Titanomachina: Mirror-match Mayhem Encoded

Habitat Coordinates (xy - building randomizer colour)

• 13 - 3G 7P 8Y | 14 - 3G 4Y | 16 - 1Y 2P | 19 - 3G 7G 8G
• 22 - 3B 4G 7Y 8P | 28 - 3B 4Y 7Y 8B
• 31 - 3G 4B | 34 - 3B 4P 7Y 8B | 36 - 1P 2B 5B 6Y | 37 - 3G 4P 7P 8G
• 41 - 7B 8G | 43 - 3P 4G 7G 8Y | 47 - 1G 2P 5Y 6G | 49 - 5Y 6P
• 61 - 1Y 2P | 63 - 1B 2Y 5Y 6G | 67 - 3P 4Y 7G 8B | 69 - 3Y
• 73 - 3G 4Y 7P 8B | 74 - 1P 2B 5G 6P | 76 - 3Y 4G 7B 8P | 79 - 3G 7G 8Y
• 82 - 3B 4G 7Y 8P | 88 - 3B 4P 7Y 8G 
• 91 - 3Y 7G | 94 - 5Y 6P | 96 - 7G 8B | 97 - 3P 4 B  

Titan Deployment (Colour, Tile, Heading, Shield Configuration using Titan randomizer & Shield Tokens)

B57E 12 21 32 41 51 61 71 81

P32S 12 21 32 41 51 61 71 81

Round 1

B - Pass

P - Plantigrade Leg 2 - Attack 31 - 4B Walk 33S

B - Deflectors 1 inactive

P - Pass

Round 2 

B - Deflectors 1 inactive

P - Shields 2 inactive

B - Capacitor 2 inactive

P - Sensor 3 inactive

B - Pass

P - Adherent 2 Operate

B - Deflectors 2 Raise Shields (rotate shield harmonics) 51 & 61 to 83

P - Pass

Round 3 

B - Sponson 1 Twist

P - Sensor 3 Detect Building 61 7P 8P 15P

B - Jump Jets 2 Jump to 34N

P - Capacitor - Full Power

B - Laser Blade Attack to P8 (Block to P2), -1 Shield Extra Armour 3 light damage Initiate Crew 2 heavy damage

P - Sponson 1 Twist

B - Capacitor 1 Full Power

P - Jump Jets 2 Jump to 66S

B - Capacitor 2 Full Power

P - Initiate Crew 1 Operate

B - Plantigrade Leg 1 Walk east 25S

P - Plantigrade Leg 1 Walk west 56N

B - Master Crew Operate

P - Pass

B - Pass

P - Arm 1 inactive

Round 4

B - Rocket Pod 1 Attack Building 61 7P 8P 15P and 2P via High Explosive

P - Master Crew 2 Operate

B - Adherent Crew 2 Operate

P - Gracious Repair Extra Armour 3 Initiate Crew 2 restored to no damage

B - Arm 1 inactive

P - Arm 1 Walk 55N

B - Plasma Shotgun 2 Attack to P3 Plasma Shotgun -3 shields 2 heavy damage

P - Plasma Shotgun 2 inactive

B - Pass

P - Rocket Pod 1 inactive

B - Arm 2 Attack 34 4P

P - Extra Armour 2 Scan (seize initiative)

P - Jump Jets 1 inactive

B - Plantigrade Leg 2 Walk 26SW

P - Pass

B - Extra Armour 3 inactive

Round 5

P - Rocket Pod 1 Attack 43 - 8B 3B & 34 - 4G via High Explosive 

B - Pass

P - Plantigrade Leg 2 Walk 56N Attack 67 - 8B

B - Jump Jets 1 inactive

P - Laser Blade 1 Attack 36 - 2B

B - Deflectors 1 inactive

P - Capacitor 1 Full Power

B - Capacitor inactive

P - Adherent Crew Operate

B - Arm 1 Attack 37 - 4P

P - Plantigrade Leg 1 Walk 35NE

B - Sponson inactive

P - Pass

B - Extra Armour 3 inactive

Round 6

P - Sponson 1 inactive

B - Laser Blade 1 inactive

P - Arm 2 Walk 24E

B - Pass

P -  Pass

B - Deflectors 2 inactive

Round 7

P - Sponson 1 Twist

B - Plasma Shotgun 2 Attack P3 (Block to P6), Extra Armour 41

P - Initiate Crew 2 Operate

B - Sponson Twist

P - Sensor 3 Detect Building 19 - 1P 2P

B - Plantigrade Leg 2 Walk 25 Attack P3 (Block to P4)

P - Arm 1 Walk to 15NE

B - Initiate Crew 3 Operate

P - Pass

B - Plantigrade Leg 1 Walk 25NE Attack P3 (Block to P2)

P - Jump Jets 2 Jump 18NE

B - Master Crew 1 Operate

P - Jump Jets 1 inactive

B - Extra Armour 3 inactive

B - Pass

Round 8 

P - Plantigrade Leg 1 Walk 27SE

B - Arm 2 Walk 26E Attack P6 (Extra Armour 4 destroyed) 27S

P - Jump Jets 1 Jump 57S

B - Extra Armour 3 Scan (seize initiative)

B - Initiate Crew 4 Operate

P - Pass

B - Arm 2 Walk 27S

P - Initiate Crew 1 inactive

B - Adherent Crew 2 Operate

B - Jump Jets 2 Jump 57S Attack P6 (Sponson 1 destroyed) P67S 3P 4Y 7G destroyed

B - Capacitor 2 Full Power

B - Laser Blade 1 Attack P6 (Capacitor light damage, Master Crew heavy damage)

B - Jump Jets 1 Jump 67S Attack P6 (Capacitor destroyed, Master Crew destroyed, Knock-Out)

Titanomachina Habitat Cards

How to get a game out of a pack of Titanomachina cards, from a 55-card deck.

• 22x Titan system cards 
• 1x Titan Dashboard card
• 1x Titan Damage card
• 1x Titan Shield card
• 1x Personality card
• 1x Pass card
• 25x Habitat cards per Titan
• 1x Reference card 
• 1x Board location card
• 1x Round tracker card

One habitat card per Titan is used in the initiative stack. Habitat cards equal to the Titan's habitat number on their dashboard cards are shuffled together into a Habitat deck. The remainder are kept by the players for detection and scoring.

Titan in 51N (Tile 51 heading North) addresses a building target in 34, but first 43 gets populated to check LOS. Each player can draw up to four cards, in the order on the locator card. Players can pass. When both players pass, they check line of sight. If the acting player doesn't have line of sight, they can contact the thing that is blocking their line of sight. Passing leaves a position open.

Addressing can be Attack or Detect Titan/Habitat. Destroyed habitats go to the Titan's habitat reserve, to go back on the board when Detect Habitat is played. 

Without a board players can write down positions on a sheet of paper with at least 30 lines using the coordinates on the card. 36-B1G2B3Y4 would be a row of habitats diagonal across tile 36 with blue on the bottom and green and yellow on top. G7Y8 would be a pineapple.

So odds (1, 3, 5, 7) would be ground level and north-west, north-east, south-east, and south-west, and evens would be second level. Bigger numbers like 11 would be the third level of the north-east of that foundation tile.

The initiative stack is kept by the round tracker card, which has 1, 2, 3, 4 on one side, and 5, 6, 7, 8 on another. That card is rotated 90 degrees relative to the initiative stack. 

The upshot being that players can play Titanomachina without a board and miniatures. Whether they would want to is another question. However, this also means the game as a product can be reduced to a minimum viable product of two decks of 55 cards per player, plus shield tokens, box, rules booklet, and a dry-erase pen. It also expands seamlessly when the board, figurines, and habitat blocks are added.

Titanomachina: Be Cool Eurybia, Be Cool

As mentioned elsewhere, I've been thinking of changing the Super-cooling action of the Coolant system to allow players to take face-up cards back to their hands. So far it's working pretty well. Here gracious Styxx fought rapacious Eurybia to a 27-26 victory, eking it out due to what was probably the one time I remembered that I could bottle someone with Styxx's claw. 

If you're not aware, the Claw has the Grapple trait, meaning that when you attack someone with it, aiming at the outer-targets will drag the target Titan stack toward the attacker, and aiming at the middle will enable the Titan to forcibly move the target Titan into an adjacent square, usually in order to force a collision. I realized that (a) turning Eurybia's Laser Blade and Claw towards Styxx wasn't healthy for Styxx, and that (b) a yellow habitat existed within range of both the Claw and the target, enabling Styxx to not only destroy that habitat and lower Eurybia's habitat score by 1 point, but convert the Grapple temporarily into an Impact, turning Eurybia away. The upshot was not only doing damage to both Eurybia and Her habitats, but also mitigating Her position. Early in the game Eurybia advanced to Styxx rapidly because She was armed with a Vulcan Gun, Laser Blade, and Claw, weapons with ranges of 3, 2, and 1 respectively. Pulling Eurybia into position on all three was also a bad idea. So a spot of luck for Styxx then.  

An interesting comment was made about the Emergency Venting reaction in comparison with the Block reaction: "This one [Emergency Venting] will inconvenience someone, while this one [Block] will save your life." Which is interesting because my opponent cleverly used a Coolant system to get a leg cooled down and re-loaded into his hand, and then kicked off Styxx's damaged Gun Battery before the game ended on a time-out. That +2VP addition saw Eurybia's score almost close the gap before the game ended. I'm okay with Emergency Venting being a weaker option compared to Block, so long as the math works for Super-Cooling. 

I do need to order some new prints of Eurybia, not only the capture the configurations that I've devised with additional legs, but also to clarify what direction Eurybia is facing in, as the pose seen in these pictures is cool, but doesn't really have all three weapons pointing in a clear and unified direction. Likewise, I should order the latest version of the board so that I don't need to lay out these prototype tiles on top of one of the original prototype boarded, to make set-up faster and easier. But that's just stuff to make things easier to set up and prettier to photograph rather than to change game-play.

Something I do want to do to change game-play somewhat is to update how the Sensor systems Detect Titan, which is to say that one cog should let a Titan 'see' (or ignore line-of-sight interruption) through a single building. This would do two things, the first to make line-of-sight a bit more granular, with seeing through more buildings commensurate with the skill of the crew member operating the system system, and in doing so enable the second which is the introduction of systems that can reduce this line-of-sight bonus for some Titan cloaking and stealth. 

 

Titanomachina: Making Coolant Cooler via Test Match

As recent blog posts make suggest, I've been worried the Coolant system has been insufficiently cool. When adding to Titanomachina my instinct has been to introduce elements somewhat conservatively with the notion that it is better to make something better than to pare it back when it turns out to be over-powered. Needless to say that was not a problem with the Coolant system as the ability to deactivate systems had some weird knock-on effects in terms of card-play. Super-cooling a system to play it next turn screwed with tempo, essentially stealing a normally cooled system from its loading back to hand three rounds after it was played. It was a disappointing system for what I had imagined.

Instead, we tried playing Eurybia Quaternary vs Styxx Tertiary because both of them mount Coolant systems and Styxx mounted a Capacitor for comparative purposes. In this case we played it that Coolant systems just return a card to the players hand for every cog available when activated. This reflected the Capacitor system in that it returns cards to player's hands, except that Capacitors only returned cards that had been played face-down to activate other systems at a 2:1 ratio. This results in a savings in system charge, at the cost of time spent on the action. Coolant systems would return face-up at a 1:2 ratio, paying a steeper opportunity cost, but also a savings in system charge. What that means is that Eurybia with two Coolant systems was not giving up card advantage easily, keeping pace with Styxx and eventually grinding a win. 

Perhaps interestingly there was no particular point at which I thought to myself (well, that's a mistake I should learn from), and Styxx maintained the initiative throughout the fight, which was probably pretty good. I think I may have under-utilized the Rapacious personality given how I lost significantly on habitats, but I think I came pretty close to a knock-out of Eurybia at times. Eurybia definitely benefitted from the Pugnacious personality, using that to avoid a one-two punch from Styxx's weapons. 

From a design perspective, I think I might try it again against a Titan without coolant systems to see what advantage it confers, but for Styxx I just about shut down the Coolant system, Thrusters, and Deflectors to hound Eurybia around the board, and then use the Coolant system to keep the plasma shotgun in play in the late game. It's a handy trick rather than a work-horse system, it seems. 

Please note it seems I forgot to get a screen-shot of round 4, which unfortunately breaks the spiral into the middle of the board that seems to have resulted from game play. 

Round 4 is missing. Oops.

Titanomachina: Coolant Systems (The Super-Cooling Action)

Something I have noticed is that the Coolant system's numbers are kind of funky, leading to it feeling wrong somehow. I've encountered this sort of thing before and it's why I consider development to be so important, because I think I got the Capacitor system's Full Power action right. 

Currently the Super-Cooling action enables a Titan to de-activate a system card for each cog it has available after crew is added and damage subtracted. This costs one other card to charge it to activation. This allows a Titan bring a card it activated back to its hand at the end of the round, available to play again next round. 

Now, a quirk of Titanomachina is that some systems have a direct effect on the score, such as weapons and limbs doing damage, or sensors detecting buildings. Other systems have an indirect effect, such as blocking an attack, moving the Titan, raising shields to absorb damage, and blocking to de-optimise attacks. These indirect systems need to be well above the curve in their effects to justify players activating them instead of using them to power weapons, limbs, and sensors. The capacitor system accomplishes this by reducing the cost of one system by one card. Crew accomplish this by increasing cogs or decreasing damage, with the master crew giving three cogs for two cards, above the curve. 

So what? Well, paying two cards, including the Coolant system itself, to deactivate one system is giving up two cards to give up another two cards. It's certainly not forcing your opponent to spend an extra charge card like the Emergency Venting does to Range 1 attacks, which works pretty nicely. There's really no motivation not to classify these as defensive systems like shields or armour, than support systems like crew or capacitors. Or at least in terms of giving players another live option in their hand. 

I need to either increase the cogs of the Coolant system, decrease its charge cost, or change the way the Super-Cooling action works from doubling a system's availability over two rounds for the cost of two other cards face-down to something else. Something, of course, compatible with the other support systems. Something that allows the card to cost one cog for two cards. 

What if the player just drew the card back to hand like the capacitor system does? I think that might justify the usurious cost. There's a marginal gain by which you can play the recovered card to block or simply leave in-active. It acts something like a swap then, putting the card back in hand as a preferred choice. 

That's compared with, say, making it a charge 0 system, increasing its cogs to 2, or both. I think immediately returning a card to hand rather than merely deactivating it jives with the established capacitor mechanic, and in a similar way because now the system can be used to charge other systems, as well as be activated (or simply played unactivated), for a tempo bonus.  

Titan Hanger Update: Efficiency Be Damn'd

 

I've added several figurines, three yellow, four green, three blue, and three pink to the Titan Hanger DLC for Tabletop Simulator (TTS). I haven't added their dashboards yet, but in some cases they are just like existing configurations of Titans with just a weapon swap, so I'm not panicking. It's playable, but obviously I need to put up their own dashboards and decks for players that just want to swap out easily. 

Some are not so easily playable. In the case of the configuration of Styxx that leaves off its turret-mounted weapon system and mounts two claws, I think that just swapping in a capacitor should make this configuration perhaps barely playable. I am uncertain quite how this would play out, and I think the best way would be to start in the middle, even in a three or four player game. This means the other players either need to set up in the middle as well, within range of the claws, or away in the danger zone in the outer three squares of the board. Sounds pretty good eh?

Well, there is a configuration of Rhea with two gun batteries and two hands, but also with big arms and digitigrade legs. Literally has more armour, more weapons, and only missing the jump from the thrusters. There is a configuration of Styxx with two turrets, two hands, coolant and capacitor systems, two thrusters, two legs, three extra armour, three sensors, four crew, and two deflectors. Maybe a pair of arms would off-set the higher rate of action.

There is also the two pink configurations, one with all lasers and one with all plasma. I'm actually pretty curious to see how those would fair against Rhea Quaternary with Her guns. I've tried with the all-plasma configuration, and while I lost in that particular encounter, I feel like a path to victory exists there. But lasers right? 

Would that even be fun? 

Give up shields to fire both laser batteries, and the capacitor to fire both macro lasers in conjunction with the fore and aft extra armour. That leaves arms, sponsons for powering digitigrade legs, sensors using junior crew, leaving leg armour to do the majority of defensive work blocking incoming fire. That leaves two senior crew, one junior crew, and the personality. That's for senior crew bonuses. First on the laser batteries, then on the macro lasers once shields are shredded.

Three cog 2 armour piercing shots and one cog 1 armour piercing shot is a knock-out on an unshielded Titan. That's ignoring any work the arms and legs can do. It's also going to need to coordinate those with the sensor for a very deliberate and expensive rounds (arm or sponson, sensor, senior crew, laser battery for 7 cards), probably alternating with a leg activation. 

Two Legs Good, Four Legs Better

Making Eurybia into a centaur. As with some extreme configurations you have to give something up. Two plantigrade legs at the cost of the rear armour (Extra Armour 4) and a coolant system. It also has a rear sponson mount, for a rear-facing weapon, because it is a centaur.

Weapons-wise I think two gun batteries and a laser blade in the rear mount. Or perhaps two claws and a laser battery. Either way, the plan is to deploy in the middle of the board and work the danger zone with legs and range 4 weapons. In terms of opponents this is figuring Rhea Quaternary's guns probably want to occupy the same space. 

Six cards for Limbs, four cards for crew, three cards for weapons, two for shields, one each for sponson, sensor, and coolant, four extra armour. Full crew and weapons requires 10 cards, leaving sponson, sensor, coolant, and three extra armour. One extra armour if the last two are activated. 

The coolant proposition is to replace two actions with a repeated action next round. It's not great until that repeated action is above the curve, 1 charge to three cogs like firing a macro gun, or operating with master crew. Because it levels out that 1:1 ratio of cards spent to cogs used. 

In which case a laser is the perfect weapon to shoot twice. The laser blade hits hard for that above-the-curve effect, while the laser battery might be more effective in volume where the first shot might soften shields and waste defensive action. A claw that can plow another Titan through a large building would also be on the menu. That or just keep the master crew running cool.

Titanomachina: Eos vs Eurybia

Last week I played a game of Titanomachina that convinced me that I needed to separate out the extra content from the Tabletop Simulator DLC. So I put the extra Titans, usually arranged in a corner, into their own DLC, and likewise removed the Formicide infantry expansion to its own DLC. At some point soonish I'll make them both public-ish. Why haven't I done so sooner? The hand of moldy old Babylonian Nergal.

All that aside, what happened? Well, I was crewing Eos Senary against Eurybia Primary and it seemed like I was winning, despite being behind on buildings, and prepared to do a ring-out/knock-out combo when the connection crapped out and could not be restored. Eos was gracious, and it turns out that the Senary Configuration is brutal with those dual capacitors behind it. Which is funny, in a sense because Eurybia Primary gives up the plasma shotgun for a vulcan gun, and my opponent noted that he should have used the coolant systems to maximize the crew operation so it should have been Eurybia bulling Eos around the board.

The fact that the habitats are 25mm cubes in their meat-space prototype should alert players to the fact that Titanomachina is a game of inches. I set up Eos in a dead-zone off Eurybia's starboard prow for an aggressive start, utilizing Eos' gracious personality against Eurybia's sagacious personality. I wouldn't have the initiative, but it made my opponent decide whether they were going to turn and fight, or attempt to lead me on a chase. But first, junior crew got into position...

A chase it was, but despite equivalent foot-speeds, Eos' jump jets gave Them a distinct advantage to close, and being in the reaction position let me push Eos in. It's worth noting that half the game here was not merely the promise of damage, but also the promise of card-advantage. Remember, I had a plasma shotgun, and even if it didn't do interesting damage, it was still going to shock Eurybia and force a discard. What I gave up could be equalized.

Then it starts, sponsons activate and it's go-time, I swing Eos around the corner of a row of buildings and as my opponent hammers some blue habitats into mulch I get a flight of rockets into Eurybia, destroying Her back armour and shields as She ducks. While it doesn't compare to the habitats Eos has lost, it cracks open Eurybia's defenses in a satisfying way. The rocket pod is, after all, the least of Eos' weapons.

Now because Eurybia is retreating along the edge of the board, I'm able to step backwards and re-address, and slightly against my better judgment (and making sure I have an avenue of retreat in case I need to fire Eos' jump jets) try for taking the initiative so my opponent can't dodge. Since that takes Eos through a yellow habitat all the better. That doesn't really work, but the intent is also to try and get my opponent spending precious power on an initiative Eurybia may not need either. Then a friendly blast of plasma to help equalize that card advantage.

Now it's Eurybia's turn to strike back, reversing course and rampaging back down that winding avenue and Eos fires those jets to make sure Eurybia's laser blade isn't buried in Their back. They brake on a yellow habitat, and a capacitor fires to keep them in the fight as Eurybia vents coolant to signal She's not slowing down.

Eos now takes something of a breath as junior crew scramble to stations inside Them, and swings back around to stalk after Eurybia. Eurybia hasn't stopped moving and presses the lead on surviving habitats detected on the board. It's a strong defensive move because if Eurybia is knocked out, my opponent may still win from an insurmountable lead; the damage to Eos' population may be too much. The upshot is that Eos has to be very careful to avoid triggering a knock-out before the damage done to Eurybia outweighs the damage to Eos' habitats. So a careful application of rockets should offset Eurybia's attempt to recover shields over Her remaining armour.

Eos has a good firing firing solution, blasting away with the plasma shotgun, looking to spread the damage and clear Eurybia's shields before executing the knock-out with enough damage to offset Eurybia's 5 VP lead. Her systems are locked and loaded, and even junior crew can make a laser blade really hurt. Yet Eurybia is building up to something, something that might see Her scrap enough shields and armour off of Eos to stay in the game, but She's backed into a corner. However, the game ends on a time-out, as something about the DLC (possibly all the stuff that makes loading it kind of slow) times out the connection. The decision of the Hecatoncheires orbital installations cannot be questioned...

Could I have won? I think so. Would I have won? In the past week I've been pretty confident that I could have forced a knock-out/ring-out with the cards I had in hand and the cards I recall from rounds 4 and 5. Keeping track of games by taking screenshots at each round really helps, since it acts like something of a study aid. 

There is also, to a degree, an opponent style, plus the commitment to a direction. Eurybia lacks jump jets for speed and using a coolant system to super-cool a limb gives you a walk for the same cost, with some trickier timing. 

Timing is everything. The game is set up so that your ability to react to your opponent offsets their ability to react to you. Generally speaking it is perhaps an open question as to whether having the initiative is always good. I think I was doing very well despite being behind in the habitats. After all, a knock-out/ring-out. My opponent pointed out the only system I could score with the laser blade would be the arm mounting the vulcan gun, which is a fair point, with other systems triggering a knock-out loss for me. If my opponent did nothing else to Eos in the meantime, despite the master operating initiate crew, it would be a tie then. 

Yes, my hope is pinned on the Eos Senary Configuration's smooth capacitor action to just hammer Eurybia. I don't think I played a deflector system in the entire game. I think I recall having card advantage at that point, 

Which leads me to a second point as Nergal's hand lifts from my chest, that now I'm torn between taking Eos in my next game or taking Eurybia's Tertiary Configuration, with a gun battery, laser battery, and hand. Which is funny because the first and third choice would be Eos Primary and Eos Tertiary. 

Titanomachina: Myrmidiae Formicide

I've been chewing on the results of the last Myrmidon ("Myrmidiae Formicide") games I've played and overall it's not great. The dice, the somewhat vague mapping of Titan end-games to Ant end-games, the shape of the game isn't satisfactory. It's not the kind of thing where fine-tuning some values is going to work. I think that a better place to restart development of the Myrmidon Mega-Ants would be back to the deterministic structure of Titanomachina, so no dice, variable charge costs based on a cards-to-cogs curve, and more actions available like full power, shields, etc.

Tactical units would be 0 charge, but two cogs, Support 1 charge for two cogs, Assault also 1 charge but for three cogs, and finally Command for 2 charge and three cogs. Attack ranges would be reduced to 1 for assault, 3 for tactical and command, and then 4 for support.

The platoon cards would be cogs equal to charge -1, in general, so Onslaught would be 2 charge but give three cogs and a potential six actions (three walks, three attacks). Firestorm would be 1 charge for two cogs for two Support units and four actions. The platoon cards would feature slightly improved ranges for attacks as well.

The command cards would vary from Advice at charge 0 for a one cog operate action to Swarm at charge 2 for a three cog reinforcement action. There would be a senior-crew style of operate action called Orders, with charge 1 for a two cog bonus to the next action. So with advice and orders three Tactical squads could walk one square and attack with one cog.

Shields up would be charge 0 for one cog's shield token to go on a unit. These shield tokens, much like in the Titan-based game, would be handy for off-setting the deterministic damage. Ditto the swarm card. 

If you make a force of ten units, two Command, four Tactical, two Assault, and two Support, then it's a decision to decide what mix of platoon and support cards will put your force at 22 cards. That leaves 23 points out of the 65 VPs, including a full building complement. Suppose then all platoon cards (Onslaught, Firestorm, Charge, Redeploy) are three points each, for 12 points. That leaves 8 command cards with 11 points between them. Put Swarm at 3 points, Spotting and Orders at 2 points, and 1 point got Advice, Shields Up, Rally, and Regroup. That should give a good play-test force. Depending on what gets left out. I might keep Swarm and discard Redeploy?

Eurybia Updates

I figured out how to repeat the magic that made the first two configurations of Eurybia online in Tabletop Simulator, and improve on it up to the standard of the original 4 Titans. Or at least the recipe. I'm still working on a way to make texture files.

Whether these configurations are any good remains to be seen. There's some half-baked theory behind them, driven mainly by the requirement to be different from the four existing Titan primary configurations. 

Eurybia is different from other Titans, going deep on extra armour and coolant, rather than Rhea's extra armour and thrusters, Tethys armour, jump jets, and capacitor, Styxx's sensors and limbs, and Eos' jump jets and capacitor.

What this seems to mean is that Eurybia can convert two junior crew into a third senior crew. There is the potential for duplicating another system, but that is going to cut into the number of useful actions it could otherwise be making. Plus a coolant system is a handy close-in defensive option. 

Is this sufficient to offset the loss of jumping? Early game Eurybia can give up shields to active both legs twice for an advantage in agility and speed. Or an extra vulcan gun or rocket pod attack. A second laser blade would require 8 cards rather than 6 cards. Eurybia would need card advantage to really exploit this or be left stranded and out of gas before an opponent has stopped shooting. Using both shields and coolant systems and sacrificing junior crew cards you could play senior crew twice. That could be +2, +3 rather than +1, +1 to thrusters. 

Consistent senior crew operated weapons and a limb makes for a hard four rounds for an opponent. Difficult if you close, thanks to the coolant systems. Plant Eurybia in the middle of the board for a ring out.

The tertiary configuration tries to take advantage of the coolant system by eschewing power hungry systems like laser blades and claws for a gun battery, a hand, and a laser battery. With senior crew behind them they can be good enough while managing power and loading better. 

The Quaternary configuration is also based on a gun battery but with a plasma howitzer for range and a buzz saw for close-in dismemberment. A bit of a twist on Eos primary like the tertiary is on Rhea primary. In each case the gun is weakened at its minimum to secure a higher, more efficient operated value. A gun battery operated by a master can be fired four times in four rounds using eight cards. 

In terms of flexibility though, super-cooling senior crew seems to be the way to go. 

Titanomachina: What is this? A war for Ants?!

Back in 2011, at the outset of the attempt to design what became Titanomachina, I wanted to be able to put Titans in the same game as conventional forces and elite forces. I feel like I've accomplished this game design goal, less through design than through the efforts of development. And after this latest game of Titanomachina playing a force of Myrmidon Mega-Ants against a mirror force, I feel like there's certainly room for development. 

Firstly I should take the visual language developed for the Titan system cards and extend them to the ant squads cards, and especially the platoon cards, better. If you're not aware, the platoon cards are intended to enable players to act with several ant units at once, where the ant unit of five Myrmidons corresponds to a system on a Titan. 

Currently those cards aren't really clear, given how they're supposed to take the cogs per action and apply it to up to three units portrayed on the cards. I was brainstorming a way to represent the bonus walk action of the Assault Ants, but I think I might just drop it entirely, as Assault Ants already have a great set of attacks. They can also be used for Spotting, Charge and Redeploy. This is only tangentially related to getting ripped apart by Assault Ant reinforcements in rounds 3-5. 

There's also a good point about making the squads themselves more easily recognisable on the table. While I'm currently using Reversi chips, for their nice round shape, they also have some annoying behaviour making them finicky to use. Also, I can use Tabletop Simulator's token creation function to make some round tokens with symbols on them and lock the ant models to those. 

How it started

How it went

How it ended (Knockout!)

Titanomachina: Hal-con 2025

Another Hal-con, another year. So far I've been coming to Hal-con to run demo-games for four years. Fewer group demos this year and more duels, with some new players returning for as many as a third game this weekend, which was cool to see. 

I played a number of memorable games including the Extra Life IWK charity game played on Twitch, which demonstrated the amusing chaos of new and veteran crew thrown into four-player mayhem. 

Some returning faces, including the Mario Bros participating in a set-up I affectionately like to call the Phone Box which is a 6x6 board where a 2x2 deployment space is created in a 4x4 square of two-habitat-tall buildings. Wario, in the redoubtable Styxx quaternary, proceed to kick Tethys quaternary in the back. This was because Tethys' player, Luigi, had the extra armour 4 in hand to deal with expected attack, and anticipated by ensuring 6 shield tokens over it. Styxx had a kick from a Digitigrade Leg operated by Styxx's entire  crew pulling together and stacking the cogs for a 10 cog kick through enough habits to cause an additional 4 damage. Having been kicked the through a wall thicker than She was tall when slouching, Tethys was knocked out by Eos, whom Styxx had also put on the ropes. 

A first time player and I managed to flatten a considerable amount of the map in what amounted to something of a mosh pit. I managed to execute a great double-jump body slam putting my opponent's Titan Rhea through a block of buildings. At that point I was behind 12 habitat blocks and raced to equalize, but caught a howitzer shot in Eos's right thrusters, destroying them, and shocking a card out of my hand. That card would have powered Eos's hand while it was operated by an initiate crew, and destroyed one more yellow habitat, for a 3vp swing. The game ended 14 to 9 for my opponent. 

After that, however, I managed to execute the same double-jump against a player that had already played twice, this time using Tethys. I had gritted my teeth during the first round, not spending any systems. I caught a plasma howitzer in the knee before jumping, but caught them up in the corner by the edge of the board. After jumping I managed to smash their Eos into some buildings with the claw, and nearly knock Eos off the board with Tethys's gun battery. Eos pours crew and power into getting those shields back up, constantly raising exactly 4 (the number constantly knocked off Eos' shield diagram. I think I also got Eos' right arm. I believe it was round 7 before I was able to pull off the double jump, and I believe I lost both kneecaps (Extra Armour 1 & 2) before it too, meaning that turned a stalemate into a +5 VP to Tethys. 

Similarly a demonstrator had another committment mid-day on Saturday and I got to sub in. That demonstrator is a good player, and while I was left with what might have appeared to be an uphill slope in terms of position and habitats, I also had a fantastic couple of hands that let me double-jump Tethys free of a possible ring-out situation, then turn around and deliver a knock-out shot with an adherent crew and master crew operating a macro laser that went through a shield, armour, and took off a leg and drilled in to the master crew. 

On Friday I took a turn in the Phone Booth, getting Eos Quaternary dismembered by Rhea Quaternary, as my opponent took up fucking and stepping out of the way.

Saturday I got to take Tethys Secondary against Eurybia Primary crewed by our Board Game Room volunteer and suffered only minor decapitation. Eurybia got that one through habitats. 

There were, I think, fewer 3-4 player games this year than in previous years. While I currently think Titanomachina scales pretty well, I think it's something of a different experience at 2, 3, and 4 players. One-on-one is a dueling experience, while the three-on-all is usually a matter of one player getting beat as two players race for victory. The 4-player game often involves players pairing up, but switching partners as the momentum of the game takes pairs through each other's combats. Team-up games are certainly something else, distinct from the multi-Titan mode I've developed.

Titanomachina: Single Player Training Missions

Lately I've been pondering the notion of a single player game. Following the Warhammer product design, the game is supposed to be played with other people, or in anticipation of other people, and it is this anticipatory part of the Warhammer hobby that is part of its genius, both because it creates a single-player section that loops back into the multi-player, social part of the Games Workshop Hobby ecosystem. Magic The Gathering uses a similar loop, creating a kind of treadmill to players that grinds out money. Not that, you know, I've managed to sell a box yet. Somewhat amusing me is that the greatest barrier to selling boxes of Titanomachina is not having boxes to sell... Nonetheless, I think that many people would like to be able to move forward with the solo part of planning the next game to playing the next game in spite of that.

Which came to me as I did some gardening, in that some people learn from doing and that Titanomachina should reward practice. So here is the notion, a set of game set-up that would make a single player game a puzzle to solve. 

The first such 'Training Mission' I think should be called "Pruning" and involve the player attempting to destroy as many non-player habitats as possible. The player chooses a personality, adds it to to the Titan deck of their choice at the bottom and deploys that Titan. They then need to get a high score destroying buildings. They have 9 rounds before Time-out game-end. The board set-up would be that of the current Tabletop Simulator default set-up (see picture at the top there). 

My plan is to run this mission in Tabletop Simulator, and to record each activation so that I can go make a little stop-motion animation of it.

So far so good:

Titanomachina: Hypothetical Systems Part 2

I mocked up some cards for the hypothetical systems I mentioned in an earlier post, and in doing so also did some thinking. Mainly the thinking was "Would that make sense?" and "Why would anyone want to do that?" These aren't final because they're mock-ups, but I find looking at the cards makes it easier to see how they fit into the game than the raw numbers. I settled on two per system, but three of the systems are specific to a single named system (Rocket Pods) or type of system (Guns and Lasers). For the purpose of these systems I think it's important that they affect a particular system rather than being broad or flexible bonuses like sponsons/turrets and crew. 

Extra Bracing adds an attack or a twist per cog to the next card activated with a range of one. 

A Refractive Collimater adds one tile of range or one shock per cog to systems with the armour piercing trait (lasers).

Rocket Pod Payloads add either an attack or the shield breaker trait per cog to Rocket Pods. Two cogs-worth of Shield Breaker would make it Shield Breaker (2). 

A Gun-Loader adds High Explosive (1) or Armour Piercing to Gun systems. If a gun already has High Explosive (1) then it is upgraded to High Explosive (2). 

Titanomachina: Stealth and Cloaking

 

The recent day of Bisexual Visibility got me thinking about ways to implement stealth and cloaking in Titanomachina. The joke was that line-of-sight is mutual, but putting it in those terms reminded me that there is space in the game's design for removing line-of-sight when it is available, as well as adding it when it isn't (the 'Detect' actions). 

Already in Titanomachina we have tall buildings, hundreds of meters in height and a fifty meters wide, being detected mid-battle only by Titans that are within 1km and engaged in high-powered sensor activity. I like to imagine that is because the Titans are drawn to battle by a recent disaster, the appearance of some sort of attack that encourages the already bellicose Titans to kick off and fight. As anyone who has seen large buildings collapse can attest, there is a tremendous amount of particulate in the local atmosphere, not unlike that of volcanic activity. It makes ranges short and detection a matter of deliberate action rather than a passive thing depending on pre-existing surveys and automatic scans. 

So a system that makes a 100m tall Titan disappear from the targeting systems of another Titan seems pretty reasonable, and falls neatly within the realm of the kind of 'Star Trek/Pacific Rim' combat that I want for Titanomachina. It seems like a system that manipulates line-of-sight in the other direction, that of reducing it, would be logical and something that fits into the Titanomachina ethos of expensive, pro-active defense. 

As is my instinct to over-complicate things, I would ideally want to have this cloaking system be able to cloak the Titan in levels or stages. So the initial stage, at the cost of one other system, would be something that needs a detect action on behalf of an attacking Titan to qualify as a target. Basically the equal of hiding behind a building, which is to say that the attacker knows you're there but cannot draw a lock. Then there would be extra cogs-worth of cloaking, corresponding to the amount of cogs a detection action would need to thereafter target the Titan. 

To restate it a bit, you activate this sort of Cloaking system and your Titan cannot be targeted unless it is detected by at least one cog. Activate this system with extra cogs due to crew, and your opponent will need to match it with Detect cogs. Maybe outgoing attacks reduce this value, as one of the tropes about being cloaked is shooting/punching people gives away your position. 

That is not the only space available for Titan stealth though. In a previous post I posited a hypothetical system that could extend the range of laser weapons by one tile. Likewise one might be able to reduce the range of incoming weapons, or perhaps increase the range between Titans. Quite what you might imagine that to be, or even call it I don't yet know. Given that the Titans employ a gratuitous amount of anti-gravity technology to begin with, there might be something to work with there for 'ludo-narrative consonance,' or perhaps something like the holo-field technology of Warhammer 40,000's alien Aeldari, a kind of distracting projection rather than invisibility. 

There is also the notion of something that might prevent crew from lending their Operate bonus to attacks, since the bonus from crew operating weapons (and other systems) represents the crew getting the most out of the weapon by aiming at vulnerable points, timing the firing just right, and generally making sure the attack is doing the most damage. This sort of thing seems harder to justify, but in a sense is the sort of thing that counter-measures such as flares, smoke dispensers, and whatnot exist to do. As a crewman you're trying to aim your gun at the target, but you can only really fire into the general area because you can't actually see what you're looking at. Probably not very intuitive though, and given how Titans are already wading through a soup of smoke, ash, etc, probably even counter-intuitive. 

Titanomachina Hypothetical Systems

As people that have been following this project and blog may know, I occasionally like to brainstorm new systems to cram into the game. These systems would be played prior to activating the weapon they're affecting. 

Ammunition Selector for Guns:

• Add High Explosive (+1)
• Add Armour Piercing 
• Add Shield Breaker

Refractive Collimator - Adds one tile of range to laser weapons 

Rocket Warheads

• Add Detect to Rocket Pod actions
• Add Attack to Rocket Pod actions 
• Add Twist to Rocket Pod actions

Additional Bracing - Add Attack to Hand, Claw, and Buzz Saw weapons

Titanomachina: Eurybia Changes

 Before

After

I decided to make some changes to Eurybia. Purely cosmetic, like swapping out Her upper arms to fit them better to the shoulders and elbows. Also reducing the size of Her head, Her primary sensor pod, by 10%. Some slight tweaks to armour, and slightly extended forearms. Basically I like the shapes more. 

Why? Part of building Eurybia is putting together shapes that I like, and grouping shapes together to form parts of the Titan so the model can be repositioned. Posing this model is my newest hobby.

 

Titanomachia: The Two Towering Battles

Two great Titans, pugnacious Eos and sagacious Styxx, face off across a contested city. Tonight my opponent and I had two games, one after the other, in part because the first game ended on Round 2 and why not while we're here and have scheduled time? The first game ended on a ring-out, something that I practically traipsed into, and the second on a time-out on round 9 after I thought I had it in the bag by the end of round 8. One lesson I brought into the second game from the first game was that I needed to keep Styxx in the middle nine tiles in order to avoid the risk of a ring-out, and to put Eos in Their back foot. There was a downside to doing this, particularly to a Titan as agile as Eos, and that was that detecting buildings on the edge of the board did not protect them from Eos flying in to knock them down. I think that was perhaps some minor miscalculation on my part, and perhaps some deft, clever play on the part of my opponet!

The Titans deploy, Styxx has the initiative and sets up in a nicely defensible position in case of an ambush, and so Eos decides to start in cover behind a block of buildings.

And by cover I think we mean 'opportunity' as Eos commences a fish-slapping dance of picking off lone green habitats, and Styxx detects a medium-sized building directly off Her right arm. 

Now the fight begins in earnest as Styxx flexes systems to provoke Eos into doing something rash, and moves up the road to detects a larger building in an empty lot. Deprived of Styxx as a target, but deploying Their plasma howitzer anyways, Eos destroys the building and fires jump jets, using Their sponson to leap in close to Styxx. Styxx is rather distracted by this, and having prepared to fire Her macro laser happily takes Eos' left leg off (She was aiming for Eos' back-left to destroy Their primary capacitor, light damage Their jump jets, and heavily damage their port deflector array, but Eos blocks with Their leg). Swinging around, Eos takes careful, master-operated aim with Their vulcan gun, and proceeds to hammer Styxx off the battlefield (inflicting heavy damage to Her claw). The +5VP for causing a ring-out more than makes up for the loss of a leg, and the game ends 23-21!

Once burned, twice bitten, or some sort of pithy saying because in the second game Styxx (again sagacious, as we re-drew personalities) deploys in the middle of the board, looking to avoid a ring-out and use it to minimize the need for movement. Eos deploys in cover, wary of Styxx's gun battery. 

A careful start to the game involves Styxx using an initiate crew member to operate Styxx's port sensor system and detect a medium green building, and Eos making to detect Styxx behind the cover of a medium building, but deciding against it. The message is clear "I can see you!"

Eos begins to dance again as Styxx calls for Her adherent crew to be ready, but Eos merely pops out of cover to quickly kick the green habitat top off of a building, and to use the change of momentum to move back into Their starting position. 

With adherent crew in both Titans called to purpose, the fight kicks off with Styxx detecting another green building, this time to starboard, prompting Eos to cut loose with Their vulcan gun to cull habitats, both green and pink, exposing Styxx to Eos' plasma howitzer. Styxx, however, detects that there is a habitat directly in front of Eos preventing that, but Eos vents Their fury on the medium building that Styxx had detected on round 1. Seeing the actinic discharge of Eos' primary weapon, Styxx bulls forward through the single yellow habitat directly in front of Her, and savagely kicks Eos, who takes the hit on Their frontal armour, suffering heavy damage and getting knocked left by the impact of the blow! Eos' buzz saw is pushed out of position, and Eos declines to activate it. 

Now Styxx withdraw back to the center of the battlefield, daring Eos to come get dead, using Her extra armour to scan the battlefield so She can react to Eos coming at Her. Eos takes the bait and walks around the building to outflank Styxx, who walks to meet Them. Now Eos drives an elbow into Styxx's front and follows up pugnacious as Styxx staggers back, but rather than attacking, Eos fires Their capacitor for the energy to detect a tall building far across the battlefield and behind Styxx! Wisdom prevails and Styxx takes back the initiative...

Styxx now faces the dilemma of turning around to destroy the new blue building that's been detected, and exposing Her relatively weak flanks to Eos at close quarters, or laying into Eos and seeking to smash Them into scrap. Perhaps it was a moment of weakness, but Styxx grabs Eos and wrenches Them sidesways through a building, bursting 40% of Eos' shields, and then following that up with a kick that Eos blocks with armour, shattering it, and a Her gun battery to batter Eos back through another building. Eos isn't done yet though, and walks back from the edge of the battlefield, facing Styxx head-on!

Styxx isn't done yet though, ordering Her adherent crew to man the main gun, and ducking to catch Eos' enthusiastically discharged plasma howitzer on Her turret; some light damage is a small price to pay with a robust turret system when the target is right there, and Styxx's macro laser vaporizes what's left of Eos' frontal armour, destroys Their vulcan gun, and scorches Their sensor! Eos isn't put off though, and has a plan for one of Their initiate crew...

Styxx is running low on gas, while Eos' power reserves climb. It's a tricky situation, and Eos makes things trickier by circling left around and smashing a green habitat with an errant elbow as They pass. Styxx calls on Her crew, know that if She can just knock out Eos, then the battle is won...

Not content to rely on a knock-out, and perhaps painfully aware that it would be a pyrrhic victory at best due to the numbers of blue and green habitats accounted for on the battlefield, Styxx detects a tall green building well away from Eos' present position, and then moves to bully Eos off the battlefield with kicks, elbows and a burst from Her gun battery. Forced up against the ropes Eos detects Their own blue building, for a perfect 24 blue habitats, and then leap-frogs over Styxx to deny Her the satisfaction of a ring-out! Suddenly, the score is tied and Eos is behind Her!

Styxx is out of gas and out of luck as She attempts to run interference, but cannot prevent Eos' flying elbow to the great green building that She had detected! She is left in the center of the board, safe, but impotent to catch Eos and prevent the great building's collapse. With that collapse, so does Styxx's hopes for a knock-out, and the final score is 24-19

It's interesting in that while the first game's loss was clearly a result of me letting Styxx run out of gas in a bad position, the second game is more difficult to assess. Often in Titanomachina we can fairly easily point to the first decision where things started to go wrong, or even where an opponent did something dastardly clever, but in this case I think it was a number of tiny, unforced errors that eventually let Eos' player pull victory from the jaws of Styxx. 

Specifically, I think spending two cards to first discard the initiative and then to regain it was not a great idea; reacting when you're on the defensive is good, but I wasn't on the defensive, merely withdrawn. More importantly, Eos has two capacitors and almost an excess of power to charge systems, while Styxx tends to run a deficit. Doing that allowed Eos to push their card advantage, leading Them to out-maneuvering Styxx at critical points (preventing ring-outs and/or a knock-out).

I suspect that the two attempts at ring-outs were also doomed to failure, and that I should have used Styxx's impacts on Eos to slew them around and to cede the +5VPs for the ring-out to board control that would have protected my buildings, and given me more tools and opportunities to pick off blue habitats (or hence not needed to hold off on the knock-out).  

Mind you, Styxx's strength is Her sensors, having three of them to Eos' one, and so where I should have ended the game with a perfect 24 habitats, my opponent was able to flip the script and tank the damage to Eos in order to win on habitats. It's not enough to play a perfect game, but you also have to be able to out-play your opponent, and my opponent is a wily Titan-master!

This is, I think, one of the strengths of Titanomachina as a game, in that for all its pretense at deterministic rules the game is something of a ouija board wherein two or more plans mesh toward to create a kind of unpredictable chaos that can surprise and upset even the best laid plans of Titan and cogs, and keep players wanting to walk the face of Gaia again!