Well as I've reported before - I've played five games with Asteros on one side.  All were solitaire,  The team with Asteros won three out of five.

In my last game Hound Dog took Asteros down, through an unbelievable stroke of luck it has to be said.

I don't believe he is overpowered in story or objective mode, and I use Deathmatch (where he is ridiculously good) only to teach the game to newbies

I'm planning to make my next game an Epic versus Epic game - on one side Natalya and the heavy marines Barry, John etc - the other, the aliens from beyond team including Asteros and Itami

...... wait a minute a girl in power armour versus an alien warrior?  Maybe this idea has legs

-Nhoj

damn good idea! Operation: Clash of the Titans!

technology with Natalya & Zor'ka backed up by Ramirez or Irishka (or both!) and a pair of Voivodes.

supernatural with Asteros & Itami backed up by Heizinger or Hoss (or both!) and a  Stosstruppen.

Operation: Clash of the TItans! on labirynth map...

Artemus Maximus said:

Exactly the map I was thinking of! 

Katsuyori said:

I wasn't lobbying for an Asteros clone for every faction, only for a powerful Epic for every faction, a character that somehow has a chance to go toe to toe with Asteros. The Matriarchy already has this character, it's Natalya. I still think the other factions should get their Epic too, so that we can play Epic vs. Epic with all factions. And while I never played Asteros vs. Natalya (mainly because Asteros is collecting dust at the bottom of my box of Tannhäuser figures), I'm quite curious about that battle and try it in the next days. Natalya's team will include Zor'ka, Irishka and 2 Voivodes. About Asteros I'm unsure - maybe Reich characters as support?

??! said:

I totally agree.

I did a solitaire Deathmatch on the Gevaudan board using a Matriarchy team including Natalya (Sta), Zor'ka (Sta), Irishka (Sta) and 2 Voivodes (10 MP, repair) and a Union team including Asteros (Sta), MacNeal (Cmb), Ramirez (Cmb) and Alpha (Cmb) to answer the question concerning Asteros vs. Natalya. The Matriarchy team was (as everyone will see) about supporting and repairing Natalya and Zor'ka. The Union team was built to do as much damage as possible even to high stamina characters. Alpha could even throw a Smoke grenade to hinder the Matriarchy.

The result: Asteros was brought down by Zor'ka and Natalya in a drawn-out and rather boring game. All 3 characters rolled lots of hits in their attack rolls that were immediately canceled by lots of successes in shock rolls. Both Natalya and Zor'ka were wounded by Asteros, but were repaired back to health by their support before Asteros killed Irishka and the Voivodes. In the end, Asteros as well as Zor'ka had grabbed Flash guns from fallen characters (MacNeal and Alpha of course) to have some good ranged combat option.

I don't know if this outcome can be called typical because I made 2 grave mistakes while controlling "Team Asteros". First, I placed MacNeal and Ramirez too close to one another early in the game so Zor'ka could use Awakening, move in and do 2 attacks that killed both MacNeal and Ramirez who both had really, really bad shock rolls. Second, at one point in the game Asteros threw his axe to score some important wounds and was unable to retrieve it for several turns because Natalya blocked his way. I'll really think twice before throwing the axe again.

Thinking again about the game, a different team to support Asteros would have been better, maybe a Reich team with Hoss, Zermann and a Schocktruppen. Hoss and Zermann can attack everyone who stays out of sight from Asteros, Hoss can give extra successes with Reichdoktor, Zermann and the Schock have First Aid Kits to heal Asteros if needed.

coincidentally enough! ...

yesterday I ALSO played a solo play-through deathmatch with natalya(stm)-zor'ka(stm)-irishka(stm) but versus asteros (stm) - hoss (cmd) - ozo (cmd) - stoss (cmd)

note: house rule that when Asteros is selected, the opposing force gains Shame of Minos bonus token for free & doesn't take up a slot. This left Reich with ZERO CP and Matriarchy with effectively 1 (with Hoss in play).

Same deal with combat however - Asteros received many successes, all cancelled most of the time. Charged & trampled over Voivodes like they were potato bugs. Zor'ka and Natalya seemed to take 1 wound at a time from Asteros, but were repaired until Irishka was killed by Ozo. But, in a moment of revelation, i realized that i had inadvertently brought Ozo who had Curse of Ozo within 3 circles of Zor'ka & Asteros - so Zor'ka attacked Asteros (all blocked) and Ozo was to take 3 wounds from the splash dmg, which had to be redirected to Asteros d/t curse - but Stoss, who found a crate First Aid Kit, healed Asteros - Asteros later took 2 wounds from Natalya.

The out-of-path attacks didn't do much at all to Zor'ka or Natalya, but eventually killed Irishka. Ozo, Hoss, and Stoss were eliminated by the Matriarchy as well, but in the end Asteros pretty much won on his own by taking down Natlaya then Zor'ka 1 wound at a time.

OH AND ALSO - note that i normally ignore the 1 CP to shake off/ignore/heal a wound magically option - so I imagine an even more tedious battle w/ standard rules . But at game end, Asteros was only one left and had 3 wounds...not an annihilation really.

But that's just 1 game - 1 set of [many] dice rolls. Of course, different packs and even the same setup could give completely different results. But I'm going to try something new today to try to curb Asteros - when wounded, his controller must destroy 1 Armor item (if avail) of choice a la Yula, unless none are left...or something similar

Very interesting team set-up and game! I know I shouldn't have thrown Asteros' axe! Reading this really makes me want to experiment around with Asteros vs. Natalya set-ups again.

??! said:

Why didn't Natalya, instead of blocking Asteros, not simply pick up his axe?  She is epic and allowed to wield it 

-Nhoj

She would have gladly taken the axe, but she had neither disposable equipment nor a free equipment slot in her inventory. But whatever, it's a good idea! It's not 100% safe for Asteros to throw his axe when Natalya is around.

I did 2 additional Asteros vs. Natalya games using Natalya (Cmb), Zor'ka (Sta), Irishka (Sta) and 2 Voivodes (10 MP, Repair). As you see, I only changed Natalya's pack because I wanted a better weapon for her to avoid the drawn-out game I had before. Well, it kind of worked. In the first game, Asteros (Sta) was supported by MacNeal (Cmb), Brown (Sta) and Alpha (Cmb). Team Asteros lost again, but the game was shorter and Asteros managed to bring down Natalya only to be killed by Zor'ka (the only survivor), who had again grabbed a Flash gun. After that, I switched Asteros' support to a Reich team using Artemus Maximus' team as an example. The team was: Asteros (Sta), Hoss (Cmm), Zermann (Sta), Schock (Sta). They could do out-of-path attacks on anyone who tried to back away from Asteros and had 2 First aid kits to bring Asteros (or each other) back to health. This time, team Asteros won with Asteros himself and Hoss surviving. Asteros himself brought down both Natalya and later Zor'ka while his support mainly killed the enemies' support and backed up Asteros.

After these games, I've got the impression that the outcome of Asteros vs. Natalya matchups depends on the players' ability to heal or repair their main characters (so it depends on the ability to quickly dispatch the opponent's support) and it depends heavily on having lucky or unlucky dice rolls. Especially a single unlucky shock roll can lose you the whole game. Concerning equipment packs, Natalya of course has a better chance to hurt Asteros if she has her Combat pack equiped, but Asteros also has a better chance of knocking her down. I think that's why Natalya seems to be more balanced than Asteros. Not only do her stats degrade when she gets damaged, but she either has a very powerful weapon (Combat pack) or a very powerful defense (Stamina pack) while Asteros has both.

Asteros with Reich support won again against Natalya and Zor'ka. I switched Natalya's equipment pack back to Stamina to give her better survivability against Asteros, but it didn't work. With some help from Hoss's Reichdoktor, Asteros overwhelmed every enemy he could reach, attacking of couse as often as possible and also using his special Bull Rush against weaker characters. When he and Hoss stood against a lone wounded Natalya in the end, I waited for a good attack roll and improved upon it with Reichdoktor, bringing Asteros to his last row but killing Natalya. Now I think that a team including Asteros (Sta), Hoss (Cmm) and Heizinger (Sta) could work even better because Heizinger can heal a character up to the top row.

I played yesterday my first game using natalya.

Asteros was not playing in the opposing team, it was an all Matriarchy fight:

-Oksana, Natalya + 4 voidoves (Natalya using 2 hero slots to try to limit her team)

- Zorka, Gorgei, Irishka, Matriarchy troop pack.

Natalya killed Gorgei after 2 consecutive shots, was wounded by Zorka and then repaired right away. Zorka's team lost by far. The fact that she can be repaired even though she rolled only 4 dice made the difference.

One question, in the booklet it says that natailya may spend an action to repair herself one row, but that is not reflected in any token, this means that on top of all her abilities she has the ability to repair herself by expending an action.

Can she also be cured by medi-kit? I could not find a place where ir says she cant.

I think that even though netalya is not as powerful as Asteros, she still cant be played against a team without an epic. In matches with 2 epic characters like the ones you described, the game evolves around the epic having the other figures as mere sidekicks which IMHO is just a less fun game. :-(

Katsuyori said:

Totally disagree.

While on the surface it seems like a good idea it is actually a freaking terrible idea.

What introducing a massively powerful character like Asteros does is inevitably make him the central focus of any strategy. He is you killer and your tank. You can send him in alone to do as much damage as possible and if he happens to die well you still have a whole team to clean sweep what he didn't murder. Or just bring in the support behind him and dominate.

When you then level the playing field by introducing a power house like that to each faction what you end up with is the same scenario for everyone. All plans get diminished into how do you support your power house instead of which of my balanced characters will act as my focal point. If you even have that.

With the basic 5 characters of each army in Tannhauser the only one who suffers at all from this kind of effect is Zorka and that is because the vanilla Russian army is built around supporting her and the Viovodes. With the trooper pack alone it becomes an entirely different story.

If you introduce Asteros class characters to every army and you go out and purchase them all you can just expect the game to degrade into nothing but Asteros class fist fights with the other characters making minimal impact on the game.

That was exactly my point lance!