While at Gen Con, I had the opportunity to sit down for a 30-45 minute demo of the combat and movement mechanics of Fantasy Flight Games’ “Tannhauser: Operation Novgorod” expansion to its popular “Tannhauser” title.

The setting of Tannhauser is that World War I never ended.  To quote FFG’s web site: “Tannhäuser is a tactical board game of paranormal investigations and Great War combat, pitting the forces of the Reich and the Army of the Union together in a struggle for control of the Obscura Cardinal Cornerstones, magical artifacts of immense power.”  The “Operation Novgorod” expansion is a not-yet-released addition to the game.

Tannhauser takes place on a game board, using pre-painted miniatures, cardboard sheets representing the characters involved, cardboard counters (used to mark the location of debris, ammo, weapons, and the like), and 10-sided dice.  The image below depicts the basic components of the game and some artwork from the Operation Novgorod expansion:

Below is a typical character sheet.  In the bottom right corner, you can see the cardboard counters used to identify the character’s special abilities, weapons, and ammunition he or she might be carrying. 

Just above that is a table of numeric values, to the right of which is another cardboard counter with a star on it.  This counter is used to mark damage to the character, by turning it counter-clockwise so that the star points to the next row down in the table.  Some characters have abilities that improve with damage, while most deteriorate.  Once a character has taken more damage than can be scored on the table, that character is considered dead and removed from play.

Tannhauser may look like a board game, but in play it’s somewhere between a boardgame and a traditional miniatures game. This would make it a good “bridge” game for introducing less “hardcore” gamers to a more complex or traditional miniatures game.

The game board uses circles to indicate positions in the building/terrain where a character might move.  The circles of a matching color are considered to be in weapons range and within a character’s line of sight.  Some circles have multiple colors, corresponding to the fact that they can be seen from different areas.  In the example image below, the two characters share matching colored circles and thus are considered in line of fire and potentially within weapons range. (Melee weapons require adjacent circles. Other weapons require a specific number of circles between the two characters for them to be effective.)

The example below illustrates how various circles may be visible from multiple areas.

When a character dies in Tannhauser, that character’s weapons and ammo are dropped on the map in the circle where the character fell.  Other characters may pick up these weapons and ammunition and use them.

The combat model seems reasonably realistic, based on my 30-45 minute introduction to it.  If you open up with a machine gun at relatively close range on someone, there’s a very good chance that someone is going to die.  Toss an explosive anywhere near them, they’ll take damage. There are modifiers that allow for more damage or more hits.

During my demo with Tannhauser, 5 characters on each side were pitted against each other in an indoor setting.  It was fairly clear that when the number of characters on one side of the battle starts to outnumber those on the other side, the characters on the “losing” side will very likely continue to lose unless some very lucky rolls of the dice occur.  My understanding of the full “non-demo” version of the game is that you can call in replacements or reinforcements for the “non-critical” characters, which would help to even the odds a little.  Otherwise, a slight advantage seems to very quickly become a victory.

I found Tannhauser very simple to learn, easy to play, and (most importantly) fun.  My main concern for Tannhauser, based strictly on a 30-45 minute demonstration and NOT a full game or multiple games, is that there might be an issue of replayability here.  The game board certainly won’t change between sessions.  The main characters, unless I missed something, don’t change between sessions.  The only things I see changing between multiple sessions of the game are the dice rolls and the potential for critical items of equipment to change hands due to a character dying.  I’m not sure that’s enough variation to keep the game interesting.  But again, I want to point out that mine is not a picture of the complete game, and there may indeed be a lot more to it than I’m aware of.  (Those of you who own and play this game regularly, please comment on this article about YOUR experience with it, because I don’t want to sell this game short.)

On the whole, I thought it was an enjoyable game, reasonably quick to pick up (less than 5 minutes), allowing for some decent strategic and tactical thinking, and likely to be an excellent game to “bridge” traditional players into more-serious adult games.