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!