Tannhäuser - GenCon 2012 news

The great news site Table Top Gaming News has been posting pictures from Gencon and here is a bit of Tannhäuser news... If you look carefully, you can see the second Tannhäuser Novel, Operation Night Eagle, for sale on the rack shown here!

This is at the FFG booth...

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2012 will be a time of change and growth here at Savage Tales. For one thing, I will be launching a new web site to promote and sell my fiction. The inaugural offering will be a novella, The Zeppelin, which introduces my pulp character, Clark Tyler, as a young man that chooses to head off to the Great War at age 17. So far, I have written four novella length tales with Clark, spanning the years 1917 to 1942. The Zeppelin is edited and I'll be putting up on Kindle as soon as I can manage.

In addition, I have an exciting story featuring Ki-Gor, the Jungle Lord, appearing in Jungle Tales Vol. One from Airship 27 sometime early in the year. This story features a supporting character that will be familiar to early readers of this blog... Airship 27s The Green Lama Volume One is still available in print and features my story that takes the Green Lama to Hollywood. A revised version of this story will be one of the novellas released this year.

The Savage Tales blog will carry on its mission of featuring news and highlights in the boardgame and speculative fiction world. I provided reports from 4 major conventions in 2011, and I don't yet know what 2012 will bring.

One feature that will be added here will be my experience with creating ebooks and printed books through my own imprint. Details on that will appear after the legal paperwork goes through. I will say that the name of the new website and the name of my imprint should not shock the readers of this blog.

I continue to be thrilled and amazed by the number of visitors and pages read here at Savage Tales. I thank you all for your interest and support.

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Tannhäuser Tuesday - Matriarchy Troop Pack

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Troops for the Matriarchy are here! This pack of two troops will retail for about twenty bucks and will be out before the end of the year! The Fantasy Flight Games press release includes a bit of new info.

The first trooper is "The Boepripacy Soldat - The army of the Matriarchy is a well-oiled machine, kept in working shape due to the constant vigil kept by the Directorate and the Commissariat. A delicate balance of tradition, zeal, and fear keeps the soldati of the Matriarchy from giving up in the face of their determined enemies. Exceptional soldati, found to be utterly loyal to the gods and unwilling to flee in the face of danger, are made Boepripacy – ammunition soldati. These fearless warriors carry the majority of the ammo for their squadmates, who will do everything in their power to keep the boepripacy alive. The extra ammunition is held in specially locked cases that can only be unlocked by the Boepripacy. Thus, if a Boepripacy dies, the unit cannot hope to last long."

The second trooper is "The Zazigag Soldat - Armed with the Gnev Bogov Ognemet, a flamethrower capable of calling down the judgment of the Slavic gods, the Zazigag Soldati are elite warriors who have distinguished themselves in combat. Only by displaying the utmost faith and loyalty to the Matriarchy may a soldat be trusted with such a devastating weapon.

Attacks with the Gnev Bogov Ognemet bathe their target in agonizing flame, and the weapon’s explosive range is such that anyone standing nearby will likewise be engulfed. Such an attack damages mind at least as much as body, leaving witnesses in a state of shock and terror. It is no wonder, therefore, that Zazigag Soldati are among the most hardened of Matriarchy soldiers. Not only are they accustomed to war’s most horrific sights, but they thrive on them." 

So we get a flamethrower in Tannhäuser! That is awesome. Scorching an entire path will be great - and a little dangerous.

Looking forward to it!

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Tannhäuser Tuesday - Hoss Harbinger Arrives

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Fantasy Flight Games has released the last of the Tannhäuser characters they inherited when they bought the Tannhäuser Game property.

FFG also released the Equipment Cards pack, but I will detail those in another post. And now, here is Hoss, and he is a monster, and epic character that is not quite an Epic Hero, but he is close.

Hoss Harbinger is a descendant of Atlas, the first king. His people could view events of the past and future, but somehow missed the series of events that would destroy their homeland. As the world around him was crumbling, Atlas threw Hoss into the timestream where the man escaped the fate of his people.

Hoss is determined to replay the timestream and regain glory for his people. He can foresee future events and used his knowledge to restore life to the Kaiser. In exchange for this favor, Hoss was granted power and resources.

Hoss is a Hero and has the affiliation of the Circle of Agartha.

Hoss is a Hero and has the affiliation of the Circle of Agartha.

Hoss Harbinger is a man out of time and is outfitted with a wondrous bag of tricks.

His Special Object, Prescience, allows him to move 1 circle before the attack is rolled. If Hoss moves out of path, or range, the attacker may choose another target.

His Combat Pack features an out of path mental attack that is focused through a statue that reminds me of a golden Maltese Falcon. His Chronograph allows him to use his movement to try to switch places with any other character, and if Hoss has a great roll (or a horrible one) he can give those dice to any character and they must be used on that character's next attack or shock roll.

Hoss' Stamina pack adds in the Idol of Esagila, whack weakens characters as Hoss gets weaker and the Nephesh, ancient runes that allow Hoss to steal life from teammates on his path.

The Command Pack features Hoss' rank of Reichdoktor, which balances bonus wounds scored against the life of Hoss' teammates and the Eye of Akhenaton which reduces the cost of using Command Point abilities.

Also included in the Hoss pack is a bonus pack for Eva Kramer that includes a pistol, goggles that negate the effects of smoke, and Domina, a token that lets you either choose any piece of equipment from the unused crate tokens or to automatically win Initiative on any one turn.

There are also a few crate tokens, three new bonus tokens and a new scenario.

 

I will detail the Equipment Cards next time!




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Tannhäuser Tuesday - When It Rains...

This weeks Tannhäuser announcement from FFG is welcome news to all present and future players...

Fantasy Flight announces Tannhäuser Game Play Aid

Further evidence arrived today of Fantasy Flight Games' continued support of the Tannhauser game system came today with the announcement of the Tannhäuser Equipment Cards, a set of over 200 cards that will relieve players of flipping through pages of rulebooks and the various expansion booklets for the rules for a particular gun or item. The initial Equipment Cards set will include cards for everything printed to date and for the Hoss and Oksana expansions that have not been released yet. This includes all crate and Bonus Tokens printed so far. The card set will retail for $14.95. I call that a bargain.

Future expansions will include both tokens and cards. The Equipment cards are a table friendly 1 5/8" x 2 1/2" size (FFG's Mini American) that should be easy to read and not crowd the table too much. Your rulebook should be referred to 1000 times less often once these cards are in hand.

FFG's Upcoming page shows the cards as being "on the boat" - meaning they should be in stores in four to six weeks - well before Hoss and Oksana arrive (they are still listed as "at the factory.")

I was scooped on this story by Miah, but in my defense I was posting Tannhäuser stuff...

This news takes precedence over your regularly scheduled Doc Savage Character Card, Sheet, and Tokens. Those are coming later today, and maybe even an in progress figure picture...

Tannhäuser Friday - FFG Teases Us

Today, FFG posted a recap of what they have released for Tannhäuser in the past few months and ended it with this teaser:


"With a new year comes new possibilities, and with an immersive game like Tannhäuser, you can expect many exciting things to appear over the course of 2011. Stay alert, because the war is far from over..."

I'm looking forward to seeing what they have come up with and if they will release the other products that TOY had in development...

Tannhäuser Thursday - Oksana revealed

 

 

Oksana

Has Harbinger

Tannhäuser Thursday - Daedalus Revealed

This month's Previews catalog had the above ad along with an ad for the previously seen Asteros single figure box. Hopefully this means Asteros and Daedalus will be out by January.

Tannhäuser Tuesday - Wednesday Edition

Asteros is to be an Epic Hero. It will be interesting to see what rules they used and why they chose to not maintain the Legendary keyword.

Here are some pix from the Daedalus preview I posted nearly two years ago...

Here's hoping this is actually out soon...

Tannhäuser Tuesday - New Troop Packs Revealed

 There they are. The first new Tannhäuser release from FFG since (I think) March 2009. Could that be right? Holy Moley. Well, here are the new Trooper Packs. Still looking forward to the Matriarchy Troop Pack.

As you can see, each Troop Pack comes with 2 figures - repaints of the existing Troop figures from each faction of the original set.

For some reason FFG decided to do away with the Iron Cross symbology on the Reich Troops and went with a more generic "Reich."

Original Schocktruppen on left, new on right.

The Packs come with two sheets of tokens - The Special Object, Combat Pack, and Stamina pack are the same as in the base game, but there is a new Command Pack that comes with two of the new tokens so that you can use the new pack with your original Troops.

The Schocktruppen Command Pack is an MP 40 (same specs as original), a Camp 111 Badge, and a Mechanized Arm. The Camp 111 Rank (the triangle-like token above) may only be taken if Von Heizinger is on your team. The Camp 111 Rank adds a +1 bonus for each friendly figure (don't count yourself) on the same path as the Schocktruppen. The Mechanized Arm is a Hand-to-Hand weapon that lets you add two dice to all the Hand-to-Hand attacks the Schocktruppen makes and lets the Schocktruppen go on Overwatch without spending a Command Point.

Original Stosstruppen on left, new on right.

The Stossentruppen Command Pack also includes 2 new tokens including a spare set for your original figures.

The first new token is the Kampfmesser Bose, a Hand-to-Hand weapon that does not take up an equipment slot. I guess that leaves room for Crate Tokens during the game - neat.

The second new token is for an Ability called Infernal Sustenance. With that token your Stoss are vampire-like - when they inflict wounds on their enemies, they heal one wound for each damage inflicted. This is especially cool considering that their Special Object adds one die for each Hand-to-Hand weapon in their inventory. Now you can load up on the enemy even more.

The original Alpha is on the left and the new one is on the right.

 The new Union figures also provide some nice options for their player. The Commando Alpha troops get a Command Pack as well. The new tokens are a Rank and an Ability. The Ability is called Watch My Back and allows the Alpha to make a Counterattack without spending a Command Point to do so. The Rank is called Only Unit For The Job and allows a Commando Alpha that has taken lethal damage to get one last emergency activation before he dies.

The Commando Delta gets a new token - a grenade called the AN-M11. It acts like a Smoke Grenade in all respects except that it leaves a cloud of FIRE (see the fire tokens below.) Any character that steps on the Fire path suffers 3 Automatic Successes. Fire Good.

The other new token for the Deltas is Moving Target. This token adds +1 to the Delta's Movement Value and all attacks against you suffer a -1 penalty to each die rolled. These new options may also be used with the original soldiers and provide a bunch of new options in your troop makeup. They can be additional troops in your army, or provide back up if you are using reinforcements. 

It is my opinion that the original figures are slightly better painted, but given the variances in the quality of painting even in the original set, this could just be my figures.

The Commando Delta on the right is the new one.

Still U-Chronic after all these years.