After last week's scaly violence, last night's donnybrook saw Sagacious Rhea knock out Rapacious Eos in round 9, for a score of 29-25. Instead of the battlefield being flattened in an egregious display of collateral damage, only four habitats weren't detected, and actual increase in the number of surviving yellow habitats prior to Rhea's arrival. Eos only lost one habitat from the 24 They came to protect from Rhea' opportunism, although the loss of an arm, armour, and both gun batteries perhaps has Eos regretting Their choice of configuration. My plan, such as it was, was to use Eos quaternary configuration's arms and light weapons to methodically chase and dismantle my opponent's choice of Titan. My opponent went with Rhea's quaternary configuration, something packing more armour and heavier guns, but slower and perhaps less agile.
The armour wasn't an issue, as I had planned to knock it off Rhea with Eos' guns and hand, and it was this notion of maintaining the initiative that caused me to succumb to temptation and line up my senior crew behind the laser battery and take the opportunity to stab Rhea through both layers of frontal armour and and render Her sensor too heavily damaged to effectively function. The idea was to eliminate Rhea's protection and initiative so that Eos could deliver a knock-out blow. My opponent, however, took the initiative and did something similar to Eos, utilizing the high explosive effect of Rhea's macro-guns to disable first Eos' superior mobility, and then chew off the armour protecting Their gun batteries. While both Titans where capable of using their sensors to detect buildings, and were well suited to clearing buildings, stabbing Rhea in the eye with lasers and being ahead on buildings meant that my opponent's option for winning was a direct confrontation, and I had been gambling on my opponent trying to win on buildings. I think Eos quaternary would have been a good choice had I not had the first choice of Titan, as a reaction to a Titan like Tethys quaternary from last week; I certainly found myself wishing Eos had brought some plasma howitzers.
I had the initiative and perhaps deployed too conservatively given how I was packing both guns and the laser battery in the initial load of systems I drew to my hand. I wasn't terribly interested in getting into an immediate exchange of fire though, and figured I could go right or left depending on the direction of ambush. I think setting up closer to the middle of the board like my opponent ultimately chose was the better more as I would have the first shot and then could manoeuvre. I'm not sure this was a mistake, but given my opponent chose a gun-boat, and what happened the last time I had set up there, I'm not sure it was a great idea either.
Round 1 was something of a battle of nerves, which is to say I don't think either of us wanted to go first. Me because I was in cover and had the initiative, which meant that my opponent could react to me leaving cover before I could shoot, and my opponent perhaps because he didn't have the initiative and was well-wary of wasting Rhea's limited power supply and allowing Eos to overwhelm Rhea's endurance with capacitor-fueled action. Sometimes it's two samurai squinting stonily at each other, and sometimes it's two fighters shaking out theirs shoulders and stretching their necks...
Well, Rhea wasn't going to exhaust Herself, so I announce Eos' presence by caving in a yellow habitat, hoping to give the impression of preparing to go on a rampage. Rhea understands the taunt, but replies by detecting a two-habitat-tall building behind Eos; "Look," she seems to say, "I have two more just like it." Eos cracks out Their back, flexes Their front armour, and curtsies. Rhea directs Her master crew to aim the right macro gun in a rude gesture, but not to fire.
Rhea has shown Her hand, so to speak, and so Eos comes charging through the pink habitat left from Their initial attack on that building, and locks in for a shot; Rhea aims Her left macro gun at Eos' laser battery and staggers Eos back as They block the shot with leg armour, with the blast catching Eos' exposed back-left arm. Eos is patient though, this was expected, and keeps a Rhea in Their sights while Their master crew helps the adherent crew aim. As Rhea stomps closers, Eos unleashes a precise set of laser beams that burst Rhea's front shields, and carve deep into Her front like claws raked across the face and chest of a human. Rhea isn't phased as She blasts Eos again, and punches Them as Eos tries to capitalize on the gaping holes in Rhea's front; Rhea still has plenty of armour, and in Her wisdom (or perhaps in the wisdom of Her master crew) has not fired Her vulcan guns yet. Eos' elevated rate of activity will come back to haunt them in later rounds as card advantage has been sacrificed...
Now as Eos attempts to suck wind and re-fire Her ichorplasma spiracles Rhea seizes the initiative and unloads with Her vulcan guns. Eos gets Their shields back up, somewhat, and isn't knocked off the battlefield, but They waste their rapaciousness and perhaps power turning around somewhat...
Eos needs to get away from the edge of the battlefield to avoid a ring-out, and has a hand available, so They chase Rhea and try to smash Her into buildings in tile 37, but only succeeds in tearing the armour off Her side. Rhea holds Her patience, if not Her dignity, and kicks Eos for good measure.
Now my tunnel vision starts to tell, as I get Eos to keep firing in the hopes of capitalizing on Rhea's loss of armour: if I seize the initiative now my opponent can't get it back for Rhea until the sagacious personality is loaded to his hand in round 8. But first I have another crack at taking Rhea's head, but Rhea has the initiative and in the exchange of fire damages my gun battery, and I fail to destroy Rhea's back armour as She takes the shot on Her back armour. Here is where I think I made a major mistake, something easily identifiable as such, which was turning to face Rhea. Admittedly it meant that I had shields between Eos and Rhea, but taking cover would have helped more next round where Eos had lost card advantage.
Now that lack of cover starts to hurt as I scramble to minimize incoming damage and Rhea keeps hammering Eos with perfectly functional systems. It's worth noting that while Eos is defending themselves, and I'm actually still winning at this point, Eos is out of gas and rapidly running out of functional body parts.
As Rhea keeps beating on Eos I keep trying for an offensive solution to a defensive action, and while raising shields on Eos' damaged sponson helps absorb some of the damage from a hefty kick, Eos is down to 10% shields and is one good hit away from something bad.
A pair of kicks from Eos does not prevent Their dismemberment, and fails to stomp in Rhea's vulnerable, tenderized face. Eos is bracketed and battered by Rhea, first losing one gun battery, then an arm, and finally the left gun battery to an enthusiastic stomp from Rhea. With the loss of the second gun battery the score of destroyed systems was 8 VPs for Rhea and 2 VPs for Eos, scoring a knock-out win for my opponent and mighty Rhea! Unfortunately I managed to lose the screen-shot that would have recorded the exact end-state of the board, perhaps related to this final position shot that I have used here, as it would help readers understand some of my post-game thoughts.
The first of which is that Eos Quaternary is not meant to exchange heavy hits with another Titan, but instead is supposed to go for board-control, using Their suite of light-weight, low-powered weapons and unusually high number of limbs to dance around opponents while laying waste to their habitats. For the purposes of a punching match, this configuration of Eos is under-powered. Could I have done that with my opponent attempting something similar? I think so had I started the game more centrally and more aggressively, so that each weapon could be activated three times in the course of a 9-round game, and perhaps spread my shields out to protect Eos' rear arms to maintain mobility. Where I had planned to absorb hits on my leg armour, I should have expected my opponent to use the high explosive trait of the macro-guns to slip that damage in. Losing the armour would have been less painful that losing the arms.
Additionally, despite the utter temptation, I should not have made that laser shot. I could have done something similar with the left gun battery, and either done damage to Rhea's guns (initial target) or knocked Rhea back into the habitats at the center of the board. Likewise I should have used the hand to bottle Rhea instead of grappling, as exchange of leg armour for facing benefitted Rhea much more than Eos.
Most of all, and this happens in most board games and wargames, is that I need to remember that I am not fighting the last battle, but the next battle. It's one thing to suppose that because an opponent turned left in the previous game that they will then turn left in the next game, particularly as the local conditions change. It's more a case of remembering the tricks and tactics that they used in the previous game so that they can't pull it over on you in the next game. Which is funny, after a fashion, because having flattened the board in the previous game this was the slug-fest I was planning on having.
From a game designer perspective this game was fantastic for how I have envisioned the game to play and to be experienced, in the sense that I had a material strategy (Eos quaternary) that might have worked out but for my mistakes, effective counter-play by my opponent, and a critical switch in the initiative that I had anticipated but not fully prepared to counter (the idea being to knock out my opponent's ability to control the initiative). Plus a knock-out win!
So glory to my opponent and glory to Rhea! Maybe revenge needs plasma weaponry...
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