Titanomachina: The Gripping Hand

I saw a picture of a Jenner from BattleTech where someone gave it hands and tried it on Styxx tertiary for a laugh. And you know what, I want to see what it can do? I have a theory that it may get shot up chasing an opponent, but may be able to control the initiative and cover using Her sensors. I think you would want to have lower initiative until you can attack with hands and then with legs. 

Hands, Digitigrade Legs, Thrusters, Deflectors, and Sensor-detection all require a charge of one other card. So that is 20, with senior Crew taking another 4 for 24. That leaves -2 other cards for junior Crew, Turrets, Extra Armour, Coolant, and Capacitor. 

Round 1

A hand, a leg, the master crew, coolant, armour, a sensor, a deflector, and a capacitor 

Round 2

Thrusters, turret, armour, sensor, initiate crew

Round 3

A hand, a leg, the adherent crew, armour, deflector

Round 4

Thrusters, turret, initiate crew, sensor, Personality

Because it occurred to me that you could use the coolant system on the master crew to double their bonus, admitted to two different systems, but for an additional cost of four cards, the master crew and the coolant systems and their respective. Where you only have two weapons, you need this bonus as much as possible. You will also need those legs more than twice a round. 

Turrets not only let a Titan open up a weapon to 270 degrees, but jumping 180 degrees up to three tiles can be both a good defensive or offensive move. You need to close to act directly against the enemy Titans, and you likewise need to dodge out of the way if an opponent is so unkind as to try and hit you back. If you go for a neutral start and try to build cards to start attacking on round 3, you can mix jump and attacking with hands rather than walking and attacking and attacking with hands. Because, ideally, you use the hands to defensively grapple the opposing Titan, and blow out their shields with their massive shield breaker bonus. Once down to 40% or so, there will be big enough gaps in coverage to do some armour shattering kicks. With around four activations to attack with the legs that'll net you four extra armour cards at best. That is if each kick gets three damage past shields. It might be something to operate the hands instead, opening up the legs to keep the Titan pointed in the right direction. Probably depends on the situation at hand...

Oh, and yes, I also updated the Styxx tertiary and quaternary dashboard cards on TableTopSimulator to swap the position of Deflectors and Thrusters in the back-left and back-right stacks of the Titan, with the notion being that Deflectors are supposed to ablate damage and being fewer HR points than Thrusters should be at the top of the stack. 

Titanomachina: Myrmidon Mega-Ants Part 5

Updates and changes to the info used in Part 4.

Ant Decks are composed of unit cards, platoon cards, and support cards. The unit cards apply to all units of that type, so a Tactical Ants card enables any one unit of Tactical ants to perform an action or two. Platoon cards enable multiple units of the indicated type to share the card’s actions and cogs. Support cards enable a unit with the model pictured on the card to perform actions.

Ant units have unlimited stacking but occupy target locations on tiles like buildings. Ants cannot stack with enemy units, or share buildings with enemy units. Each ant unit can take one point of damage before it is removed from the board.

Actions include:

• Attack – The unit of ants chooses a range and rolls 1D6 per cog. The target must be in range, line of sight, and arc (arc is 360º). Each dice result that rolls over the range does a point of damage. Ants in buildings gain line of sight from that building. Ants in a building are destroyed if that building is destroyed. However, they won’t be destroyed until the entire building is destroyed, not just individual habitats. Each point of damage removes one unit of ants from the target stack.
• Walk – The unit of ants moves a tile per cog. Ants can move into buildings, An additional Walk icon allows the unit to move one more tile in addition to any cogs.
• Reinforcement – One unit of destroyed Tactical, Assault, or Support ants may be placed on a road tile on the edge of the board. The Gracious personality is a reinforcement for ants.
• Detect Titan – All ant swarm units have line of sight to a detected Titan until the end of the round, or the location of a stack of ants – moving ants away from this location on a tile will disrupt automatic line of sight to that stack, but not to anything in that location until the end of the round.
• Detect Habitat – Place a habitat within line of sight of the unit.
• Scan – Increase the swarm’s initiative.
• Operate – Increase the cogs of the next action to be declared.

Reactions Include:

• Fall Back – enables a unit of ants to move one tile directly away (‘directly’ by overkill rules). This may take them out of range (attack fails), or into a different range band.
• Block – enables a stack of ants to switch the attack to a different target on the same tile.
• Covering Fire – enables a unit of ants to shoot back at an attacker with 1D6 at Range 4 simultaneously with the attacker.
• Take Cover – enables a stack of ants to ignore one point of damage that turn.

End-Game/Victory Conditions

• Knock-Out: All Command Ant units are destroyed.
• Ring-Out – All Tactical, Assault, or Support Ant units are destroyed at end of round.
• Time-Out – the usual 9 or 18 rounds.

Units

• Command Ants (Walk, Attack, Scan, Cogs: 2, Range 1, Range 3)
• Tactical Ants (Walk, Attack, Cogs: 2, Range 2, Range 4)
• Assault Ants (Walk, Walk, Attack, Cogs: 2, Range 1, Range 2)
• Support Ants (Walk, Attack, Attack, Cogs: 2, Range 3, Range 4, Range 5)

Platoons

• Onslaught – Up to three units of Tactical ants can each walk or attack at range 3.
• Charge – Up to three Assault ants can each walk or attack at range 2.
• Firestorm – Up to three Command, Tactical, and Support ants can each attack at range 4.
• Redeploy – Up to four units of any ant unit type can walk with a movement bonus.

Support

• Command – Add two cogs to one unit during the next action played.
• Spotting – Add a building to the board or gain line of sight to a Titan or ant target location.
• Reinforcements – Up to three locations on road tiles around the edge of the board may have x cogs-worth of ant casualties redeployed onto the board.

Titanomachina: Myrmidon Mega-Ants Part 4

Since the multi-Titan rules are working out pretty well, I'm back to working on the infantry expansion, the Myrmidon Mega-Ants. 

Ant Decks are composed of unit cards and support cards. The unit cards apply to all units of that type, so a Tactical Ants card enables a unit of Tactical ants to perform an action. Support cards enable a unit with the model represented on the card to perform actions. Ant units have unlimited stacking but occupy tiles like buildings.

Support Cards

·       Scout is an option for Tactical, Support, and Assault Ants.

·       Reinforcements is an option for Tactical, Assault,

·       Command is an option for Heavy Ants

Actions Include

Attack – The unit of ants chooses a range and rolls 1D6 per cog. The target must be in range, line of sight, and arc (arc is 360^o). Each dice result that rolls over the range does a point of damage.

Move – The unit of ants moves a tile per cog. Ants can move into buildings, gaining the line of sight of that building, and being destroyed if that building is destroyed. However, they won’t be destroyed until the entire building is destroyed, not just individual habitats.

Reinforcement – One unit of destroyed Tactical, Assault, or Support ants may be placed on a road tile on the edge of the board.

Detect Titan – All ant swarm units have line of sight to the detected Titan until the end of the round.

Detect Habitat – Place a habitat within line of sight of the unit.

Scan – Increase the swarm’s initiative.

Operate – Increase the cogs of the next action to be declared.

Reactions Include:

Block – enables a unit of ants to switch the attack to a different target on the same tile.

Fall Back – enables a unit of ants to move one tile directly away (‘directly’ by overkill rules)

End-Game/Victory Conditions

·       Knock-Out: All Heavy Ant units are destroyed.

·       Ring-Out – All Tactical, Assault, or Support Ant units are destroyed at end of round.

·       Time-Out – the usual 9 or 18 rounds. 

Right now, as the default, it'll be four squads each of Assault ants, Tactical ants, Support ants, and Heavy ants. In addition to this the swarm will have two each of  the reinforcements card, the scout card, and the command card. These latter cards can be played if the player still has a unit with that model on the board. Reinforcements enable players to re-deploy destroyed units to the table. The scout thing is basically a sensor for the swarm, enabling it to detect the enemy. Finally there's the command card for both enhancing other actions with operation actions, seize the initiative, and sacrificing some units in favour of others with the block reaction.

The notion, of course, is that there is a trade-off between the amount of ants you can have on the board at any given time vs their capabilities. But that is why we do development and play-testing, to see how this makes us feel...