Interesting. In both case, there are no TPM errors, but tcsd daemon that provides access to the TPM for the rest of the system shuts down:
2018-11-24T08:03:46.717161+00:00 WARNING kernel: [   11.722543] init: tcsd main process (929) terminated with status 127
2018-11-24T08:03:46.717174+00:00 WARNING kernel: [   11.722573] init: tcsd main process ended, respawning

It says it respawns, but there's nothing from tcsd after that.

And, obviously, it is TSS_E_COMM_FAILURE after that for all TPM access attempts.

Not much in common between the two failing boards: wolf is x86, kernel 3.8; hana is aarch64, 3.18. TPM 1.2 models are also different.

Any chance there were any recent changes in permissions or security filters that can prevent tcsd from starting?

I didn't see anything relevant in the changes that were committed in the builds just prior to these failures.