Titanomachina: Quaternary Quarrel

Some days a game turns on a tiny, insignificant mistake the consequences of which compound and spall through the sights of victory. In this case, I made a series of obvious and painful blunders that were immediately and mercilessly exploited by my opponent, who was running Rhea's gun show quaternary configuration to Eurybia's. Rhea clinched it in what appeared to be round 5 with 23 to 19 victory points.

The first mistake was that I had the option to reconfigure my shields and perhaps maximize their coverage of Eurybia's blue prow. I did not take that chance, and found Eurybia's shield coverage evaporating under Rhea's hail of gunfire. The second mistake I made was trying to use the coolant systems early in the game, rather than using them to power my active systems (particularly shields, to raise them back up after Rhea shredded them). The third mistake was not activating a junior crew-operated arm to get Eurybia's back off the ropes before a ring-out in round 5. Where it looks like we set up in the second round, the first round saw both players, sagacious Rhea and gracious Eurybia alike both play pass cards. So we started in round two with 13 cards each...

Eurybia made another mistake here used Her master crew and gun battery to open up some lines of fire, and to reduce the number of yellow habitats. The notion was to use the following coolant system to bring them back for another round of firing next turn, but what it did was give my opponent card advantage as Rhea calmly advanced and clipped Eurybia with macro gun fire. 

I tried to claw back the card advantage at the expense of Eurybia's shield coverage, by holding off on any action, and Rhea continued Her merciless advance maintaining fire and elbowing the odd blue habitat when the opportunity presented itself.  

I note that we didn't appear to be moving the round marker along the track properly, so this is more like round 5, and also shows how Eurybia pursued Rhea for an opportunity to use that hand to even the score by grappling Rhea into some buildings. In retrospect maybe using up my senior crew to prevent Rhea from retreating wasn't a great idea either. 

Finally, the hand comes into play, but since Rhea is also heavily armoured, all Eurybia could grab was a leg and like that Rhea levered Herself back into play (and Eurybia back under Her guns). 

Here is where my tactical and strategic nous deserted me, as I looked at the board, I looked at what Rhea was lining up, and I looked at the arm I had prepared to activate and somehow decided not to activate it. Donald Davidson might have forgiven me for having four cups of coffee that day, but Rhea did not. Having run me out of any remaining defensive cards Rhea used a crew-operated vulcan gun to blast Eurybia off the board through a pink and yellow building for a final score of 23 VP to Eurybia's 19 VP.