Titanomachina: Hal-con 2023!

 

The second Halcon where I (and my fantastic assistance) was able to run demonstration games of Titanomachina to drum up interest, and I think the improvements (and changes) I have made to the game from last year. The addition of the player mats, the changes to the Capacitor system, the tuning of the Vulcan Gun/Gun Battery/Laser Battery (and its renaming), changes to the card layouts, the development of the board tiles, and even a few un-intended changes like the charge/cogs of the Master crew (1/3 instead of 2/3) have made the game better. 

There's still some changes I would like to implement. I still need to implement the new VPs for systems. However, I think that is best left for production since it affects dashboard cards and I want to put those costs back on the system cards to make scoring more transparent. I just don't want to do that until the numbers are very firmly nailed down. 

There is a question of using a board vs using the board tiles. A pre-printed quick-start board is probably the best idea, given the effort required to set up the board, despite the enjoyment I personally derive from setting up the tiles either as a quick-start or a competitive set-up. Getting players to the meat of the action first, and letting them consider how they would do it differently if they could set up the game tile by tile is probably for the best. Plus there's the round tracker on the board, which makes that more usable and transparent. 

One suggestion that came up, which I think may have come before, is that there should be a scoring bonus for having the highest habitat. Previously I think it may have been the tallest building, but having the highest habitat would encourage players to detect taller buildings rather than widely scattered one-story buildings. At least it would make it less of a no-brainer, which is a good thing.  

There's also the implementation of the Pass cards and simultaneous activation. So far it seems to work. I have yet to see any indication that there are situations in which it might not work. I think it's possible that wear-and-tear on the pass cards could remove their anonymity over time. Perhaps I should think of this like an opportunity to sell more cards, but I think the risk of people simply giving up on product because it wears out easily is worse. Certainly these cards are easy enough to include in packs of 54 cards where each pack doesn't require a full 12 different weapons, especially where the alternate configurations of Titans are essentially a weapon swap. 

There's still the question of how to implement the player mats, given that like the cards above a gloss finish works with dry-erase markers until it doesn't. A laminated version would be perfect, but I'm not yet clear on the cost of doing that. I do think that standees are a valid option until we boot-strap into producing plastic miniatures equivalent to the resin 3D printed Titans. I want to make sure I have the production and fulfillment details worked out before another attempt at crowdfunding in April. 

In terms of procedure, I think a change by which players look through their decks to find the cards for destroyed systems rather than wait until they're drawn is also a good idea from a book-keeping standpoint so they don't get forgotten. The problems I'd foreseen with players doing that just don't really happen, which is another point in favour of development. People are doing that anyways, and a good rule of thumb is to re-design the game to reflect how people enjoy playing it. I might also mention a few things like tracking whether crew have operated systems by turning the card upside down (and not flipping it over, lest it be confused for a card used to charge another system for the purposes of capacitors), and 

There's also a bunch of optional rules that I have in the development queue, pretty far down, to address things like being able to kick other Titans' legs when they're otherwise out of arc, being able to grab habitats with hands or claws and convert grapples to impacts by hitting other Titans with them, extending shields over buildings, and so on. As mentioned at the convention though, I want to make sure the core game play is solid before implementing by vast list of optional extras. 

Hal-con 2023 Deck Presets

 

I'm getting ready for Hal-con 2023 and one of the last things on my To-Do list is making sure I have a list handy of the way decks should be set up when some people interested in becoming players sit down for a demo game. One of the design pillars of Titanomachina is that players have a deck of cards which they can cunningly order before the game as part of their strategy to win. It makes the game interesting for explorers, competitors, socializers and killers alike. The explorers have a massive system to explore thanks to the combinations available with all the systems and their cards. Competitors get a lot of levers to optimize. Socializers have something to discuss, like army-building in other Wargames, and killers have a way of tripping other players up with counter-play.

For beginners, however, it's important that the decks be preset because beginners have neither the time nor the interest nor the context for understanding the deck-building aspect of the game. The idea is that preset decks will give them direction on what they might be able to do in the game, and what they might be able to do with the cards in a different order. In addition, the preset decks need to be recorded so the demo sets can be reset at the end of the demonstrations by the demonstrators that aren't me. Hence the lists, such as in that picture at the topic of this post. 

The general notion is that players have a crew member and a limb in each draw so as least they can keep moving and operating, those being some of the most important actions in the game. I also tried to space out the offensive and defensive options, and to align support systems like sponsors and capacitors with cards that would benefit from their activation. The first draw is intended to maximize the options available to each player without overloading those options, and leaving players with a reserve on round 2. 

I'm definitely going to need to revisit my demo script because I want to also use these decks to do open-handed round 1s, so that players can see how they should be thinking of the cards.

Titanomachina: Simultaneous Activation

In my efforts to figure out an additive way of speeding up the game, a friend and guru of mine suggested that we try activating simultaneously. Usually in Titanomachina we would take turns both activating systems and resolving their actions. I resisted because in order for this to work, at least with the minimal amount of change to the rules, I would need cards for the pass option in each deck; two cards where a 54 card deck contained two Titan decks with their optional weapon loads. 

But having tried it a few times in two-player game, I think it works to both speed up the game, and to perhaps make the game a tad more exciting. I rather like how Titanomachina ratchets up the tension for the players because reactions are limited to parts of a Titan being targeted during attacks, and there's a wonderful economy by which players try to play off combos against combo-breakers. I enjoy how the tension builds and then releases when some manages to pull off a crushing blow or clover combo. 

Where players are activating simultaneously there's additional pressure to play a card quickly, and keeping the actions resolved in initiative order it makes initiative even sharper. There's some tension leading up to players playing cards, which releases when the cards are flipped. It works. However, I feel like these mini-build-ups and releases of tension are more of a side-grade to the overall build-ups and releases. Usually after a game I'm very excited because of the way the tension isn't exhausted by the pay-outs, but in this case the constant release of tension meant I was pretty relaxed when it was over. On the other hand the response from my test-cogs was pretty positive, and I think it's definitely one way Titanomachina could go.

Production-wise, putting two extra cards into a two-player 54 card pack isn't a show-stopper. Where the two Titan configurations available to each player aren't radical changes requiring 12 cards in total, and even just weapon swaps for 6 cards minimum, there's plenty of room. I even have this lovely chibi art by Kristina Amuan showing the crew goofing off that stands out from the regular art and does a good job of punctuating the round. 

Currently I'm not sold on making this a change, but it seems like a great idea for an optional rule, particularly if I can shoe-horn the pass card into the regular rules. Certainly there is some potential for shenanigans where it shares a card back with the other Titan cards and announcing it's available to charge other systems. It might require a specific injunction about not using the card to power systems. The identical card back should make it invisible, but older sets will see these cards used more and wear harder than other cards, making their utility as a blind insufficient. Maybe the cards just need to be made sturdier. It's an option.

If I'm being honest, it also irks me that this is how Marvel Snap works and I didn't enjoy that when I tried it. The point of Titanomachina is that it's the game I want to play, so I'm pretty resistant to removing parts I enjoy, but slightly less for some reason to adding parts I don't hate. 

As mentioned before something not working on play-testing is easy, you simply mark it up as not working and why, and move on. Something working, on the other hand, has this terrible tension of making me wonder when it will stop working, or whether it will do the same thing all the time. Still, that is what play-testing is for, right?