Titanomachina: Ring-out Rope-a-Dope!

I have been working on learning from my mistakes, and while I did not win the latest game between me and my esteemed opponent, I managed to shrink the spread to a final score of 24-23 on a round 7 ring-out. I took pugnacious Eos' tertiary configuration to war against my opponent's gracious Clymene's tertiary configuration, taking the right strategic response to my opponent's choice of Titan (capacitors to resist the shock effects of those plasma drivers). I remembered to not give my opponent time to charge while I wasted time and charge closing. I remembered to do something clever on the first round (laser blade, plasma shotgun, both legs, both senior crew, both capacitors), and I even successfully executed a double-jump, double-body-slam ring-out. However, despite all of the plasma flying and the capacitors firing, it came down to my opponent playing an intercept reaction and preventing Clymene's left shoulder Sensor 1 system from being destroyed by the second body-slam that pushed Clymene off the board and ended the game. That prevented me from scoring 2 VPs, and swung the game from 25-24 in my favour to 24-23 in his. 

Interestingly my opponent had two systems left in hand, the Extra Armour 4 mounted on Clymene's back, and the Deflector 1, and the ring-out could have been prevented by reacting with the extra armour. However, he was not confident that Clymene could have held onto that six point lead had he used it to prevent a ring-out. Clymene's left leg and that sensor system had both suffered heavy damage, as well as the front Extra Armour 3 package. While Eos had lost Their plasma shotgun, They were still armed with a rocket pod and laser blade, and that laser blade could have sliced off the sensor and the plasma driver mounted beneath it, removed the heavily damaged leg, or destroyed the frontal armour and gutted Clymene's specialist system (the plasma siphon, in this case). 

There were a couple of errors in regard to the rules, that we realized afterwards and as I prepare this report. In round 3 Clymene's attacks should have turned Her around, leaving Her in range of Eos' plasma shotgun counter-attack; the recoil rule works like the impact, grapple, and drag rules except on the attacker relative to the target (rather than the target relative to the attacker), and until Clymene Tertiary is firing diagonally She should be turning 45 degrees with each shot. Likewise Eos should have lost shield tokens over Their left arm when Clymene's laser blade got blasted. That said, sometimes things get forgotten in the heat of the game, and games are about agreeing to a state of affairs. I had a lot of fun this game, and seeing that my opponent was able turn my ring-out against me by making a clever move cheered me immensely. 

Clymene has no jump jets in this configuration, and set up to make sure She wasn't boxed in, or ambushed from behind. Eos has two jump jets in this configuration and decided to start like They meant to go on. 

Eos starts swinging, but Clymene has the initiative, and the limbs to duck and dodge. Also, Clymene has the firepower to put some hurting on Eos and nearly takes off Their heavily shielded plasma shotgun, with a degree of finesse, using only two shots to avoid being knocked off the board. Eos' plasma capacitors show their quality, recovering the power lost to the shocking effect of raw plasma!

Eos doesn't want to get shocked again, and swinging right with a kick to a yellow habitat forgets that heavy damage to the plasma shotgun has rendered it useless without a crew member repairing or operating it! An opportunistic body-slam using jump jets ends up bursting shields and shattering Clymene's rear armour as She ducks, but up against the edge of the battlefield She deftly reverse and steps around Eos, through the blue habitat left in tile 63, who wrenches Themself around with an initiate-crew operated arm to try and stay out of the arc of that plasma driver mounted on Clymene's left arm.

Clymene still has the initiative and pushes Herself back and right, from tile 53 to tile 64, as Eos' initiate crew 4 works on getting the plasma shotgun's damage remediated enough to fire. Here is where the plasma driver's recoil pushed Clymene away, out of plasma shotgun range, and as it turns out Eos mysteriously takes less damage than one would expect; I think the first shot was blocked by the extra armour 1 and apparently the second shot was ignored. It seems to even out. 

Now Eos seizes the initiative as Clymene uses initiate crew to detect a two-habitat yellow building in tile 14 (behind the pink and green building), swinging around with an arm, and jumping over the green and yellow building in tile 63 to close for a plasma shotgun blast! Too close, as it turns out, and Eos has to push additional power to the plasma shotgun to overcome the emergency venting of Clymene's plasma siphon! While this blasts the shields off of Clymene's left side, She uses the passive sensors embedded in the Extra Armour 2 package on Her right-hand side to scan and seize back the initiative!

Obviously not ideal for Eos, but They plow ahead, in this round plowing a kick into Clymene's left leg, shattering the extra armour protecting it, and doing heavy damage. They wind up for another kick, but Clymene's right arm plasma driver, operated by Her adherent crew, melts off Their plasma shotgun, and is blocked by the leg Eos was aiming to kick Clymene with. Close investigation suggests it's the left leg, so Eos should have lost Their Extra Armour 1 here instead of spreading the damage to the Extra Armour 2 system on the right leg. The adherent crew is not activated and goes back into Eos' hand...

Clymene staggers back north from tile 95, turning to fire the left plasma driver, bursting shields and damaging Eos' laser blade as They heave around to punch Clymene back, firing jump jets for one body-slam after another. The damage isn't enough, as Eos's capacitors fight against the shock of the plasma driver and the charge-thirst of the jump jets. Clymene is knocked out of the backfield, but She remains intact enough to claim the victory!

Now things would have gone slightly differently if we had followed the strict letter of the rules, with the game events diverging wildly had Clymene gotten turned around and hit with the plasma shotgun in round 3 instead of blasting to safety, Eos losing armour in round 5, and Eos' left arm shields being fully accounted for, but as mentioned these slips didn't detract from game-play. Mentioning them is important just in case ignoring these slips confuses those players who have been playing by the rules, and make them think they have been playing incorrectly. It was a fantastic game! We may even have gotten carried away...  

Glory to Clymene, Her crew, and to Her plasma drivers!

Titanomachina: Scorching Hot Plasma!

Avid readers will recall me commenting how I should not have made that move to close Eos with Eurybia in the previous week's battle report. Well, I may have done it again. This time I had rapacious Eurybia close with gracious Clymene, in particular Eurybia quinary closing with Clymene quinary, and it worked out better than one might imagine, but really not any better as I ended up getting knocked out in the 5th round. In part this is because Clymene's quinary configuration is monstrous: a specialist system begging for a plasma siphon, a coolant system on the left shoulder, and then two plasma shotguns and a plasma driver (and stabilizers on the left shoulder). This configuration of Clymene can unleash a barrage from a plasma shotgun, using the plasma siphon to power it with one card, super-cool both plasma shotgun and plasma siphon with the aid of an initiate crew, and then fire it again. It has two big weaknesses, which are short-range, topping out at range 4 for the plasma driver, and the coolant system is exposed on Clymene's shoulder. Anyone with a long-ranged weapon like a rocket pod, missile pod, macro gun, or plasma howitzer could start the game hard and probably knock Clymene out about as promptly as She knocked out Eurybia in this encounter. 

However, Eurybia, in this case Her senary configuration, was also armed with short-ranged weapons and only one coolant system to keep things moving. She had wings, but I definitely did not put the crew in to make the most of these systems. Likewise I didn't utilize the harpoon gun in an effective way, and lost the pincer way too early. I suspect the shield calibration I chose could have been more effective as well had I put two shield tokens on arms and wings, and one for each of the legs. I could have also wandered off and amused myself clearing buildings, which this configuration of Clymene is very well suited to do. And it almost worked out, having survived round 2's fire-hose of plasma, I could have probably gotten a ring-out on my opponent had I pressed harder. The irony of doing what I'm used to doing, which is not over-extending my Titan, instead of following my instinct to reach for the win, was Eurybia's loss. I feel like I need to play some solo-games with this configuration to get a handle on this configuration of Eurybia. Nonetheless, the final score was 23-20 for Clymene.

Eurybia has the initiative, and I decorate Her in teal to make deployment of habitats easier. In truth I should probably start suggesting that we decorate the board according to the set-up rules, and work the battlefield as well as my Titan's deployment. In the latter case I decided Eurybia is heavily armoured, the nice, safe center of the board She goes. My opponent then set up in what could have been an absolutely hilarious position had I thought to set up my Titan deck so that Eurybia could turn around, detect Clymene, put a crew member on the harpoon gun, and then yank Clymene through the thin wall of buildings in front of Her. I was, however, also in the position to get blasted with plasma if my opponent had a similar idea, and a coolant system to keep Eurybia moving. 

A tense first round as neither of us did anything. In fact, this was when I should have fired up Eurybia's legs and moved out of the way, as Clymene would be hoping to push a card advantage, and while She was sitting there chugging away I could position Eurybia for a winged assault. 

Having waited a smidgeon too long, Eurybia paid the price, losing Her left wing and Her pincer, which put me at risk of losing in a knock-out, but in a pretty good position to pull a ring-out of Clymene. Eurybia had swung around and right to tile 46 (11 is bottom right), and then operating with my master crew moved to tile 23 to kick Clymene into the pink habitat left in tile 43. Eurybia got cooked by Clymene's left plasma shotgun, and I used my coolant system operated by an initiate crew to recover the legs to my hand. Then I got Eurybia turned around, but got blasted again!

Eurybia punches Clymene, who punches back, and then a body-slam from behind to exhaust Clymene's defenses. I have card-advantage, and I have a great position. Here is where could have either gotten a ring-out, or at least pressed Clymene up against the edge of the board. But I'm ahead on buildings, why rush? Because you can't give them an inch, that is why!

Having left it too late, my opponent is able to seize the initiative, extricate Clymene from Her bad position, and accept being kicked through a building because it exhausts Eurybia to do that, and I lose that card advantage. I do manage something good with the master crew operating the harpoon gun, but without the pincer to tear at Clymene, or the spare wing to batter Clymene, She makes it to a safer position despite losing some armour in the process. Those dings will buff right out! 

I still feel Eurybia was safe, but I don't have the cards to get to safety and don't activate the crew that might have pushed Eurybia to walk further. My opponent operates their coolant system using their own master crew, recovering four cards to get Clymene turned around, and exploiting that damaged left back, destroying Eurybia's port armour and shield generator to achieve a knock-out!

Two great strategic lessons here, the first being that if you're going to choose a Titan, you should consider what can be done with that Titan. I think a master-crew-operated wing can do some spectacular things, particularly with a little lay-up, and a pincer can do an astonishing amount of damage to buildings should it use the bottling rule and not be afraid to be used. A little bit further ahead on buildings and a knock-out still would have gone to me. Secondly, a master-operated coolant system can recover four cards. FOUR CARDS. You could use both arms and both plantigrade legs, and then use them again! In terms of re-orienting after deployment, or when you're in a bit of a pickle, that extra speed will come in handy.