Tannhäuser Tuesday - Operation Hinansho Detailed

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Operation Hinansho

This expansion contains:

Two-Sided Map :

Kitamon Research Base in Japan

Union Airplane Crash Site on Okinawa Island

The new maps have paths that follow a new basic rule - if the base of a character can fit in the space between two circles without touching them, then they are NOT adjacent.

 New Rules for the new map features and tokens.

Bunch of Tokens including those for new rules like Volatile Rubble, Locked Wooden Doors, and Locked Reinforced Doors. There are also the full Faction Tokens for the Shogunate - Objectives Tokens, Command Point Tokens and Flag Tokens. The remaining tokens are for Story Mode, and Covert and Gate tokens.

New Circle Types:

Locked Door

Sniper Circle

Covert Circle

Volatile Circle

There are a number of new circle types in this expansion.

Locked Doors

When a Locked Door token is on the appropriate circle, the door is locked and characters may not move into that circle.  The Locked Door tokens contains 2 skill icons; green and red. If a character adjacent to the locked door has a skill matching the green icon, they can spend one movement point to open the door. If they do not have that  skill, the door is unlocked by using 3 movement points.Anyone next to the door can spend one movement point to close it and it is locked again. Any character adjacent to the locked door with a matching skill to the red icon may try to smash the door, permanently destroying it. Reinforced doors require the Mechanic skill and Wooden doors the Athletics skill.

Covert Circles and Tokens

Now they're getting tricky. Covert circles can target Sniper circles if their icons match in color. They may also target characters in circles that match the color of the covert targeting icon (green in the example picture. Additionally, the character inside the covert circle can be targeted by anyone they can target, BUT… only Natural 10's count as hits when attacking the character in the Covert circle.

Just to make it more fun, grenades thrown from a Covert circle and using the Covert ability don't bounce. Grenades thrown at a Covert circle follow the normal rules.

There are also Covert Tokens that can be placed in certain scenarios.

Volatile Circle and Volatile Rubble

Before they are activated, characters pass through these circles normally. Once activated, all characters that share the volatile path take three automatic hits and a volatile rubble token is placed in the circle. Any character that passes through this rubble takes 3 automatic attack successes (in addition to the movement penalty of the rubble.)

Gate Tokens
You can now connect two maps together using these new tokens. Put two maps next to each other and place a couple of these tokens down to bridge the gap between the two maps.

I think you could also use these to connect the stair cases on the original maps to allow an upstairs and downstairs to be easily identified…



The rest of the rule book is not included, but the Gate Token section mentions you can play these big double maps with "Large Teams" - 5 Heroes and 4 Troops, or with 4 teams.


The Cost
I am not sure why FFG did not release the Shogunate items as one big box set like the Matriarchy, but it probably has to do with price.

$29.95 - Operation Hinansho
$12.95 - Iroh
$12.95 - Mizu
$12.95 - Itami
$19.95 - Troops
$85.85 - Total - I don't think the included Equipment Cards raise the price by $25.90 over the Novgorod set which is also a full Faction. Being able to buy them piecemeal also spreads the payment out into manageable chunks, instead of the one big hit.

$59.95 - Operation Novgorod
$69.95 - Base Game


Operation Hinansho and the Matriarchy Natalya pack are currently listed as being 'On the boat' which typically means 4 to 6 weeks.

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Pulp of the Week - Doc Savage 28

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June, 1935 - The Roar Devil

The Roar Devil fits right in with this recent group of Doc Savage novels where an astounding device is being used by a criminal gang to steal vast amounts of cash. Here, the gimick is a machine that causes earthquakes and another that silences all sound. The descriptions of the soundless world are quite good and raise the book up a level.

There is another standard Doc Savage adventure fixture in this novel as well - the plucky girl. However, this particular girl, Retta Kenn, is a standout and such an enjoyable character that she raises the story up even more that The Roar Devil's outlandish (and as usual, unexplained) premise.

 Here, Retta Kenn meets Renny... 

            His long arms gathered her in. His big right hand clamped over her gun. She surprised him. He had fought me, more times than he could remember. Few of them had equalled this girl. She must have been an avid exponent of physical culture. She knew something of jujitsu, too. She kicked him and hit him with terrific force. They were both on the floor before Renny got the gun and that was something he would never brag about, because he considered his own strength by no means ordinary.

            "Holy Cow!" Renny puffed, and got to his feet. "Talk about your wildcats!"

            The girl was up like a shot and nearly demonstrated she could outrun him. He caught her fifty yards from the cabin. She knocked him down once, beautifully, something he would have sworn that no woman could do.

            "What'd you come up here looking for?" he demanded.

            "Nuts to you!" said the female fire-eater.

        

Retta Kenn proceeds to break out of the bonds he ties her in, kicks the hide off his shin, and "gave him a marvelous black eye."

Retta Kenn is, for my money, one of the great supporting characters in the series so far and one of the main reasons I liked this novel as much as I did.

I read my Bantam paperback, bought new, May 1977 with a great cover by Boris Vallejo. The Pulp cover is by Walter Baumhofer. I'll give The Roar Devil an 8 out of 10.

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Tannhäuser Tuesday - Miah's Blog

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Work is eating into my gaming and creating time... So my Tannhäuser Tuesday is to send you to Miah's Blog. He is getting a tremendous amount of cool stuff up during his contribute to the blog drive.

Take a look - including an online play engine.

Miah's Blog.

Pulp of the Week - Mockingjay

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Pulp of the Week - Mockingjay

by Suzanne Collins

The third book in the Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay, is a mixture of sweet and surprising, thrilling and frustrating. All in all, it is a solid final chapter to her terrific dystopian science fiction series. Once again, the YA section of the book business comes through and is doing some of the best storytelling.

If you have not read these books, stop here. There be SPOILERS AHEAD.

 

Mockingjay follows Katniss Everdeen into the underground world of District 13 and into the Capitol itself. She embraces her destiny and takes on the iconic role of the Mockingjay, that avatar of hope for the people of Panem. She trains as a warrior with Gale and goes into battle (mostly for the propaganda cameras) and takes the battle to the Capital.

She gets aid from people in the capitol and the freedom movement has spread there. A lonely shopkeeper hides them for a time and I can't help but visualize her as Eartha Kitt. A lovely character.

I feel that while Collins' writing is strong, like many third acts, it all sort of feels like a slog to the final showdown between her and the President Snow. But then the book finds some new life and I found their encounter both somewhat baffling, and yet somehow satisfying. The book ends in a somber tone, but after what Katniss has been through, I guess it is appropriate. She is changed forever and war is Hell.

I read the family's hardcover of Mockingjay and will give it an 8 out of 10. It really is a different kind of book than the others. Once again, the cover art is by Tim O'Brien and the cover design is by Elizabeth B. Parisi.

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New York Comic Con - Part 2

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Here are a smattering of pix from the 2011 New York Comic Con