Titanomachina Tactics: Part 3 - The frontal assault

 

Okay, so you have started the game with these shield conditions. There are four shield tokens on the left arm location, two on both the left leg and front, one on the back left and on the right arm. This lets the Titan block with extra armour 1, extra armour 4, or the laser blade on the left arm. Leading left also allows the Titan to cover forward, hopefully leveraging an incoming attack to switch directions after the rocket pod is used. Tethys here is expecting a hit from the front, and for it to probably have high explosive. Against Rhea Quaternary, this is the gold standard providing they have the initiative. This means you can ambush them, and unloading a plasma shotgun point-blank is a great way to start a game, up there with shanking someone in the leg with a laser blade. Or you can set up out of sight and control the direction of the game. Rhea Quaternary has a spatial weakness: low angles. With low angles, a block may convert the direction of the forced turn, but there is no danger of being hit directly enough for a push-back. Even the laser blade helps Tethys fight like a knight in Chess, engaging best at two-over-and-one-down, which could avoid the cost of range 1 attacking. 

So Tethys is going to get hit by two macro guns. These macro guns will have +1, +2, or +3 added. The extra armour 1 and extra armour 4 will be able to absorb 4 points of damage, but those will probably be used to draw out my effective defenses while high explosive erodes the shields over the rocket pod, left arm, and laser blade. That's the reason there are shields on the right arm and left back, to ameliorate any high explosive contact to either of these systems and their locations. I can reply with the rocket pod, but I think I should hold back to fire in tandem with the plasma shotgun. Likewise the plasma shotgun and the laser blade, or the rocket pod and then the laser blade. Actually, strike that, make that the laser blade and then the plasma shotgun. The laser blade is great for popping shields, and opening up systems to erosive high explosive damage. 

Tethys also has two jump jets and a capacitor, enabling double-jumping up to 6 tiles without crew. One would think of jump jets mainly in the context of body slams, but moving like that can also change the game, especially when an opponent can't jump. They give Her the speed to chase Rhea down, and to engage in opportunistic body slams. 

The combination might involve an early game deletion of enemy buildings to put yourself in the lead and something of the hunted rather than the hunter. Starting in cover when you don't have the initiative is a great way to force your opponent to waste power detecting your Titan across line-of-sight blocking buildings. Without a way to force you to play cards, you can accumulate power (load systems) at your leisure, and deny Rhea card advantage. 

But not by deploying to tile 95, because that is just begging to be slapped back off the board by macro gun fire even if the deployment is at a low angle to Rhea, because Rhea will move to accommodate. As the player with a lower initiative, deploying Tethys second, you need to deploy Tethys closer to tile 55 (the middle tile on the 9x9 tile board). Not in tile 55, but lurking somewhere on a street much like Rhea is lurking, waiting for you to try and shank Her. 

Back to the first turn though. You want to have master crew, rocket pod, plantigrade leg1, extra armour 1, extra armour 4, shields 1, shields 2, sponson 1. You can move or shoot in response to their first moves, or hold tight to charge up at the end of the round. If they move to put Tethys at risk of collisions with the buildings hemming Her in, you can walk in response to work that low angle. Activate the sponson first, play an un-activated rocket pod, if they have not moved, play an un-activated shields system. You want to end with the extra armour systems, un-activated. 

Alternately, planning on getting them back at round 5, activate the master crew and then the rocket pod, and (drawing power from the shields to) demolish some blocks of buildings to try and claim the lead.

Which isn't to say there aren't other ideas, like using a sponson, a sensor, the master crew and the rocket pod (and power from three other systems) to slap an opposing Titan in round 1 and again in rounds 5 and 9. 

Titanomachina Tactics Part 2

Imagine if you will, that you had any Titan in any situation, how would you seize the initiative. Seizing the initiative is a simple action that requires more than just activating a sensor or extra armour system to scan, and this ascend your Titan's initiative marker in the stack. 

For one thing, doing it when no opponent is ahead of you moves your marker to the bottom of the stack. Furthermore, while being able to shoot before an opponent away or out of line of sight is great, shooting second can deter pursuit. In pursuing an opposing Titan you want to be able to react and follow them, rather than moving first and having them successfully retreat before you can attack. If you have more cards, then you can run them down with the initiative.

You can try to gain and increase card advantage by making efficient trades using capacitor and coolant systems, or successful attacks using plasma systems. Shocking an opponent into discarding cards unactivated while saving cards with a capacitor means a solid ratio of damage to cost. Coolant can be used to push this earlier in the game with a risk of gassing out in the late game. 

This is further complicated by a Titan's ability to soak attacks on shields, and to block with extra armour. Both systems are cheap, and ablate favorably for the defending Titan. Of course, cards used to block cannot be used to activate other systems, and the number or type of attacks may overwhelm an active defense and sap power for offense. 

No Titan does well under fire from two enemy Titans on one side, and rarely better coming under fire from both sides. But having the initiative can assist a Titan in removing themselves from between two mutually antagonistic opponents. It's worth rememberimg that a Titan that has been savaged by another Titan is a prime candidate for a knock-out.

A knock-out blow requires a target to stay available for about three turns, while the Titan activates crew and any sensors or sponson pr turret. Master crew and then a weapon can destroy multiple systems with a single attack, and removing armour removes a Titan's ability to defend itself as well as exposing 2 & 3 point systems. Lasers can bypass armour, but get easily absorbed by shields. A master operated laser battery can do serious harm to an undefended Titan, and a laser blade can deal game-changing damage with a quick early game stab.

Getting there is going to require chewing through shields and causing extra damage with high explosive, impact, and grapple attacks. 

So depending on whether you start with more or fewer habitats, and whether you have the initiative or not, is whether you walk, operate, attack or operate attack walk, or attack operate walk.

Titanomachina Tactics: Part 1

Titanomachina is a strategy-tactics game where players choose a strategy and carry it out. Much of what you can do is constrained by the personality you drewe and the systems aboard your chosen Titan. If you think of a game as a record of played cards, your first thought should be of the right order in which to play those cards cards. However, the value of those cards in that order is relative to the board state: relative positions of Titans and the positions of habitats and other terrain. This is also relative to the way you are trying to win the game, by time-out, knock-out, or ring-out.

If you are going for a time-out, then you want to tank the other player's attacks and beat them on habitats. If you are going for a knock-out, you need to overwhelm the opposing player's Titan to overcome a lag in habitats. Likewise a ring-out presumes the victory point bonus for moving an enemy Titan off the board outweighs any lag in habitats and damage. 

At some point in a knock-out your opponent starts to take damage, limiting their ability to resist. A knock-out almost always requires achieving card-advantage, not merely having more cards but also controlling tempo with unactivated cards. Having the initiative helps get that knock-out hit in so the target can't duck aside at the last minute. A lot of things need to go right. I think it is riskier than time-out wins, and works best against a ring-out strategies.

A ring-out strategy works best against the time-out strategy, because they want to absorb the damage with shields and armour, rather than habitats. You need systems like guns, hands, claws, sponsons, and turrets. Of course, you also need some willingness to lag in destroyed systems and habitats for a positional and card advantage. But since they're trying to soak the damage on their Titan, they're an obliging target.

In fact, card advantage is clutch, so there is a tension that systems can be used more if used regularly, but if held unactivated in hand it is a threat and a timing resource. Titans such as Styxx, relying on big arms and digitigrade legs, seem at a plain disadvantage, giving up two cards to activate one. It's the same amount of cogs, roughly, but requires initiative to pull off. Once Styxx has built up a sufficiently large hand though, or simply has card advantage, Styxx also has a cog advantage of hitting harder and moving faster. 

Initiative is going to Sagacious Rhea or Styxx, unless it can be defeated by doing light damage to all of a Titans' sensor and extra armour systems, or sinply where they have more that can scan. So initiative is cards, and the order that lets you maximize it for that personality after being dealt that personality. Pugnacious Styxx may even have an edge on Sagacious Rhea. Eos is going to get the initiative by activating both capacitors at regular intervals. This will give Eos something of a freeze, a time in which they are vulnerable to attack should they have used extra armour and deflectors to power weapons and jump jets. 

Hitting first, or dodging out of the way first, or raising shields first is obviously good. Being able to evade a chasing opponent, or detect a building, or seize the initiative are also handy things when you don't have the initiative. 

So this is the strategic framework of Titanomachina in which specific tactics or combos may or may not work.