Tannhauser Review

Forget the Gate for a moment.

Tannhauser was a poet. The Tannhauser of legend knelt at the feet of Venus and adored her. He became remorseful, begged for forgiveness from a Pope, was denied, and returned to his adoration of his goddess. He is there, we imagine, even now. Rapture of the flesh.

Tannhauser is poetry, eroticism, torture, guilt and love.

Fantasy Flight’s Tannhauser is set in 1949, a year which sees the First World War rumbling on. But after 35 years of conflict, things are about to change. The Reich has found some occult artifacts, as they often do in works of fiction. Now things are about to get very gothic, very steampunky, very shooty and very roll-a-lot-of-dicey.

In truth, Fantasy Flight themselves explain the game better than I can. Watch this video, and then read on to see my take on the gameplay.

The first thing to be said about the game is that it’s beautiful. When you lay the fella out, with its lovely double sided map board (a house and an underground cavern), and place all those pre-painted miniatures on there… You just have to step back, look at it and say “Man!”

INT. ROBERT’S HOUSE – NIGHT

ROBERT and KENNY are sitting at the table. Tannhauser is laid out upon it.
JOANNE enters.

JOANNE
Is this Tannhauser?

ROBERT
Aye.

JOANNE
Oof.

As a great man once said: “It’s an FPS.” Tannhauser is simply the board game equivalent of a PC or console first person shooter game. Ten characters, each with different abilities, each with multiple weaponry and equipment loadouts. 5 baddies, 5 goodies. Different modes of play – Story Mode, Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, King of the Hill…

“It’s an FPS.”

Tannhauser is an easy game to learn, and an easy game to play. You’ll be rolling a lot of dice. You roll for initiative, you roll to shoot, you roll to go hand-to-hand, you roll to duel. You do have a little bit of control over Lady Luck. Tinkering with your weapon loadouts can give you an advantage (some weapons will kill instantly on a natural 10, for example), and you can spend Victory Points to shift the goalposts. Victory Points can be found in crates, by the way.

In crates. “It’s an FPS.”

The standout feature of the game is the “Pathfinder System.” Each map is littered with coloured circles. If you’re on a red circle, you have line of sight to anyone else on a red circle. If you’re on a yellow and blue, you can see along the yellow and blue path. It’s a beautiful system, and it removes any abstraction from the game. Miniature skirmish games are often fraught with LOS debates and rules lawyering, so it’s nice to find a game that allows everything to just be and lets players get on with trying to kill each other. It also allows for moments of high drama, where characters can be RIGHT BESIDE EACH OTHER on adjacent circles, but neither having line of sight because of a half-closed door.

The teams seem beautifully balanced. The Union (the good guys) have incredible weaponry, but aren’t very nippy on their feet. The Obskura Corps (the bad guys, MY GUYS) have some crazy mystical powers, but they need to duck in and out of the shadows – they’re not the most resilient bad guys in the world. Take this big prick, for example–

OZO - Can't get my head round him

–for some reason, I can’t keep this gentleman alive. Kenny killed him two games in a row just last night, without Ozo even firing off a single shot. I’m not blaming the game for this. I’m blaming me. Characters have their strengths and weaknesses.

Now, while I’m shit at ordering Ozo around the map, give me this bad boy and all bets are off–

Stosstruppen - A fucking BEAST

Now, the chap above is just one of the Obskura Corps’ troopers. But he’s a monster. He moves fast, and when he gets into close combat with someone, it’s a case of STAB, SLASH, HELP!, TOO LATE, YOU’RE MINE, OH MY GOD HELP OH GOD, TOO LATE TOO LATE SHHH SHHH SHHH DIE SLEEP SLEEP SHHH DIE FRIEND SHHHH MY BABY DIE SHHHH SHHHHHHHHHH SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH UGHHHHHHHHHHH! This is a game where you play your characters to their strengths.

The game isn’t without strategy, then, but the strategy is light. That’s fine. It is, after all, “an FPS.” I’ll give you a look at some of the strategic choices you might make during a play of Tannhauser.

EXAMPLE TANNHAUSER STRATEGIES

1. Stay away from that big fucker with that fucker of a gun.

2. Don’t stand in a cluster, you tits. She’s got dynamite!

3. Sneak up behind that wee wanker and slit his throat with your claw.

4. STAY AWAY FROM THAT BIG FUCKER WITH THAT FUCKER OF A GUN!!!

Tannhauser plays 2-10 players. I’ve only ever played it 2-player, so I can’t speak for these massive games. I imagine, though, that it might just work. The thing is, Tannhauser is a game that sees characters getting cut up and killed regularly and quickly. In a 10 player game, if you’re the first character to get popped, you might not fancy waiting around for a new game to start. But then again…

…here’s the thing. “Dicefests” are often met with disapproval in this age of Eurogame snootiness. But sometimes there’s no greater entertainment than a do or die face-to-face dice roll. Kenny and I had a stand-off last night. Two characters, going toe-to-toe. Both refusing to run away. Both rolling at each other for turn after turn. Both refusing to die. It was amazing. I imagine that, even if it had been a 10 player game and we were the last two left, people would have enjoyed watching the drama play out.

Tannhauser has a full expansion already, called Operation Novgorod, and it’s also a thing of beauty. It brings in a steampunk character set, and features a beautiful snowy outdoors map. The miniatures in Novgorod are particularly beautiful–

Wow. Right? Oof.

–further enhancing the I AM COLLECTING ACTION FIGURES HOORAY! element of the game. There are individual character packs available too, and you can swap these into the factions. In truth, there’s room on the table and in people’s wallets for more expansions than are currently available. GET A MOVE ON, FF.

If you like the theme and you like computer games, you’re probably going to be right at home with Tannhauser. There’s a lot of scope in the game for the kind of things videogamers enjoy – learning the pros and cons of your character, fucking about with the weapon loadouts, trashtalking.

Tannhauser is poetry, eroticism, torture, guilt and love. And dice, and dice, and guns, and bombs, and monsters, and leather, and whips.

And, last night, lots of Jack Daniels.