Titanomachina Tempo Problem

Correct me if I'm using the wrong terminology but I have been concerned about the tempo effects between charge 0, 1, and 2 systems. Originally the notion was to represent the way plasma cannons and destructors in Space Marine 2nd edition and Epic Titan Legions. In case you haven't played these games the plasma cannon prevented a Titan from using any other.weapons, and the plasma destructor prevented a Titan from moving or firing any other weapon. Naturally these weapons were generally equivalent to two or three other weapons in a system that didn't quite math how to hit rolls and multiple dice worked. The notion was tbat each additional cog after the first costs +1, so the curve is 1 card per cog. 

However, this is only in a vacuum. In a series, as in a round, costing two to three times as many cards leads to an imbalance in when and how many actions each player can make. This leads to card advantage disproportionately benefitting the player that has it and leads to cagey play where it turns into a game of chicken. Ideally the best shot is evenly balanced against the first shot, but instead it becomes about exhausting another player's hand. It could also be the way that I've been playing but even then it's something of a red flag for the game. 

Some solutions that have been tabled include converting unactivated systems to charge cards to activate systems, discarding pass cards in favour of unactivated systems acting as passes, and banking charge cards by not flipping them over as each is played. 

The latter places something of a lockstep on the 'everyone plays a card at once' framework, and does some weird things with systems that recover cards to player hands. It still allows card advantage and forcing an opponent to run out their hand where you can play capacitors or coolant. Where unactivated cards count as passes, it is harder to run out the proverbial clock, but it does lose the pass cards and their lovely artwork. Converting unactivated systems to charge cards makes sense in terms of minimizing card advantage, letting players match card for card, but it advantages Titans with lower-charged system where they already have an advantage. 

Removing pass cards appeals the most because it hews most closely to the original design where players could play a card or pass, triggering the end of the round when all players had passed once. Removing parts always seems a benefit for fewer epicycles to keep track of, and easier to cognize for player. It frees up cards in the decks for other uses. It even removes the tricky issue of commercial use, as the images weren't licensed for that. There are two per deck... It should also be compatible with alternating activations as well as simultaneous.

It does change player behaviour as well. Each round needs to chain together a set of activations. I feel like it should reward aggression as well as caution. Whether it actually does this is an empirical question. Time for some play-testing.

Titanomachina: Pacifism Incarnate

Rapacious Clymene vs Sagacious Eurybia, secondary configuration vs quinary configuration, purple vs orange (or in this case blue vs yellow). I had been wanted to run Clymene's secondary configuration for a while after making changes swapping out the Extra Armour 4 for a second sponson and upgrading the Plasma Driver weapon system to have two cogs instead of just one. While Clymene may have dropped the ball here 17-20, this game has motivated me to make some changes to some of the expansion systems (currently explained in a set of notes left beside the Clymene/Eurybia figurines/dashboards/cards), particularly the wings and the harpoon gun. They're somewhat anemic, and maybe some special rules will help them fit into their spaces. Which isn't why I managed to lose this game, but it is worth considering why my opponent decided on a course of avoiding direct conflict when Eurybia's quinary configuration looks like it should jump in for close-range mangling. 

One good reason is that the wings and harpoon guns would have been costly in a brawl, particularly against Clymene's dual stabilizers (which can react to range 1 attacks with explosive venting, retroactively preventing the attack's activation unless the player plays an additional charge card). With three grapple attacks, and a coolant system this configuration of Eurybia is better suited to flailing around at nearby buildings; lots of light, rapid attacks despite what should also be considerable board control power using grapple and drag to plow an opponent through buildings. Of course, Clymene's secondary configuration is likewise built to make things go pear-shaped during a close encounter, and at one point I thought that I had caught my esteemed opponent's cogs napping because I almost managed three attacks at 3, 2, 2 and shock for each until I realized the first shot would put the next two shots out of arc as the Plasma Driver's recoil spun Clymene around. I settled for melting Eurybia's frontal armour off in one shot, but I had really been hoping for the shock to ruin my opponent's card advantage (shock x3 would have meant three cards lost, possibly more to blocking). But instead I split Clymene's attention between Eurybia and the buildings. 

I also notably fell for the oldest trick in the book, which is "Hey, look over there," as Eurybia detected a three-habitat building over on tile 97. I was already behind on buildings as I think I had miscalculated my fire control, having chosen the gun munitions specialist system to enhance Clymene's Vulcan Gun and increase its anti-building firepower; I believe Clymene should have been facing due east instead of north-west, where the round track lies to the east of the battlefield. This would have opened up the yellow habitats in tiles 76 and 67, as well as the habitats in 43 and 63 to the Plasma Driver. 

As you can see I deployed first and my opponent's counter-deployment presented just the right amount of threat and lure: Threat to show that Eurybia could be jumping over those buildings separating the Titans at any moment, but lure to get me thinking of trying to winkle Eurybia out from behind them, or going in after to try for a ring-out. 

I waggle Clymene's Plasma Driver while my opponent uses Extra Armour to scan and seize the initiative, and since I was going to lose it at some point I'm okay with that: Eurybia has six systems that can scan and is sagacious: She simply has better battlefield awareness than Clymene in this configuration. I was still thinking of Eurybia as an aggressor, so having Her jump into Clymene's guns wasn't the problem it eventually turned out to be. 

I start with Clymene's Vulcan Gun early, clearing a couple of yellow habitats and four others: this probably isn't a great ratio of enemy habitats to neutral habitats for six cards. Facing south-west Clymene probably could have netted twice as many for this investment thanks to the concentration and exposure of yellow habitats in and around tile 63. Notably I am spending six cards to my opponent's three... My opponent is cheerfully working away on somewhat better ratios, elbowing a blue habitat in tile 36 to smithereens. 

As we can see here Clymene is going absolutely bonkers on pink and green, but less effectively against yellow and realizing this I turn Clymene right around to go after some yellow habitats in the south-east. I probably should have piloted Her south-west, but my vision was somewhat tunnel-visioned by the two-high habitat Eurybia had detected on tile 94 on the previous round and I wanted to equalize the building score as I was falling behind. Of course, while Clymene is doing this Eurybia is working Her was west, and then super-cooling the systems She used for that, yielding a hefty two-card card advantage, and I had used my Plasma Driver to destroy a building so it was no longer a deterrent. Not that it needed to be, but it didn't register with my cogs...

In what looks in retrospect like a fit of indecision, I turn Clymene around again and try to make like She can threaten Clymene directly before She completely clears out the blue presence on the north side of the battlefield. Eurybia makes like She is ready to jump if Clymene gets too close. I had the choice of using my initiate crew and rapacious personality to detect much-needed blue habitats, but put it off to the next round so I had more cards in hand and looks a tad less vulnerable. This was, of course, under the assumption that eventually Eurybia would attempt a direct attack at some point. 

Instead my opponent pre-empty my strategy of concentrating on buildings and uses Eurybia's main sensor to detect a three-habitat-tall yellow building in tile 79 while Clymene detects a two-habitat tall blue building in tile 19. Clymene hoves in closer on Her stabilizers, but Eurybia keeps moving south-west, keeping the low line of habitats between the two Titans as if they might block line of sight. In fact they do not.

As Eurybia kicks down the two-tall building in tile 41, Clymene carefully draws a bead on Her and with Her senior crew making sure the Plasma Driver's stream turbulence and magnetic re-cavitators are functioning properly, melts Eurybia's front armour clean off as She twists to prevent the same from happening to Her side armour and left leg. But Eurybia isn't staying still, and staggers south, reverses course north-east through the blue habitat left in tile 63 and heads south-east to stand between two buildings She could demolish with Her wings. 

Now I knew that, given the number of cards in my hand that I could get a final shot off with the senior crew and Clymene's Plasma Driver, and that if I did that correctly it could expose Eurybia to a ring-out from the Vulcan get if I played it aright. So I pushed Clymene up behind Eurybia to start a push for the edge of the board, and Eurybia draws south and then east again with a wing working to bait and exhaust Clymene and maintain card advantage.

Of course I don't take that bait, I take the one that was left for me earlier in the game, that takes Clymene away from threatening Eurybia to leaving Her to carry on with Her dastardly scheme uninterrupted. Heading east over the buildings Clymene lines up to reduce Eurybia's habitats by 4 and increase Her own by 4. I did that because without reducing Eurybia's building amount (or destroying more systems) a ring-out would still be scored in my opponent's favour. As snap judgements go it was probably not a great one because of how this played out next. 

Clymene's adherent crew blew away four yellow habitats with the Vulcan Gun again firing high explosive munitions, and the master crew detected a four-habitat-tall blue building in tile 96, but while Eurybia was unsupervised She crunched Her way through two more blue habitats in tiles 74 and 82, and detected a six-habitat-tall yellow building in tile 31. Clymene's Plasma Driver destroyed a building containing a yellow habitat in tile 76, but nowhere near enough. But Eurybia got that building up because She was on the board, still had a functional sensor on Her shoulders, and didn't have anything to worry about. 

So yes, it was clever of my opponent to forgo direct combat and to do a kind of pacifist run, insofar as 'pacifist' can be applied to smashing down buildings. Perhaps in the same way a 100m tall giant robot can attempt to sneak past another but for a row of 50m habitats between them. Needless to say this is working as designed: You should be able to win Titanomachina like this, and a skill in the game should be recognizing when is a good time to engage and when is a good time to simply enjoy a quiet rampage in the city. Minor errors in surveying aside, my opponent played an excellent game.

Glory to Eurybia and to my opponent! 

I should like to make this decision harder though, rather than a practical calculation that a direct encounter will not go to the robot with the pillow-fisted weapons and the expensive, impractical wings. My design philosophy for Titanomachina has always been to attack the players and to make their decisions agonizing, and it's always good to increase the allure of incentives to direct engagement.

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.