations for everything, and then convincing people to play it with the French text.  This makes it much easier.

[Brendan]

I have a hard enough convincing 3 other people to play a non-Cranium board game that foreign language rules would end the possibility of board gaming altogether...

I'll pretty much buy anything made by FFG or Days of Wonder at this point, so I'm inclined to give it a go.

[hepcat]

Had a friend pick this one up for me at Gencon this year.  We gave it a couple of tries the following Saturday night.  I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed in it. 

The concept of the game and the history behind it are fun.  It's the execution that left me a bit wanting.

The board's much touted "pathfinder" system sounds great in theory, but the colors are a little hard to determine without getting up close.  And god forbid you're playing in a room without a main light directly overhead.  Combined with some issues of doors looking like walls, and vice versa, and you've got the makings of some confusing movement rounds.

Also, the rules are a little...well...odd.  You can tell that it was translated from the another language due to some syntax issues, but the way you have to jump around to different sections just to get rules for something that SHOULD be in one area (combat rules, for example, should be covered in a section called "combat", I would think.  Not chopped up and placed in various other sections throughout the manual, as it stands now) is annoying.

As for the combat itself, the meat of the game, it plays like Heroscape with an extra page of rules.  It really needs enhancement to become something more than it is, which is basically a very light miniatures game.  Of course, that could've been the intent the whole time.  I just expected more from it, I guess.  Hopefully the expansions add some new rules, new characters, boards, etc.. 

[Brendan]

Yeah, I actually picked it up last week and gave it one play-through.  You're completely right about the pathfinding colors - the system works well enough in theory, but the printing is so dark that it's frequently hard to make out where walls are and where colors shift.

We only played the "deathmatch" variant, so I can't talk about advanced strategies, but it was reasonably fun.  I have a hard time believing that it has a lot of legs without purchasing expansions that give you more characters, and therefore more options when selecting your squad-members.

There're four individual character packs coming out (not counting the "Wolf", which was apparently a special prize for pre-orderers), and a full expansion called Operation Novgorod, which adds a board, equipment, etc.