Tannhäuser Tuesday - Daedalus and Field Ops Arrive

12.17.08 - UPDATE - see notes in RED

Daedalus

Yes, it is true. The newest Tannhäuser expansion is out. I got mine yesterday and had to interrupt my planned complete Moeller's Hermetics posting. That will have to be next time.

I tore open the shipping box and got out out my camera. As you will see, the map is beautiful, the tokens are plentiful and the scenarios are... well they're in french.

The Daedalus package, when still sealed in the shrink wrap reminds me of cracking open a 2 LP set more than anything. When you open it up here is what you get in the Daedalus expansion pack. A 2-sided map board (complete with a mostly useless base set catacombs), a boat load of tokens, and a booklet (in french) describing the tokens and scenarios.

There are MANY more pictures at the Savage Tales Gallery on Shutterfly.

Daedalus

Malechi's favorite feature of Daedalus

The new map has 4 entry points on it! That is awesome. It also has some new symbols on it.

This first one, the person in the red No symbol is a Prohibited Space. You can move through this space, but you can't stop there.


The next one is a mechanical horizontal elevator that you can summon, get in, and move around the board in. I am still trying to decipher the exact rules...


There are these green arrows on the map as well. I am not sure exactly what they are for.

As Matt has surmised in his comment, these are indeed one way circles. Your character can only pass through these in one direction. Once you step in you can only exit in the indicated direction.

Some of the circles are partly off the board.


The Daedelus pack stuff fits into the main Tannhäuser box just fine. The new map is really nice and I am looking forward to playing on it. Since we do not yet have Novgorod, at least I can play scenarios that link the castle with the catacombs.

Tannhäuser Field Ops

Field Ops is an interesting game, joining Wings of War and Battleground as card-based tabletop miniatures games. Field Ops has Characters and Troops and their equipment. It also has Terrain and Structures. The Character Cards themselves are pushed around the table to position the troops for battle. If the cards touch, they can go at it Hand-to-Hand.



Here are the contents of the box. You can see the back of the rulebook, the unpunched token and counters sheet, dice, and two Command Posts. The Command Posts are used to track damage and to assign orders for each turn. As in Heroscape the orders are secret. The Command Posts are cardstock and a bit flimsy, and could be dented easily. They nest inside each other to fit in the box. If I enjoy the game I will figure out something to make them sturdier.


While the production value of the art work and design cards is top notch, all the cards have a burr that is right in the middle of the top and bottom edges. Since the cards are physically pushed aroung the table, I put my cards in sleeves right after taking these pictures.

Reich Card Backs

Union Card Backs

Wolf also has his own set of cards you can see at the Savage Tales Gallery.

The Heros of the Union

Hoax's powers

Sergeant Drake Harrison's powers. Hmmm Sgt. Drake... That has a familiar ring to it... I'm surprised he doesn't have a grapple gun...

Some Heroes of the Reich

Freya Von Karloff's powers.

Behemouth Cards

Some Battlefield condition and structure cards.


There are MANY more pictures (almost, if not every card) at the Savage Tales Gallery on Shutterfly.

Daedalus and Field Ops are going to take a serious effort to translate to English. Give the speed that FFG is releasing this, I am looking forward to a year or two of play before the FFG version comes out. People interested in helping the translation effort should chime in here, or at the FFG boards.

These games were easy enough to order from Ludibay, and they take credit cards and PayPal. I got my games quickly, but the shipping wasn't cheap... Of course they have had Novgorod and Georgi and Ramirez for a year.

I will follow up with playing reports as they happen.



I FEEL U-CHRONIC!!!





© 2008 Peter Miller


My custom additions to Tannhäuser are not created by, distributed, or endorsed by Take on You, Asmodee, or Fantasy Flight. Tannhäuser and all related characters are trademarks of Take on You and © Take on You LTD. All Rights Reserved.

Pulp of the Week - G-8 and his Battle Aces #1

This is the start of a new feature. Don't let the name fool you, there won't be one of these each week, but I will put them up from time to time.

G-8 and his BATTLE ACES

AN INTRODUCTION

Starting before the turn of the century, Argosy Magazine and Adventure Magazine led the way in popular fiction. Novels and short stories of all kinds filled pages of innumerable magazines on the racks. Then, in April, 1931 'The Shadow' hit. Followed by 'Doc Savage' in March of 1933. The era of the "Character Pulps" was underway and 'G-8 and his Battle Aces' joined the fray in October of 1933. There were many pulps, but 'G-8' remains one of the most popular after lasting 110 monthly issues.

G-8 was created in the years following the success of The Shadow and Doc Savage by writer Robert J. Hogan. There were 110 issues of "G-8 and his Battle Aces" published beginning in Oct. 1933. Hogan, a former pilot wrote all the G-8 novels and most if not all of the back-up stories. In addition, all of the covers were painted by Frederick Blakeslee. That is an unprecedented run.

G-8 is an American spy and flying ace during the Great War. His adventures mainly see him fighting the Germans under Kaiser Wilhelm II. He is a master spy; America's greatest and hated by the Germans for successful mission after mission. However - they have never seen his real face. He is fluent in German and with the help of his man-servant named Battle, a master of disguise. He is also a flying ace; one of the worlds greatest pilots. As far as we know, G-8 is his real name, we learn no other.



The G-8 adventures pit the man with no name against the Kaiser's most bizarre creations of super-science and the supernatural. G-8 fought a menagerie of bizarre villains: Herr Grun, an ape man; Man in Armor, a pilot in full armor plate that lead an army of corpses; Gorilla men led by Dr. Schlemmer; Herr Feuer, a firebug. There were also monsters like vampires, werewolves, and zombies. That list sounds like it could be an issue of Hellboy or a list of scenarios for Tannhäuser, AE WWII, or Shadows of the Third Reich.

I have read issues of the Shadow and more than half the issues of Doc Savage. For some reason I was never aware of G-8. Well that has changed. I will be putting the G-8 stories into my reading rotation.

The Bat Staffel - G-8 and his Battle Aces issue #1, Oct. 1933

staffel - Noun - German for 'squadron'

This premiere issue begins with G-8 already a master spy and the German's worst enemy. The story opens with a disguised G-8 intentionally getting captured in a bid to get to Herr Doktor Krueger, one of G-8s recurring villains. He is a mad scientist that creates a series of horrifying schemes to bring victory to Germany. This issue involves giant bats spraying a deadly gas over France. The gas dissolves its victim into a pile of dust. Krueger boasts to G-8 that an army of giant bats will breathe their deadly 'bat's breath' over all of France.

G-8 escapes Krueger's clutches and returns to his airfield with a new mission - to find Krueger's giant bat cave and stop the attack. G-8 recruits a pair of pilots that helped out when he was escaping Krueger's castle. He selects them to join his secret squadron.

The flying aces are Bull Martin and Nippy Weston, two Americans that stick with the master spy through the run of the series. Nippy is a short analytical pilot that dreams of being the next great stage magician. His plane is #13, showing that he believes you make your own luck and superstition shouldn't rule your life. Bull Martin is a former College All Star half-back. He is a big man and a fierce fighter. He fears no man, but he can be taken in by superstition. His Spad is #7 for good luck.

The story is a great mix of spy intrigue behind enemy lines, dogfights, shootouts, fist fights, and a ton of action. I quite enjoyed the story and am interested in reading more. The flying scenes are very well written; exciting and well described. The writer, Robert J. Hogan, makes it easy to keep track of the different planes and who is where in the battle. Not an easy task and he succeeds admirably. Additionally, G-8 and his men are distinct characters and their interplay is fun to read.

The mixture of war action and weird menace is very appealing to me and feels like a precursor to Hellboy, Tannhäuser, and the current crop of Weird War II games and fiction.

Needless to say, G-8 and his Battle Aces prevail, but not before Doktor Krueger escapes. There are 109 more stories and from what I've read, they only get weirder from here. Since much of this first novel sets up the series I am looking forward to a bit more story in subsequent issues.



Where can you find the G-8 novels? Vintage New Media has been re-publishing the run of pulp novels. They have selected issues available as PDFs. That is how I obtained this story. Some of the books were reprinted as paperbacks in the 1960's, but beware - there are different printings of #1 and and one of them is not the first issue.

I would like to thank Bill Mann for some information and for compiling his awesome G-8 and his Battle Aces Cover Gallery. Bill also publishes a line of Air War pulp reprints under his Age of Aces Books imprint.

© 2008 W. Peter Miller