Titanomachina: Eurybia Earns Her Wings!

Game design is a funny thing because you can build a big, elaborate structure out of rules and numbers, but whether or not it feels right will depend on the players. In this game, I took pugnacious Clymene quaternary configuration against sagacious Eurybia quinary configuration, and despite losing 20-16 I ended the game feeling like Eurybia's weapons needed a boost. We've been trying to fine-tune this configuration of Eurybia for a while, adding a bonus to Her wings for instant body-slams, and adding a combo to Her harpoon gun for drag & grapple, and it worked when my opponent switched things up in the middle of the game and decided to start playing more aggressively: Clymene was knocked out, losing a missile pod, extra armour , and deflectors for no additional damage to Eurybia. 

Certainly this configuration of Clymene is a relaxing one to play, having taken pod payloads as the specialist system for the game, and being well-armed with a solid combination of weapons. Had She lasted until round 9, I suspect I could have won this one. But as careful observers may note, this version of Eurybia is meant to swoop in and batter its opponents, which it did. The problem, such as it was, was that this configuration of Eurybia did not encourage its player to use it like that. Furthermore my esteemed opponent is a cagey player, preferring to wear down an opponent, encouraging them to gas out and over-reach. While Eurybia established and maintained a card advantage, the sheer cost of onboard systems, especially wings, acted as a brake on closing with Clymene. Titans that depend on impact and grapple to engage an opponent also depend somewhat on overwhelming an opponent, being able to reach that point where they have enough cards to force an opponent to collide with buildings, or their opponent has too few to resist effectively. Closing costs cards, and closing is more complicated than just reaching out and shooting someone with a gun.

But when it works, boy howdy does it work. So the trick seems to be encouraging players to try. I've decided one way to do that is to upgrade the pincer and harpoon gun to 2 cogs each. This brings the pincer in line with the claw in terms of raw damage, with the ability to split up the cogs between shield breaking, grappling attacks a decent alternate to the claw's shock, and the buzz saw's high explosive shield breaking. Similarly, the harpoon gun's two cogs should put it up beside the macro gun and gun battery in terms of efficiency, despite the low range, and single attack. This also affects Clymene's secondary configuration, since it mounts a pincer, but that should be a good thing.

The initiative track is wrong here, I did not have the initiative, having drawn the Pugnacious 1 card. My opponent set up on tile 33, and I decided that I would start things off by trying for a one-two with Clymene's macro gun and missile pod, using the pod paylods to add the impact trait to the missile pod's firing. 

A little too confident my opponent was going to stand still and try to power up before doing anything I tipped my hand with the pod payloads and Eurybia walked south-west (north is right in these pictures) to taunt Clymene into an unwise use of a laser battery. Fortunately my laser battery was scheduled to be loaded on round 2... We both had our master crew up though. 

Unfortunately something went wrong with the cropping in this picture but you can see where Clymene blocked a hit with Her rear extra armour 4 and took the initiative with Her extra armour 2. As planned Clymene managed to take out a number of buildings with Her macro gun and laser battery, while Eurybia took the opportunity to smash up the exposed blue habitats before stomping into the middle and punching Clymene as a sort of erstwhile greeting. 

Now that Clymene has the initiative a snap-shot with the missile pod exposed Eurybia's right flank, and I decide that Clymene should take a crack at kiting Eurybia as it looked like She was laying up for something nasty. 

This is identifiably where my over-confidence took over, and exposed me to the knock-out coming up in round 8. I stepped Clymene back and around to mash a yellow habitat with my back-left shield, exposing the area. That Clymene's rear armour was also exposed didn't seem to be a big problem. My opponent spotted a yellow building in tile 16, I spotted a taller blue building in tile 91, and I take back the initiative when my opponent tries to take it again. At least I am aware at this point that my choice is to cede the initiative to my opponent or to spend a card trying to hand onto it. As it would happen this was the wrong choice for pretty much the reasons you would think: giving up the defense for offensive oomf left Clymene knocked out!

Following my impulse to go on the offensive I chased Eurybia with first my laser battery and then my macro gun, before lifting up Clymene's skirts and heading over to get a clear shot on the yellow building Eurybia had detected. Instead of using the full five cogs I brought Clymene to a halt in tile 53. I was ahead on buildings, and shields, but I didn't need to get close to the edge of the board or make things easy for my opponent. I lost the initiative, but I was always going to (4 extra armour and sensor for 5 scans, while my opponent had 5 extra armour, sensor, and sagacity for 7 scans) and perhaps had hung onto it for too long. 

Of course, things had started changing last round, but I hadn't marked it. My opponent had switched gears, and decided to close. I was fine with that, because I had a plan, some juicy targets, and decent shield coverage. As it turns out I came out behind on habitats, trading two yellow for three blue, and needing to work the defense. Rather than using Eurybia's coolant to get those cards super-cooled and back in hand, instead emergency venting was used to make my attempts at fighting back more costly. 

Now Eurybia piles on the pain, using crew and wings to draw back and push Clymene up against an anvil of buildings in tiles 37, 47, and 36. Not a huge problem, but I declined to defend Clymene more actively because I wanted to hold back defense, and it was seeping through my sensor feeds that Clymene's defenses were being worn down. Clymene fought back with a kick and tried to get the missile pod into position for a spread to crack Eurybia's armour, but of course Eurybia has the initiative and activates two crew members and then the second wing, but bringing Her crashing down on Clymene. My choice was taking two damage on the weapon I wanted to use, or taking two damage each on Clymene's left arm, back right and back, breaking armour and exposing my laser battery to attack. Taking two damage instead of six seemed rational at the time. 

As I struggle with Clymene trying to get a good gouge in on Eurybia, and can't because She is knocked out of position. A hard punch destroys Her damaged deflector system and it's not a problem because it's only 1VP and I am trying to set up for a crushing reply in round 9. A sharp kick sends Clymene into the blue-topped buiding in tile 36, destroying Clymene's heavily damaged missile pod and netting my opponent 3VPs.  And then Eurybia rips off the tatters of Clymene's back armour with Her pincer, meeting the 5VP threshold for a knock-out! Maybe it was the pincer, the arm, and then the kick from the leg? Needless to say Clymene was out of gas, and I wasn't expecting that despite all the evidence otherwise. 

Which is to say that I was doing pretty well that game. I finished ahead on habitats, and for the most part of it I was leading in damage done to my opponent's Titan. I was falling behind somewhat on defense though, and to a degree it's probably important to understand how I needed to weigh position, amount of damage, and what was likely to hit Clymene next. Certainly it was not a good idea to give away that shield token for the yellow habitat in round 4, as that opened up Clymene just enough to cinch the knock-out in round 8! From the other side of the table, so to speak, it occurs to me that you want to try and get your opponent to waste their extra armour cards, disrupt their ability to attack back, and manoeuvre them into a position where the choices get both harder and less obvious...

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. 

Titanomachina: Carcination Concerns

Eurybia Configuration 6 is up on Tabletop Simulator and we attempted a debut match between Eurybia and Eos, with inconclusive results. Certainly gracious Eurybia won by a decisive ring-out against rapacious Eos, but in the main because I played to Eurybia's strengths rather than Eos'. I should have moved Eos to the middle of the board and kept Them there. Instead Eos movied in close and was overwhelmed by Eurybia's limbs and coolant systems. Mounting twice as many ranged weapons and possessing capacitors, Eos was equipped for a stand-off game of tearing up the board or crippling Eurybia. 

Instead time and power was used up delivering a tentative and half-hearted barrage of lasers and gunfire that Eurybia was able to soak. Leaving Eos in a weak position close to both Eurybia and the board edge just about threw the game. The ring-out was carried out against an exhausted Eos by a Eurybia sporting a massive card advantage having super-cooled four arms and legs in round 3.

 

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: Clymene Reconfiguration

Clymene's secondary configuration kicked my ass up and down the board last week, but that is not why I am adjusting it. It turns out that I had put the wrong cards in the deck, regular arms and plantigrade legs, but the card was big arms and digitigrade legs. My opponent, having used Clymene to thrash me, also commented that the loss of Clymene primary's second sponson was also kind of rough in terms of enjoyable game-play. The question was, what to take out to install that second sponson? I eventually settled on the Extra Armour 4 system because while the loss is substantial, the sponsons can also be used to block attacks, and it frees up a space in the back target area for the sponson. It also makes some sense out of having one sponson supporting Her torso and the other supporting the plasma driver. 

What does this do? It might make Clymene slightly more agile, being able to use a sponson for each stabilizer, and gives the plasma driver more opportunities to combine fire with the vulcan gun. Perhaps the digitigrade legs and big arms will slow Clymene down, but frankly Her main mode of moving is jumping with the stabilizers and then the arms and legs flailing to turn Her around and smash things. Putting in the plasma siphon as Her specialist system should enable Clymene some more agility just to bring down the cost of firing it which then can increase both damage and mobility as the system's recoil comes into play. Extra bracing remains a strong competitor. 

 

Titanomachina: Specialized Systems Addition

Fanatical cogs may notice that there is no specialized system for plasma weapons, while there is for guns, lasers, pods, and range 1 attacks. That is because I was not really sure how to do it. Given some of the development pains plasma capacitors went through, I know what it shouldn't do even if the logic for it is extensible from core rules. Repeat a system or load more systems shouldn't be done. But what about charging a system? Coolant and capacitors already draw cards back from the player's hand. 

The first draft of the plasma siphon will have a new action, giving two charge per cog to subsequent systems with 'plasma' keyworded. Maybe call it  a Super-Charge action. For a reaction it shares Emergency Venting with coolant and stabilizers. 

Now, I think as something experimental, an action that lets a player pre-pay an action at the cost of a snap shot is more like a crew member adding cogs to a subsequent system. Capacitors remain necessary for a first strike capability, and broader utility. So it satisfies the specialist system design of helping one sort of weapon change up its  behaviour, and perhaps tune it up.

Titanomachina: Clymene goes Two for Two

The new girl, Clymene, got Her secondary configuration tested in production last night and the reviews were mixed, with is not to say the results were mixed. Clymene managed to ring-out Styxx's secondary configuration on round 3, and then ring-out Eurybia's secondary configuration in round 9. Was She working as designed? Well, Clymene's secondary configuration is vibe-architected, rather than carefully designed around the numbers. Her rear-mounted plasma driver was never used, and the number of sponsons in this configuration were held to be insufficient, leaving Her vulnerable to a flank assault. Her pincer, despite winning Her the second game, was deemed a liability with a comment something like "I say this now, but watch me win with this." In the writing business we call this 'foreshadowing,' and perhaps Clymene's apparent faults lulled me into a false sense of security. 

Here it might be useful to distinguish between the purpose of the game and the goal of the game. The goal of the game is to win, to do whatever you can within the framework of the rules to achieve that win-condition. The purpose of the game is to have fun, and to enjoy the experience (trying to win while your opponent is also trying to win), and so while Clymene's secondary configuration certainly seems to be able to push when it counts, maybe there are useability changes that will make Her more enjoyable to utilize on the board. By contrast Styxx is a sluggish, cantankerous reptile that rewards a slow and careful build-up, which I did not do in the first game. I had set up too aggressively, having drawn the Sagacious personality vs Clymene's Pugnacious, when I think perhaps that I should have hid Styxx in a corner with an escape combo (initiate crew, turret, thrusters) loaded for the first round. The fun of using Styxx is carefully building up power for mid to late-game press. Letting Clymene get in close and early was a fatal mistake. 

Conversely, Eurybia is an oppressive monster that can let a player get carried away. Having chased Clymene all over the board, I had hoped that Her underwhelming offense would continue, and apparently not completely learning from the first game got between Clyeme and the board-edge. Not only that, but I cleared some of the habitats that would have prevented a ring-out by catching Eurybia as She was pushed into them. All I can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the game. 

But about Clymene: The stabilizers were a clutch system, enabling the Titan to make quick, opportunistic jumps to evade Eurybia and close with Styxx. Choosing the extra bracing specialist system enabled Clymene's player to grapple Styxx into a position with a leg that allowed Her to be pushed off the board by sustained vulcan gun fire. It also enabled Clymene to punch Eurybia off the table with the pincer. The lack of a system like coolant or capacitors reduced Her rate of activity, but careful (perhaps miserly) hoarding of cards meant that Her player was able to exploit card advantage perfectly. In fact, to a degree where I'm not sure I like what that means for game-play. Certainly, hoarding cards can lead to a satisfying explosion of activity when players have completely filled their hands with their cards, but at least in the two-player game it can lead to somewhat static game-play. I don't yet have an answer to this, and perhaps it doesn't need one, but I'm not sure it improves the game. Nonetheless, the consensus seemed to be that giving up one of Clymene primary's sponsons was perhaps a design mis-step; the question being what to give up to retain it?  

We had used Rhea's yellow habitats for Clymene this game, since the board was pre-set and I am only now realizing that the game can now support 2-6 players with the addition of two new Titans (shapes) and colours. I cleared out Eos and Rhea's spare figures, cards, and tokens. As you can see I left a 'danger zone' behind Styxx to discourage a mugging, but I have have done better to deploy to tile 33, that middle L-bend road between the two rows of buildings on the bottom-right there. 

A lazy way to start off, perhaps, but Styxx needed to start clearing yellow habitats and I had a crack at giving up the initiative so that I could react to any incoming moves Clymene made. Notice, of course, that Clymene is biding Her time. 

Clymene makes Her move after Styxx swings Herself around to tile 45, facing Clymene, who jumps over Her using stabilizers deftly operated by Her master crew. This brings Her to tile 44, putting Styxx directly astern and green habitats directly ahead. Styxx comes about and along-side with an inadvisable kick that Clymene rolls with, blocking with frontal armour, and bringing the plasma driver about to threaten Styxx. Styxx is royally borked if She gets shocked, let alone two or three times, so this may have panicked me. 

It's time for Styxx to get the claw into play and I play the turret to enable Styxx to twist and reach with it. At the same time Clymene is also twisting into position using Her lone sponson, operated by an initiate crew member deployed last round. The claw drags the plasma driver out of position, but that wasn't the threat as Clymene dances away to tile 65 to jab Styxx in the back left  (deflectors) while She is recuperating power with Her plasma capacitor and then seizing the initiative. Styxx has prepared to hammer Clymene with an arm, but having seized the initiative Clymene can dodge out of Styxx's arc, even enhanced by the turret, leaving Styxx to save the arm for later and concentrate the adherent crew on finding a tall green building in tile 97 before gassing out. Clymene has plenty of power though, and grapples Styxx from tile 54 to tile 53, and then opens up with Her vulcan gun to push the Titan off the board while destroying the lightly damaged deflectors... Despite the building detection, this ring-out for +5 victory points means the game ends 25-23 for Clymene!

Now it looks like I buggered up saving the screenshot for game 2's deployment and round 1, but Clymene got pugnacious and Eurybia got gracious, and Clymene deployed to tile 83 facing north (the bottom of the image) and Eurybia set up directly beside Her in 84. Once again I was green and my opponent was yellow for the initiative track and habitats. Eurybia proceeded to stab Clymene in the leg with a laser blade. As Clymene jumped away, Eurybia stomped after Her using both legs, slowing to stomp nearby yellow habitats, both of which (and the laser blade) were super-cooled by an adherent-operated coolant system. Having come around again, in round 2 Eurybia had a crack at taking the initiative, and pushing forward on freshly super-cooled limbs She is foiled by Clymene scanning with Her back armour's passive sensors to take it back. Seeing an opportunity She taps Clymene into the yellow habitat topping tile 43 with Her vulcan gun. Then the gun and legs and sensor are all super-cooled again thanks to Her master crew and Her second coolant system!

Clymene backs up behind the safety of the mixed yellow and green buildings in tile 63, but no problem as Clymene walks forward and turns to bring Her super-cooled vulcan gun to bear even though the buildings block line of sight. Clymene is biding Her time though and detects a tall yellow building in tile 16, bringing the score to even.

Now here is perhaps where over-confidence got me, or perhaps it was seeing Clymene in a vulnerable state as She headed north, smashing green habitats into flinders. I closed the gap and didn't really pay attention to how I was falling behind on power, spending more cards for less effect, and not gaining the initiative when I tried for it. 

Realizing what had happened I tried to stall for time, but it turned out that my opponent had similar ideas and so we sat their charging. I believe the scan action associated with that extra armour piece was also rebuffed, since the initiative didn't change and I'm only counting four played cards across the table here. 

With our respective hands full, I tried to push Eurybia to somehow mangle Clymene and my opponent made good use of limbs and stabilizers to duck, dodge, dive, and dodge. Clymene ended up by that tall yellow building though, so I was confident that if Eurybia stepped back around around I would have a target for the super-cooled vulcan gun regardless. 

Not unexpectedly, as I moved the vulcan gun into position to fire my opponent activated their master crew to operate a leg, and to move south-west kicking a green habitat to begin the move and then reversed course when I spun Eurybia around to stab Clymene again! In the hustle and bustle Clymene had detected a yellow building on the very edge of the battlefield, surrounded by yellow and blue habitats...

Eurybia was running behind on habitats though, and after that, and knowing Eurybia's coolant systems were ready to re-load, I collided Eurybia with the yellow habitats in tile 63 and then moved to stab the yellow building Clymene had detected in tile 31 earlier. Clymene takes the opportunity to try and stomp Eurybia face-first through the remaining green habitats, and ends up destroying Eurybia's leg armour as She blocks with it. I am well ahead on habitats though, and decide to see if Eurybia can't hang in there. I fail to notice again, it seems, that Clymene is holding back for a big round 9 push. 

Literally a push, as both Titans twist on their sponsons to reach targets and I find Eurybia no longer able to claw anything interesting, and scrabbling to get the purple dinosaur off Her back. A quick glance up the table detects a tall green building, but even with that, the rain of blows and body-slams from Clymene pushes Eurybia through the last green habitat and off the building for another ring-out! Eurybia only has 19 victory points, while Clymen finishes off with 22! Another victory for Clymene! If Eurybia had a face She might appear as surprised as myself. 

Of course, a common element in both of these games was myself, and I do tend to over-extend my Titans. Likewise, I do tend to forget the over-arching strategy when I find myself in the lead: I should have played more defensively and stayed out of the danger zone by the edge of the board. That shouldn't take away from my opponent's work in pulling out the second ring-out of the night with an unfamiliar Titan. Pretty impressive as I think that ring-out is the coolest way to end and win the game. Given it was this configuration's debut battle, and the Titan was perhaps not user-friendly, all the more so. 

The point about making this configuration more fun to play with stands, as winning is definitely not the only thing. I certainly enjoyed playing Eurybia as She stomped around gouting clouds of coolant and chasing Clymene. There's just something about starting a game off by shanking someone in the leg. Still...

Glory to Clymene and glory to my opponent! Next stop, Clymene's tertiary configuration...