I bought Tannhauser at GenCon 2007 as my Take-a-Chance game: a yearly GenCon ritual (that I now question after this experience) where I buy a game I haven't fully researched yet, and take my chances with. There was so much promise to this game. Who doesn't like killing evil Nazis in a seemingly pulp environment with flavorfull missions and good tactics? That was the appeal.

Executive Summary: Tannhauser "borrows" many game elements from exisiting games (Frag, Adventure!, Mage Knight/HeroClix, Doom, Red Faction II, HeroScape), and while the flavor is still great, that flavor does not translate well to the gameboard, which plays like a better Frag (and Doom-deadly at that), but the board itself is a deal-breaker along with a half-baked rulebook.

Let me start by saying that I am not hard to please when it comes to board games. I can play most and enjoy them, and rarely do I refuse to play a game. Ergo, when a write this largely negative review of Tannhauser, know that it takes a lot for me personally to react as negatively as I have to this game.


THE GOOD

There are some great things about this game despite my overall frustration with it. The rulebook art is top-notch. There are plenty of tokens with great art (a bit dark, but more on that later). The flavor of a pulp Nazi vs. Union conflict with some supernatural elements and higher tech is so very well done in the rulebook. It easily captures your imagination and makes you excited about playing. The minis are also very well sculpted and painted. My game was missing the Eva mini, but FF was very quick and courteous to send a replacement.

The story mode is really neat (at least before you actually play). The objective tokens tell a neat little background story about what your team has come to do, and this adds well to the flavor of the game. Well done.

THE BAD

The board itself is a deal-killer for me. The background art is actually pretty good, but the board is so dark, people with really good vision have to strain to see even the walls let alone the path colors. If you don't play under a theatre searchlight, you're already in trouble. The self-touted 'revolutionary' pathfinder system may be untried, but it's hardly revolutionary and is frankly not even needed. Do selfish players really argue about line of sight *that* much? The paths are so murky, almost muddy looking, you almost have to stare down at the circles from directly overhead with a flashlight to see them. Who approves something like that? I can see it was made dark for flavor, but if you can't see the board because of really shoddy design, that kind of kills any flavor.

The rulebook is another mess. I can get past a few spots of less than optimal translations, but the organization is messy. There are some areas overly covered and some areas not covered nearly enough, and it jumps around. I don't think it's a good logical choice to be explaining something in one section and then refer to another section that hasn't even been covered yet. The many unique weapons and starter packs require people to pass around the rules for far too much time.

The bits, while many as one expects from a FF game, are well-constructed, but some are hard to see. For example, on the dial down counters for health, could the arrows be any smaller? While the actual artwork on them is good, again, too dark, murky, and so many of them that you don't really even need. I love customizability, but the different equipment packs are largely unimportant, as your character is likely to die not long after seeing an enemy anyway.

THE UGLY (Gameplay)

So at this point we have great pulpy flavor and artwork nd missions, with an awful board and dubious rules. But how does it play? This is where there is a large disconnect between flavor and execution. At set up, the story objectives are simple tokens. Granted, they are placed near room objects which match the objective in some way, which is neat, but they are still just tokens, so it loses some flavor for me right there, mostly because you can't see the board well enough to enjoy the story objective with the murky dark board.

The actual movement and fighting is pretty simple. When you encounter an enemy you essentially roll competing dice pools for successes (Adventure!) pitting your attack stat against your opponent's stamina stat (and equipment and other elements add +/-s to the rolls). You then compare whether you have more successes than your opponent (HeroScape), and if you hurt their character, you dial down their stats (Mage Knight/HeroClix), often with lethality (Doom). If you can get your characters with the proper skills to the objective tokens, you can win. There are other modes like Capture the Flag and Deathmarch, but those are rather Red Faction II-ish, and I have no personal interest in as far as a board game.


Thus, IMO, the great flavor doesn't translate well to the simple gameplay, which is a better Frag with real minis, and combines elements from various games as described above. If the board was more usuable, and the unneeded pathfinding system was replaced with spaces you could see, I might not be so critical of this game. And I don't mind dice-fests at times. But a $60 dice fest that is very disconnected from the neat flavor of the game is very frustrating to me. Others may enjoy this game, and I respect that, but I am not one of them.

Yes. We do. I am still argueing with one of my friends about a LoS ruling in Squad Leader and that was over 3 months ago.

Compiling elegant mechanics from other games does *NOT* make a game less desirable to me, but I am worried about the board quality. The game is coming to me in the mail this week and I will post back here with an agreement or disagreement. Thanks for your frank review!


Edit for the missing "Not". Duh.

Uh, yeah, we do.

Thanks for the review - I appreciate your comments.

This means I have to scale back my 'Must have this game' to a 'Thinking About it'. More research will follow.

I can forgive a game for mashing other games mechanics together, expecially when I have no experience with many of the games mentioned (Doom aside).

I can even forgive poorly constructed rule sets - how many games fall into this bracket?!

But the functionality of the board is critical. The board conveys the feel of a game, it should inspire. It if does neither of these things and then even makes the game hard to play...

I'll look forward to Tim's comments in due course.

I thought this game was an alternate history of The Great War. There were no Nazis in that war (well at least the real Great War). Are the characters just Nazi-like or are there actual Nazis in this game?

    For those of us who's eyes are over forty, is the print type used in this game going to be a problem?

             Sag.

If you hadn't "fully researched" it, and it was a "take-a-chance" game, then how could it have been "incredibly disappointing"?

    Because he, like me, just wanted it to be a good game. The theme is just so cool you want the rest of it to match.

             Sag.

I agree with that also. I really wanted to try it at GenCon, but did not get a chance. The theme looked really cool and I really had my hopes set high on this one. Now I am glad I held off getting it.

Thanks for the comments everyone.

Gary - You are correct, and I misused the term Nazi. It's not about killing Nazis proper, but that's the feel it has. It does indeed reference only WWI.

Sagrilarus - I just hit 40, and while I have visual challenges myself, even the younger guys in our group sans glasses remarked "holy crap, that's hard to see" referring to the board especially and some of the murky tokens. And you're right on with the Take A Chance motiff. One of my friends was very excited about it and blogged his excitement, which after reading the blog, got me hopeful it was a good game. I bought it on the hope that the flavor would carry it, but as mentioned, the mechanics are a large disconnect from the flavor, IMO.

Anything can be disappointing if it's less than you hoped for. I've often gone to a movie that I knew nothing about, and been very disappointed by it.

You said the BGG magic phrase!