Titanomachina: Eurybia Walks!

 While I haven't been able to get Eurybia's model up on Tabletop Simulator, I do have a beautifully printed version that I was able to get onto the table last night for meat-space testing. I was reminded of the advantages of playing live, such as the opportunity to game out the set-up stage of the game, using every dastardly trick in the book to make sure my opponent couldn't sweep the board of my habitats and vice versa. 

My opponent piloted Eurybia Primary, in all Her unpainted grey glory, since he has a better win-record, and would probably suss out any overwhelming effects of Her dual coolant systems better than I could. I took Tethys Primary, as She is a fantastic all-rounder, and would be a good test for Eurybia. Speaking of, Eurybia got the Gracious personality, while Tethys got the Sagacious personality. 

This is how we set up the buildings, with the non-combatant blue and green habitats often capping or blocking off the yellow and pink habitats from easy targeting. Notable was the fact that most of the exposed yellow habitats were close to my opponent's side of the board. 

Deployment for me was a matter of preparing Tethys for an ambush while planning how I would move Tethys into the top-left quadrant of the board and pick off those yellow habitats without letting Eurybia get behind Her, or use Her coolant systems to bombard the heck out of Tethys without worrying about returning fire. Eurybia was set up conservatively, apparently leveraging that edge in sensors and ranged weapons that would see Her just out of the arc of Tethys' gun battery, and the opposite side of Tethys' body from Her macro laser. 

Thins started off relatively slowly, both Titans working to amass an extra card for the next round, while Tethys re-oriented towards Eurybia, and Eurybia starting pushing Her habitat advantage by smashing the first of Tethys' habitats, and using Her coolant systems to deactivate Her initiate crew for use next round. 

Both Titans comfortably flush with power and systems loaded, Eurybia advances to the centre of the board and Tethys advances to meet Her, tearing into Eurybia with Her claw and macro laser, which Eurybia is able to tank on Her shields and armour. Eurybia makes a threatening motion with Her laser blade in return, but having survived the initial clash with relatively minor damage, it's not fired yet, despite Eurybia's crew members lining up to use the power of friendship and teamwork to gut Tethys like a fish. 

Realising that standing in front of Eurybia is begging to be knocked out, Tethys steps back and away, preferring to risk vulcan gun fire rather than a close-range laser blade hit, and manages to block the incoming storm of fire (5 cogs for the first shot, 1 cog each for the following shots, lost because of the block of the first shot takes their designated targets out of contention after pushing Tethys 45 degrees counter-clockwise) on Her left leg, while using both shields systems to pull in shield tokens from Her flanks to prevent the loss of 1/4 of Her armour. Notably, dumping three cards in reaction to Eurybia's vulcan gun attack means Tethys also sacrifices Her cards-in-hand advantage, but doesn't lose the armour...

Here is where I make the decision to back Tethys off from direct confrontation and start working on those yellow habitats with Tethys' gun battery. Tethys keeps going left, working on getting away from the laser blade and rocket pod on Eurybia's own left side, and drawing a bead on those yellow habitats on the west side of the board (the left of the image above). In terms of buildings, the score has been equalised, having started off with Eurybia one habitat ahead. Eurybia gives chase...

I activate Tethys' adherent crew, and post off of a two-habitat yellow building to bring Tethys around to bear Her macro laser on Eurybia while Eurybia swings around to lead with Her left arm. I've moved into the lead, but there are still yellow habitats laying around and Tethys will be reloading Her gun battery soon-ish. Eurybia's scans give Her the initiative, to which I respond by taking it back, and my opponent activates Eurybia's sensor to take it again, now blowing the coolant system to make sure it'll be available next round. Eurybia now has the initiative, meaning She has the edge in the following confrontation. 

This edge means that Tethys eats a face-full of rockets from Eurybia's rocket pod, reducing Her shields to tatters (down to 40%), and leaving Tethys open to whatever Eurybia has to throw at Her. Except that Tethys cannot as Eurybia steps back into cover, leaving Tethys with only sub-optimal targets a macro laser. After some quick, Propeller-aided cognition, I realize this calls for the second oldest trick in the book. Tethys is, after all, ahead on buildings, and if I push that to 6 or more, then it doesn't matter if Eurybia follows up with a knock-out, as Tethys will still win. So Tethys' master crew grabs Her sensor and peers east (the right hand side of the board), and detects a tall pink building where initial scans had indicated a much shorter building. Eurybia cannot let this building stand, and comes about...

Eurybia's adherent crew takes control of Her vulcan gun and annihilates the tall pink building at the edge of vulcan gun range and Tethys comes about and steps forward to likewise pick off yellow habitats off the tops of buildings, exposing more to Her macro laser. But, for various reasons, I decide that Tethys should try to exploit that damaged frontal armour of Eurybia, because although it would be fewer points that the two yellow buildings that are beautifully lined up for a laser, attacking Eurybia should force my opponent to spend Her power on protecting Herself, and that should minimize the counter-attack. Which is does, to a degree, and Eurybia is able to absorb the snap-shot by blocking with Her right side and intercepting with a shields system. 

Eurybia is now ready to square up, and moves left, coming about to shank Tethys, taking the initiate back from Tethys' sagacity with a quick scan. Tethys banks off of a yellow habitat, destroying it, and closes to face Eurybia. Tethys' claw crunches into Eurybia's frontal armour and Tethys smashes Eurybia right into the building on Eurybia's left, demolishing it. Eurybia brandishes Her laser blade, but doesn't activate it until the next round. 

Now Eurybia attempts to stab Tethys in the initiate crew compartment, but Tethys ducks and instead takes the laser blade through the sponson. It's a slightly more acceptable loss, and as Eurybia side-steps, Tethys comes about with a punch to Eurybia's side. Eurybia vents a coolant system, and Tethys has to pour on the gas to smash Eurybia through a block of buildings. Eurybia's master crew operates Her sensor and detects a tall yellow building, but it's not enough, and Tethys spots a pink habitat crowning a blue building instead of executing a body slam to crush Eurybia through another block of buildings (having run out of power thanks to Eurybia performing an emergency coolant venting and nearly freezing Tethys' arm). 

It's a time-out, and the final score is 21-19, with 3 victory points of destroyed systems to Eurybia and 2 victory points of destroyed systems to Tethys, while the building score is Tethys with 19 habitats remaining on the battlefield and Eurybia with 16 habitats. It raises something of a question as to what, exactly, is a comfortable lead as it would not have taken much to push that to a tie, or even a victory for Eurybia. Unfortunately Eurybia wasn't able to indulge in such tricks as using an initiate crew to operate the coolant system and deactivate both a senior crew member and a weapon, but this was Her first time in action and there was some discussion of the economy of a coolant system. 

There's also the matter of set-up. As it currently stands in Tabletop Simulator there's a default set-up and players can add/subtract habitats as necessary for the Titan they're using, but it's a very generic set-up intended to be relatively neutral. In this game I was able to both set up Tethys' pink habitats in ways that were both relatively well protected, and able to keep Eurybia occupied in a section of the battlefield where Her habitats were most exposed. My opponent's early set-up also involved a lot of buildings composed of a yellow habitat capped with a blue habitat, which is good for neutralising those pinky one-cog gun battery shots, but less so for resisting a claw or a Titan pushed through a building with a claw. 

Given then that the battlefield favoured Tethys somewhat, I think it was a good first out for Eurybia, particularly when my opponent was able to use Her coolant system to deny me that last body-slam, which would have seen the score more heavily weighted in my favour. I think the next time I'm playing the game I'm going to be running one of the Styxx configurations with a capacitor and a coolant system, or perhaps take the helm of Eurybia Herself to see what sort of envelop I can push. 

It's also interesting to note what is going on when a player declines to activate a system. It's a bit like in those shows (super sentai, tonkatsu, etc) where fists/weapons/what-have-you are brandished so that they (a) do nothing, and (b) are shown to be available in the future. 

We discussed what would happen when a sponson is deactivated, and I think the best thing (for now) is that a deactivated sponson's arc bonus lasts until the end of the round, unless it's damaged, and deactivating it doesn't need to remove that bonus. 

Titanomachina Hypothetical Systems

As people that have been following this project and blog may know, I occasionally like to brainstorm new systems to cram into the game. These systems would be played prior to activating the weapon they're affecting. 

Ammunition Selector for Guns:

• Add High Explosive (+1)
• Add Armour Piercing 
• Add Shield Breaker

Refractive Collimator - Adds one tile of range to laser weapons 

Rocket Warheads

• Add Detect to Rocket Pod actions
• Add Attack to Rocket Pod actions 
• Add Twist to Rocket Pod actions

Additional Bracing - Add Attack to Hand, Claw, and Buzz Saw weapons

Titanomachina: Battle Begins Anew!

Some days you win, and some days you hear a record scratch and have to explain how you got into this position via a flashback. This recent game was one of those, where having gotten the Gracious personality (while my opponent drew the Pugnacious personality) and having first choice of Titan I decided to abandon my plan for taking a configuration of Styxx with a coolant system, and took Eos' tertiary configuration of a plasma shotgun, laser blade, and rocket pod instead. My opponent chose Rhea's tertiary configuration, which is a beast of a Titan, but also nearly the ideal target for Eos Tertiary's armament. 

The first problem, I think, was looking at the default order of Eos Tertiary's Titan Deck and going for a kind of round four frenzy, instead of daring Rhea to waste time and power trying to get that armament into position. As it was Rhea was set up with Her macro gun pointing directly at Eos, and in range of the laser batteries. Eos is a bit of a glass cannon, so I figured I'd do what I could to get Them dodging, ducking, weaving and dodging...

Needless to say it did not work, with the final score being a knock-out for 27-19 victory points on round 7! How did this happen?

The Titans are set up on the board, with Rhea reacting to Eos' conservative deployment by setting up outside of the arc of Eos' plasma shotgun, and with a clear line of sight for macro cannon shots. So help me I was spooked right then and there. Not in a panicky way, but in a "Well, I don't get arms and legs loaded until rounds 3 & 4, all I have are jump jets and a single sponson" kind of way. 

Here is where I got too clever for myself, using my sponson to threaten my opponent but then not following through on the implied threat in order to strengthen the shields protecting Eos' left leg, the leg I with which I was planning on blocking the upcoming macro gun shot. That puts me down three cards to my opponent's two, which isn't a great start where having more cards is a crucial advantage Eos should have. Especially since Eos still holds the initiative...

As I prepared Eos for a jump by activating an initiate crew to operate the jump jets, strictly forward now that the sponson's thrust vectoring is finished for the last round, Rhea storms forward, presumably to do something awful to Eos with masterfully-operated lasers. Eos makes the jump, and blows Their capacitors to recover the cost of charging those jump jets. Eos is outside of the arc of Rhea's lasers, and I feel like I accomplished something. However, Eos now has Their back turned on their opponent, and still no arms or legs until the next round.

Seeing Eos' ample high-energy systems, Rhea reverses course and stomps back after Eos, who slides back behind Rhea and then swings around for a friendly plasma shotgun blast to the rear before Rhea also ducks and swings behind Eos! Nothing to worry about, I think. Eos has another arm and leg coming right up. But Rhea scans the situation and seizes the initiative...

Now it's time to settle Rhea's and Eos' scan seizes the initiative, only to have Rhea seize it back! With no chance to claim the initiative, Eos attempts to settle Rhea's hash with a reverse kick into the buildings behind Her, but Rhea is able to take the kick on Her knee to little effect beyond heavy damage to Her armour and a slight clockwise slide. This slide segues into a leftward slide as sponson rotate right, and Rhea cuts loose with all Her guns! Despite Eos' best efforts Their rite side is savaged, plasma shotgun and armour lightly damage, jump jets and deflectors heavily damage, and shields burst! Nothing destroyed yet though, therefore so far so good, right? 

Reloading Eos' cooled sponson, They take a swipe at Rhea with the laser blade, looking to perhaps slow Rhea down, but Rhea can't be shaken off Eos' back quite so easily, and Eos' rite deflectors are destroyed as Rhea continues to boot Eos in the hip! Eos has crew on deck though, originally intended to operate the laser blade until Rhea dodged out of the way. So Eos' position hasn't improved, and perhaps is worse. Still, perfectly salvageable.

Thinking Eos' biggest problem is having Rhea on their six, Eos moves to get Rhea in front of them and Rhea keeps on trying to shatter Eos' kidney-area, destroying their jump jets and putting them on the precipice of a knock-out. Eos puts this behind them, and prepares to do some damage to Rhea in return. 

In a final and perhaps most ill-considered round, Eos desperately tries to tank Rhea's firepower on Their armour while manoeuvring for a solid kick to the right leg, but it's not enough. However, perhaps it is too much, as it exposes Eos' plasma shotgun to a close-range shot from Rhea's macro gun, and a knock-out shot. Having lost armour, deflectors, jump jets, and a plasma shotgun Eos cannot go on, and is indeed quite salvageable.   

So that was the game, a series of increasingly bad decisions that culminated in my opponent winning on both buildings and destroyed enemy systems, and ending the game on a knock-out. Typically things are slightly closer, and they certainly felt closer than the final score might have indicated, particularly since my initial strategy for my Titan deck was to hit hardest in the fourth and eighth rounds. 

Often in a game of Titanomachina, often a closer game, there is a single decision that stands out in retrospect as where everything went definitively wrong, but in this case it was the slow attrition of increasingly bad decisions, from not going for a head-on exchange of fire in the first round, to staying too close to Rhea where Her agility and armament wasn't going to be outweighed by Eos' capacitors and jump jets. The fact that Eos barely landed a hit on Rhea is at once extremely pleasing to me as a designer seeing a Titan's mobility and agility being its primary defensive measure, but also indicative of a bad decision being made to turn Eos' back on Rhea, which itself can be traced back to silly buggers with the order in which Eos would load systems instead of a solid, conservative spacing out of crew, limbs, and weapons for a solid, straight-forward fight. 

In retrospect my initial impulse to pile shield tokens on my front and legs, the stacks containing Eos' extra armour packages, was probably correct when facing a laser-boat like Rhea Tertiary. Any high explosive damage from the macro gun could essentially be cancelled by Eos' Gracious personality, a free point of damage repaired, and then the hits from the lasers and macro gun blocked by the armour. Conversely then the rocket pod might have been fired, the plasma shotgun would have shocked Rhea's own systems offline, and that laser blade might have done what it was supposed to do. 

In fact, this can all be traced back to what I think of as the army-building phase of the game, which is in between games when players get to think about what sort of material, tactics, and strategy they want to bring to their next games. I wanted to bring a Styxx configuration with the combination coolant and capacitor systems, but I didn't really have a good game plan in case my opponent decided on Eos or Rhea's Quaternary configuration. I was also planning re-actively, in the sense that I wasn't really thinking about what to do if I had the initiative rather than my opponent. With this gap in my planning, I lacked a proper plan to lean on once the game had started. Let that be a lesson. 

That said, it was a fantastic game despite the loss, as I was constantly on the cusp of taking control of the game and doing unto my opponent what they ended up doing to me first. In particular I had found that my decisions were being guided not just by who might get the first hit, or the best hit, but how any action might lead to a chain of hits, and hence events, that would somehow be worse than the present circumstances. Indeed, as round 4 shows, I had plenty to be worried about. And I enjoyed that because it felt like a cool gun-kata (referenceing 2002's Equilibrium) style of match where one wrong move is a knock-out!

Glory to Rhea and my opponent!

Titanomachina: Eurybia Changes

 Before

After

I decided to make some changes to Eurybia. Purely cosmetic, like swapping out Her upper arms to fit them better to the shoulders and elbows. Also reducing the size of Her head, Her primary sensor pod, by 10%. Some slight tweaks to armour, and slightly extended forearms. Basically I like the shapes more. 

Why? Part of building Eurybia is putting together shapes that I like, and grouping shapes together to form parts of the Titan so the model can be repositioned. Posing this model is my newest hobby.

 

Titanomachia: The Two Towering Battles

Two great Titans, pugnacious Eos and sagacious Styxx, face off across a contested city. Tonight my opponent and I had two games, one after the other, in part because the first game ended on Round 2 and why not while we're here and have scheduled time? The first game ended on a ring-out, something that I practically traipsed into, and the second on a time-out on round 9 after I thought I had it in the bag by the end of round 8. One lesson I brought into the second game from the first game was that I needed to keep Styxx in the middle nine tiles in order to avoid the risk of a ring-out, and to put Eos in Their back foot. There was a downside to doing this, particularly to a Titan as agile as Eos, and that was that detecting buildings on the edge of the board did not protect them from Eos flying in to knock them down. I think that was perhaps some minor miscalculation on my part, and perhaps some deft, clever play on the part of my opponet!

The Titans deploy, Styxx has the initiative and sets up in a nicely defensible position in case of an ambush, and so Eos decides to start in cover behind a block of buildings.

And by cover I think we mean 'opportunity' as Eos commences a fish-slapping dance of picking off lone green habitats, and Styxx detects a medium-sized building directly off Her right arm. 

Now the fight begins in earnest as Styxx flexes systems to provoke Eos into doing something rash, and moves up the road to detects a larger building in an empty lot. Deprived of Styxx as a target, but deploying Their plasma howitzer anyways, Eos destroys the building and fires jump jets, using Their sponson to leap in close to Styxx. Styxx is rather distracted by this, and having prepared to fire Her macro laser happily takes Eos' left leg off (She was aiming for Eos' back-left to destroy Their primary capacitor, light damage Their jump jets, and heavily damage their port deflector array, but Eos blocks with Their leg). Swinging around, Eos takes careful, master-operated aim with Their vulcan gun, and proceeds to hammer Styxx off the battlefield (inflicting heavy damage to Her claw). The +5VP for causing a ring-out more than makes up for the loss of a leg, and the game ends 23-21!

Once burned, twice bitten, or some sort of pithy saying because in the second game Styxx (again sagacious, as we re-drew personalities) deploys in the middle of the board, looking to avoid a ring-out and use it to minimize the need for movement. Eos deploys in cover, wary of Styxx's gun battery. 

A careful start to the game involves Styxx using an initiate crew member to operate Styxx's port sensor system and detect a medium green building, and Eos making to detect Styxx behind the cover of a medium building, but deciding against it. The message is clear "I can see you!"

Eos begins to dance again as Styxx calls for Her adherent crew to be ready, but Eos merely pops out of cover to quickly kick the green habitat top off of a building, and to use the change of momentum to move back into Their starting position. 

With adherent crew in both Titans called to purpose, the fight kicks off with Styxx detecting another green building, this time to starboard, prompting Eos to cut loose with Their vulcan gun to cull habitats, both green and pink, exposing Styxx to Eos' plasma howitzer. Styxx, however, detects that there is a habitat directly in front of Eos preventing that, but Eos vents Their fury on the medium building that Styxx had detected on round 1. Seeing the actinic discharge of Eos' primary weapon, Styxx bulls forward through the single yellow habitat directly in front of Her, and savagely kicks Eos, who takes the hit on Their frontal armour, suffering heavy damage and getting knocked left by the impact of the blow! Eos' buzz saw is pushed out of position, and Eos declines to activate it. 

Now Styxx withdraw back to the center of the battlefield, daring Eos to come get dead, using Her extra armour to scan the battlefield so She can react to Eos coming at Her. Eos takes the bait and walks around the building to outflank Styxx, who walks to meet Them. Now Eos drives an elbow into Styxx's front and follows up pugnacious as Styxx staggers back, but rather than attacking, Eos fires Their capacitor for the energy to detect a tall building far across the battlefield and behind Styxx! Wisdom prevails and Styxx takes back the initiative...

Styxx now faces the dilemma of turning around to destroy the new blue building that's been detected, and exposing Her relatively weak flanks to Eos at close quarters, or laying into Eos and seeking to smash Them into scrap. Perhaps it was a moment of weakness, but Styxx grabs Eos and wrenches Them sidesways through a building, bursting 40% of Eos' shields, and then following that up with a kick that Eos blocks with armour, shattering it, and a Her gun battery to batter Eos back through another building. Eos isn't done yet though, and walks back from the edge of the battlefield, facing Styxx head-on!

Styxx isn't done yet though, ordering Her adherent crew to man the main gun, and ducking to catch Eos' enthusiastically discharged plasma howitzer on Her turret; some light damage is a small price to pay with a robust turret system when the target is right there, and Styxx's macro laser vaporizes what's left of Eos' frontal armour, destroys Their vulcan gun, and scorches Their sensor! Eos isn't put off though, and has a plan for one of Their initiate crew...

Styxx is running low on gas, while Eos' power reserves climb. It's a tricky situation, and Eos makes things trickier by circling left around and smashing a green habitat with an errant elbow as They pass. Styxx calls on Her crew, know that if She can just knock out Eos, then the battle is won...

Not content to rely on a knock-out, and perhaps painfully aware that it would be a pyrrhic victory at best due to the numbers of blue and green habitats accounted for on the battlefield, Styxx detects a tall green building well away from Eos' present position, and then moves to bully Eos off the battlefield with kicks, elbows and a burst from Her gun battery. Forced up against the ropes Eos detects Their own blue building, for a perfect 24 blue habitats, and then leap-frogs over Styxx to deny Her the satisfaction of a ring-out! Suddenly, the score is tied and Eos is behind Her!

Styxx is out of gas and out of luck as She attempts to run interference, but cannot prevent Eos' flying elbow to the great green building that She had detected! She is left in the center of the board, safe, but impotent to catch Eos and prevent the great building's collapse. With that collapse, so does Styxx's hopes for a knock-out, and the final score is 24-19

It's interesting in that while the first game's loss was clearly a result of me letting Styxx run out of gas in a bad position, the second game is more difficult to assess. Often in Titanomachina we can fairly easily point to the first decision where things started to go wrong, or even where an opponent did something dastardly clever, but in this case I think it was a number of tiny, unforced errors that eventually let Eos' player pull victory from the jaws of Styxx. 

Specifically, I think spending two cards to first discard the initiative and then to regain it was not a great idea; reacting when you're on the defensive is good, but I wasn't on the defensive, merely withdrawn. More importantly, Eos has two capacitors and almost an excess of power to charge systems, while Styxx tends to run a deficit. Doing that allowed Eos to push their card advantage, leading Them to out-maneuvering Styxx at critical points (preventing ring-outs and/or a knock-out).

I suspect that the two attempts at ring-outs were also doomed to failure, and that I should have used Styxx's impacts on Eos to slew them around and to cede the +5VPs for the ring-out to board control that would have protected my buildings, and given me more tools and opportunities to pick off blue habitats (or hence not needed to hold off on the knock-out).  

Mind you, Styxx's strength is Her sensors, having three of them to Eos' one, and so where I should have ended the game with a perfect 24 habitats, my opponent was able to flip the script and tank the damage to Eos in order to win on habitats. It's not enough to play a perfect game, but you also have to be able to out-play your opponent, and my opponent is a wily Titan-master!

This is, I think, one of the strengths of Titanomachina as a game, in that for all its pretense at deterministic rules the game is something of a ouija board wherein two or more plans mesh toward to create a kind of unpredictable chaos that can surprise and upset even the best laid plans of Titan and cogs, and keep players wanting to walk the face of Gaia again!

Titanomachina August 2025 Update

It's something of an August update. I've only made one major change, and it's the body slam combo converts collisions to attacks with impact.

I've made a ton of cosmetic changes, and did some editing for clarity. Previously I had been trying to explain each rule in eight or so words, like I was making a card game out of the rule book. 

July 2025 Titanomachina rule book

There's certainly room for improvement, but game wise I think I'm running out of things to change. Probably a good thing, and I think it's time to declare the change moratorium I like to put in place prior to Hal-con each year.

I should be working on a print-and-play that I can distribute at Hal-con. 

Titanomachina Report and Analysis

The deployment is Styxx configuration 5, nee configuration 2, two plasma shotguns and a macro gun, two big arms, two digitigrade legs, a thruster, a turret, a capacitor, two deflectors, three sensors, three extra armour, and a standard crew. This Styxx starts with 17 habitats on the board.

Arranged against this is Rhea configuration 3, two laser batteries, a macro gun, and a hand, two arms, two plantigrade legs, two sponsors, two shields, one sensor, five extra armour, and a standard crew as well. This Rhea starts with 22 habitats on the board. 

Styxx is Rapacious, Rhea is Gracious. Styxx therefore has the initiative. 

Rhea telegraphs either a heavy punch or a tall building, and Styxx steps into cover, knowing that this will waste Rhea's heavy punch, or exhaust Rhea's lone sensor for three more rounds. Activating Her own master crew, Styxx detects a tall, four-habitat somewhere that is risky for Rhea to shoot, nearly the opposite arc from Rhea's macro gun. However, instead Rhea makes a play for position, using the master crew to operate Rhea's legs, swinging around behind Her own cover and ready to come out swinging.

Styxx brandishes Her turret, and Rhea, taking a moment to scan the battle-field takes notice and the initiative!

Rhea operates an arm with an Initiate crew member, using it to swing forward in front of a block of buildings, and out in front of Styxx. Fortune favours the one with armour! Styxx has Her own Initiate crew blast Rhea with the macro gun. Thanks to Rhea's preparation, blocking the shot with Her armoured right side and intercepting the shot with a shield from Her left back, the shot only wings Her, hammering the presented right side, and bursting shields, but only doing light damage to Rhea's armour. Rhea has even used the impact of the attack to slew starboard and lay Her own macro gun for a reply. This macro gun is operated by an Adherent crew and does far more than light damage to the right side of Styxx, destroying all of it's armour, bursting shields, and knocking Styxx askew. Styxx turns this into a right arm-driven power slide to the left, determined to bring Rhea into range of Her plasma shotguns. Rhea activated Her sensor and notes that the line of sight is blocked by a hitherto undetected yellow habitat.

Rhea moves right, matching Styxx and working to maintain that 4 tile sweet spot where Styxx's plasma shotguns are ineffective, and Rhea's laser batteries can carve Her up. Styxx is still moving through, moving left faster than Rhea can track with Her left-shoulder laser battery, which perforated a green habitat instead. Spotting another green habitat, Styxx is ready when Rhea changed tack and closes sensor-to-macro gun with Styxx; Styxx has Her Adherent crew take careful aim before Rhea blocks the stream of giga-voltage plasma with Her left side, reducing Her shields to 40%, and taking heavy damage to Her armour. The shock to Rhea's own power system sees Her hull crawl with snakes of lightning. Styxx now engages Her right leg, swinging around behind Rhea and outflanking Her!

Suddenly going into reverse as Rhea tenses with Her Master crew at the controls, Styxx backs up between two blocks and dares Rhea to kick Her. Rhea obliges, stepping up to deliver a hard crack to Styxx's left shin, hoping to avoid another plasma shotgun blast. Instead, Styxx fires Her thrusters, leaping over a building to relative safety as Rhea's Initiate crew take over.

Now Styxx is in trouble. She's not out of danger yet. She's up against the edge of the board and low on power, deflectors and armour down to 50%. As Rhea reaches out to seize Styxx, She slips under the yellow Titan's reach, working to distance Herself from being unceremoniously ejected from the battlefield. However, it was a feint, as Rhea's Adherent crew operated Rhea's right-should laser battery, its dual-beams carving Styxx's left leg clean off, for a technical knock-out!

Styxx is defeated 27-23, in the sixth-round. I haven't used Rhea configuration 3 in a long while and while I've been thinking about the potential of those dual laser batteries, it's interesting to experience the down-sides. Rhea is heavily armoured, maybe even excessively so, and perhaps that is actually an advantage, but the arms and plantigrade legs mean Rhea is either hitting hard, or moving fast, or detecting tall buildings. Styxx can combine moving and hitting more effectively, and detect multiple small buildings. Detecting large buildings is a trap, because they can usually be seen from far away, are efficiently leveled, and require a Master crew to spot the vast and obvious building. Operated by initiate crew, sensors can detect two-habitat buildings that can block line of site to Styxx. Likewise they can be used to detect enemy Titans behind known cover. 

Which isn't to say Styxx is easy to use, but that this configuration 5 looks it needs to play for time, and attack an opponent's city rather than their Titan directly. Shooting an opposing Titan in the face with a plasma shotgun is not a trap though, despite the temptation of it. Shooting anyone with such a weapon is a sound tactic, but it needs senior crew. Already a highly powerful weapon, it's also efficient at causing damage for its charge cost. Having a pair should be treated more like having one with a 180 arc. 

I think it's an interesting idea to maybe use Styxx's crew members on Styxx's capacitor. Two plasma shotguns, a Master crew, and a capacitor recovering all five charge cards to press a card advantage. My point is, I think I need to run Styxx the next time I play...

Titanomachina: Plasma Drivers

 I was reminded that I had commissioned art that hadn't been used yet in Titanomachina. Originally, the notion was that the weapon was supposed to be a short-ranged hybrid of armour piercing and high explosive traits, but I think it can be repurposed as something more like a hybrid between a plasma shotgun and a jump jet. The difference between a plasma weapon and a jump jet using plasma for thrust is basically matter of containment and cavitation. 

In this case the downwards-facing arrow icon is the Recoil trait, pushing a Titan activating the system with each attack as if it were itself struck by an Impact weapon. At full attacks it can push itself back three tiles. Crew operating the weapon won't increase this, but the damage from collisions could be catastrophic, with destroyed systems being allocated to the opponent with the lowest current score. 

The weapon also features a staggering cost of three cards to charge it, which is both only one card more than the cost of activating plasma weapons and jump jets, and another system that won't be activated for another four rounds. 

I think the first Titan to be armed with this weapon should be Eurybia, although perhaps naturally enough it it may be  something for Eos and their dual capacitors.

Titanomachina: Room for Improvement

One might think that Titanomachina has been honed to a fine edge, and while that may be the case, there is definitely some room for improvement. 

There might be an issue with allowing players to avoid activating systems, particularly given how having more cards in one's hand is a distinct advantage. I'm not entirely convinced this is an issue, but I must admit that it can be irksome to know that you can reveal your entire hand to an opponent and have nothing to defend with if they're willing to play enough unactivated systems. Of course, one can work to maintain card parity with one's opponents, or simply to make them regret not activating systems. 

A good rule of thumb is that you should be able to gradually increase the cards in your hand, bluff the other players to get them to waste cards, or simply knock the cards out of them with shock weaponry. 

At the other end of the rule book:

The shin-kicking optional rule is an optional rule and it would be better to build in a special rule to the general rules about selecting targets within arcs, since requiring players to pay one cog to turn a Titan 45 degrees in order to enable a kick is counter-intuitive to many players, and explaining you can only kick an opposing Titan in the legs makes one wonder how to welcome an opponent to Sparta. 

I think allowing leg systems, mounted to the leg stack, to count as mounted to the corresponding arm stack for the purpose of attack arcs might be a way to simplify this. They will attack like arms. Plus it opens up cross-body kicks, while requiring sponsors or turrets for back-kicks.

Mind you, the nice part about shin-kicking is, of course, being able to kick your opponent in their own legs. 

Reacting to Collisions

Oh, and being able to react to collisions as if they were attacks also simplifies a special rule in the main case. Players should indeed be able to mount a defense of the flying body slam, flying elbow, and flying knee. We know what happens when the moving Titan can't force the other Titan back due to buildings in the way, and if that lands a Titan on a building.

Grappling

It works, but what if the direction isn't just 90 degrees left or right? You kind of need to catch someone napping to push them through a building, and the positioning is pretty transparent. Occasionally the deployment of a sponson may take someone from surprise, but that's again focusing on something that can be prevented with a single cog of walking. Probably good to team claws up with another weapon or sensor to be used in case of a retreating target.

But think about the things that could be done if you could pull a Titan into the hexes left or right, not just front left and front rite? Or, alternative, introduce a new weapon system that can pull Titans towards each other. I've certainly had ideas for weapons that push the attackers around (the kzinti weapon). That last one though, I think I may have a model for that. 

Titanomachina: Eos vs Tethys

Rapacious Tethys has gone to investigate the a new development in the southern hemisphere of Gaia, one where Her remote sensors suggest the conurbations of other Titans are infringing on Her territory, but She finds gracious Eos there waiting for Her, ready to claim it for Themselves. Tethys has chosen Her tertiary configuration of digitigrade legs, capacitor, dual sponsons, dual gun batteries, macro laser and claw. Eos is in Their secondary configuration of macro gun, laser battery, and hand. 

Tethys has the initiative, but Eos isn't planning on letting Tethys exploit it and goes for the ambush. 

Realising that Eos means business, Tethys slides into cover. It turns out Eos was detecting a vast tower of blue habitats!

Now the chase begins in earnest, with Eos attempting to line up a volley of laser fire, and slicing down buildings rather than Tethys. 

Now it's time for Tethys to attempt to ambush the ambusher, but Eos swings around left instead of right, lining up a shot with Their macro gun!

Seeing how Tethys is tensing for a crew-operated explosion of action, Eos turns to present Their heaviest shields to Tethys, but open seeing the subtle body-language of multiple crew members, jumps to relative safety at the edge of the board. Tethys pursues!

Now Eos steps back and left coming alongside Tethys to deliver some punishment, but that's Tethys' plan as well and when the attack turns out to be a feint, pushes Eos back up against the edge of the battlefield with a punishing fusillade of gunfire!

Eos can't risk a ring out, and comes about to return fire, first a burst of macro gun fire to break shields and armour, and then another salvo of laser beams focused on Tethys' leg in the hopes of slicing it off. Tethys is prepared, intercepting some beams with shields previously focused on Her rear and blocking others with shields over Her own macro laser, and She seizes the initiative!

The Titans pause to let the dust settle a bit, charging themselves for the final push before the ceasefire order comes down from the orbiting Hecatoncheires.

Now Eos makes a push, coming in swinging, with a hard right elbow hammer hammering Tethys back through the yellow and green habitats behind Her, and following up with jump jets to smash Their macro gun through Tethys' starboard gun battery. Tethys is not idle though, and cognisant of the strategic position hammers down the first tall blue building while detecting a pink building nearby. Eos tries to grapple Tethys, but only succeed in pulling Her around to face Them!

Now Tethys goes after Eos' other tall building, and while Eos detects a third such tower amidst the billowing clouds of ash and pulverised concrete, the second is sent crashing down with a tectonic crash! Eos sees an opening, however, and makes one last ditch attempt to push Tethys off of the battlefield before the hammer comes down, and it fails at the last. While Eos batters Her, Tethys detects more pink habitats far across the flattened rubble of the battlefield, and carries the day! 

The final score is 22-20, for Tethys! Tethys' detected 22 pink habitats to Eos' 18, and suffered only the loss of a gun battery (2VP). Glory to Tethys and Her crew!