Titanomachina: Myrmidon Mega-Ants Part 3

Like Aristotle before you, many of you may be wondering what the telos, or purpose this all serves. After all, the Myrmidon Mega-Ants are playing a different game than the Titans. Or rather, they are playing the same game of coordinating parts to achieve victory. Which makes one wonder, does it not, what exactly victory looks like? Titans have time-outs, ring-outs, and knock-outs, one for each of the victories of time, space, and material. Obviously the Myrmidons should have the time-out, as fighting an enemy to a standstill, while scoring a strategic advantage in material is suitably heroic. Also, no changes need to be made to the rules for timing out. You play 9 or 18 rounds and then score habitats and destroyed systems. A knock-out will depend on the human resources needed to include each card and matching squad in a swarm of Myrmidon. I think 1 for Tactical ants, 2 for Assault and Support ants, and 3 for Heavy ants. Ring out is obviously impossible in the sense of pushing an enemy Titan off the board, but where Myrmidons have the following actions, perhaps there's some way of there being a risk of shocking a swarm of Myrmidons off the board.

Reinforcement Action

The player rolls xD6 for each action rolling x cogs. If they can roll above the number of reinforcement actions being called, the player can place that many Myrmidon squads on tiles around the edge of the board. 

Retreat (Reaction)

The Myrmidon squad may move one tile when attacked, before contact is resolved. 

In terms of a knock-out then I think I want a set ratio or fraction indicating that Myrmidon players ending a round with that few units on the board is knocked out. I think knocking them all off the board would be a knock-out condition, because otherwise a play may use a Command and then a Reinforcements action, using 4D6 to get 3x 4+ dice results. That could be 18 units of ants, potentially. On its own Reinforcements would be 2D6 to 2x 3+ dice results. 

How would the ants knock-out a Titan? They're going to hit Titans hard, doing between 2 and 6 points per attack. With 16 units of ants, all of them activating in four rounds, that would be 23 actions. That's nearly six actions a turn. Which is a good number because players are going to be throwing a lot of dice. Dice to move, dice to attack, dice to spot, dice to reinforce; the tension for the Myrmidon player should come from this stochastic machine. Because shots may do devastating damage, but the real play of Titanomachina is developing that damage past armour and shields, with ants not only surviving to do damage, but being at the right place and time to do that damage. 

Speaking of, when a Myrmidon force has the initiative and surrounds a Titan right off the bat, then it was probably a good idea for the Titan to set up in a corner of the board to avoid attack from every direction. Once again Rhea Quaternary would be the gold standard for massacre.  

Titanomachina: Multi-Titan Mayhem

I've been wracking my brain, trying to figure out how players could play multiple Titans at once without it becoming unplayable, and here's a first draft of what I've come up with so far: 

Players draw a card from each of their Titans' decks each turn. In initiative order players choose to: 

• play a card face-up, activate it, and resolve the subsequent actions,  
• play a card face-up to be activated later. 
• play a card face-down to charge another card from that Titan, either for immediate activation of a face-up card, or for later.  

Cards can only be activated if the player has built up sufficient charge (face-down cards), either because they have enough cards already face-down in play, or because they just played a card face-down. 

After a card is activated and its action(s) resolved, place the card on top of any cards needed to charge it on top of a discard pile. Once a player can no longer draw cards, this discard pile is flipped over. 

• Capacitors act as charge cards when they're activated. 
• Emergency Power lets you recover a card with block or intercept from the top of the discard pile and play it in reaction to an attack.
• Shock has players add the next card at the top of their deck to the discard pile.

Rounds end after five cards have been drawn, whether they're activated, left un-activated, or used to charge activated systems. Charge cards and un-activated systems (as well as activated crew) persist past the end of the round, although twist actions, detect Titan actions, and body slams do not. 

Edit: Players get three unactivated systems out on the table to begin the game. I also need to figure out how to count those rounds better...

Further edit: Someone on Bluesky made a very good suggestion for players to put a pass card five cards deep in their decks at the beginning of the game and every new round.