Titanomachina starts by deciding the order of play, based upon the number on the Personality cards. This order of play lasts until it is changed, and is connected to a Charge 0 action that a Titan cannot be deprived of for the rest of the game. But for the steps of choosing a Titan and setting up a battlefield, the order is constant and one player goes first, second, third, etc. Unlike rolling dice there is no possibility of a tie. None of this fun clap-trap either, like pick the player with the most navel lint, or would probably benefit most from going first. Perhaps amusing the available numbers run evenly from 1-6. You could roll a D6, but shuffling and drawing from a 6 card deck is easier, fast, and kinda sets the tone. You want to leverage that personality with the right build for your starting position. Your first question is which Titan will you choose (including the habitats it starts on the table), given you're drafting?
The game is designed so that players ask each other a series of questions, such as whether they're going to tank a hit or defend themselves. A Titan might raise its shields, move out of line-of-sight or arc of the weapon about to fire, or block the attack with a different part of the Titan as an answer, but also the question 'Is that all you've got?'
There are essentially 6 non-exclusive types of weapons: Shock, High Explosive, Armour Piercing, Impact, Grapple, and Shield Breaker. That's not including the Titan's arms and legs (really just impact weapons). Shock affects a Titan's resources to retaliate, forcing blocks to cost twice as much (the blocking card and the shock card). High Explosive gets bonus damage to adjacent targets. Armour Piercing gets a bonus for how deep into a Titan they go. Impact pushes Titans either back, and possibly into some buildings, or forcibly rotates them to expose new targets to the attacker. Grapple does the same, at a right angle, shoving a Titan right or left of the attack, or forcibly rotating them. Shield Breaker destroys shields before they can repel an attack.
All of this needs to fit into the order in which the cards are played, each deck getting rotated through like a gear. As parts of the Titans are destroyed, the faster those rotations become, but the fewer resources with which to buy actions.
Titanomachina uses a Charge/Effect system whereby a card can be played face up so long as the indicated number of cards is played face-down. A six card hand will usually yield between 1 and 3 actions. One of those actions is often a block, used to interrupt an attack with a new target. Players keep their cards in hand and it's wholly possible for a player to have all 23 cards in hand. Getting there, on the other hand, seems to be a war of nerves, because the first hit carries a tremendous psychological tension. Perhaps that's because it is where these two gears meet and begin to grind into each other.
Oh, and the habitats are big, glass people silos. Players can use a default set-up, or they can take turns setting up the tiles and placing their starting allowance of habitats. This way players can build their fights from the battleground on up, looking for that edge to turn defeat in that scene into victory. But also the players can discover unmapped habitats on the board using their Titan's Sensors to detect them, replacing losses or bolstering the initial complement of habitats. The important thing is that Titans can be pushed or pulled through them, or even hurl themselves through them recklessly at the cost of damage.
Instead of heroic super sentai though, the crew of the Titans are grizzled lifers, grappling with their own impending mortalities, and those of others. They are human resource cognitive units ("cogs"), biological hardware for the Titans, useful, if not necessary components of vast machines. They keep the Titan fighting, and the Titan replaces them with new components, read 'Initiates to the mysteries of the Titan,' to march back out to get some revenge, and kill a few brain-cogs. Like all Titan components they are costed in the currency of human resources.
It ends once a Titan has been pushed off of the board, and out of the designated battlefield, or when it is hit with a knock-out blow, and one player is miles ahead on points. Or it ends after 18 rounds, and the damage done to the Titan is added to the habitats on the battlefield they have saved from other Titans. Each Titan tops out at 24 habitat blocks, but it's easier to detect and destroy buildings than the far better protected Titans. It may simply be that a Titan wins by the barest of margins.
