1. Expandability
2. Unique Combat
3. Unique line of sight system
4. Great components
5. Killing
6. Even more killing
After playing again tonight I had to finally write my review. This game easily got over looked with a couple new games that I purchased at the same time as Tannhauser. (Last night on earth & StarCraft on pre-order) As you can see it was out shined by some great games.
I will give my review and then finally review what this game is missing...
COMPONENTS
The miniatures are just awesome! let me say that again, Awesome. Highly detailed and great painting.
The board is nice as well. Some people complain that it is too dark. I have to say I like the darkness. However, It does make matching the pathfinder system hard. if they would have lighted up just the path system enough to get a good look at it, this would have made it 100% on the board.
The equipment markers and counters are great as well. Think cardboard and great detail as well. The only real good complaint I have about the markers is there is not enough for the standard units. The rules state that you can heal your basic units and rebuild a custom equipment packs. However, you had to drop your equipment on the board when they die. It makes it impossible to use the same gear. If FFG supplied extra markers for the base units it would make this great as well.
The rules are horrible once again. True to FFG, you are going from page one to page five, back to page three just to figure something out. The reference sheets are just about worthless. Until you memorize what each piece of equipment does, you are constantly flipping through the reference sheets.
GAME PLAY
The game play has some really cool points, and some that really are not so cool.
Characters, if used with the canned equipment packs, are good. They change just enough to really change the way you play them from game to game... The problem is, the rules to customize your character. if you do not use the defaults packages for a character, you only get three equipment tokens and NOT their special one. I know it is that way to balance it out... but to me there could have been a better way to do it. because of that, I never created a custom package. Now FFG have posted many new tokens for some characters that may offset them, but to print it out on paper and use them stinks. I would purchase them if they would print them on the same card stock as the game.
The path system is good and the way it is laid out on the board is really good. The weapons range and the way the paths are setup can really cause troubles for you if you do not really think out your moves. If you are not careful with unit placement, you can really make you own team useless. That is where the strategy comes into play.
The character sheets and hit points are laugh. To many times the token used to point to your current heath get moved and you have to remember where it was at. They could have done a better job at that.
I really enjoy the combat system... The attacker has to a set number of dice they roll and must roll higher than the defenders difficulty rating. For every success, the defender had to make a similar roll counter with their own successes. If he doesn't he suffers a wound. A little confusing at first, but once you get knee deep in killing, it was very simple and efficient. I really liked the combat system.
THE GAME MODES
Here is where the game lacks. The game has rules for Story Mode, Death Match, and Domination. We only played the deathmatch because the other left us lacking fun.
Story Mode had a great concept but really stunk. Supposedly each team had missions to accomplish. But the missions are just tokens on the board that match your main characters abilities. With that, you would need to grab the tokens from the board. If you got enough to satisfy the requirements, you win. BORING... there is not back story, there is nothing like that. You need to just think of something in your head for a story plot. Not to mention, the boards are hard coded for specific tokens, so the so called story never changes from game to game. Well, the side that needs to take a scenario spot changes, but that is all setup at the beginning.
FFG have posted some ways to make the story mode better... but all that should be in the base game.
Domination mode and death match to me are the same. we always wipe each other out before achieving the death match objectives...
OVERALL
I really wanted more out of this game and maybe expansions, and not just new people... in the year it has been out, there has been two added characters. No new boards... nothing to make this game work. They have stuff in development, but it will be far to long away to make a difference. This game also needed at least 1 more double sided board. True story mode with unique objectives. Not just spots on the map to go to. But real objectives.
The combat system is great... the path system is great... the miniatures are great... other than that, the game is pretty bad.
Posted Thu Apr 10, 2008 5:40 am
its all too true 
