Titanomachina: The Gripping Hand

I saw a picture of a Jenner from BattleTech where someone gave it hands and tried it on Styxx tertiary for a laugh. And you know what, I want to see what it can do? I have a theory that it may get shot up chasing an opponent, but may be able to control the initiative and cover using Her sensors. I think you would want to have lower initiative until you can attack with hands and then with legs. 

Hands, Digitigrade Legs, Thrusters, Deflectors, and Sensor-detection all require a charge of one other card. So that is 20, with senior Crew taking another 4 for 24. That leaves -2 other cards for junior Crew, Turrets, Extra Armour, Coolant, and Capacitor. 

Round 1

A hand, a leg, the master crew, coolant, armour, a sensor, a deflector, and a capacitor 

Round 2

Thrusters, turret, armour, sensor, initiate crew

Round 3

A hand, a leg, the adherent crew, armour, deflector

Round 4

Thrusters, turret, initiate crew, sensor, Personality

Because it occurred to me that you could use the coolant system on the master crew to double their bonus, admitted to two different systems, but for an additional cost of four cards, the master crew and the coolant systems and their respective. Where you only have two weapons, you need this bonus as much as possible. You will also need those legs more than twice a round. 

Turrets not only let a Titan open up a weapon to 270 degrees, but jumping 180 degrees up to three tiles can be both a good defensive or offensive move. You need to close to act directly against the enemy Titans, and you likewise need to dodge out of the way if an opponent is so unkind as to try and hit you back. If you go for a neutral start and try to build cards to start attacking on round 3, you can mix jump and attacking with hands rather than walking and attacking and attacking with hands. Because, ideally, you use the hands to defensively grapple the opposing Titan, and blow out their shields with their massive shield breaker bonus. Once down to 40% or so, there will be big enough gaps in coverage to do some armour shattering kicks. With around four activations to attack with the legs that'll net you four extra armour cards at best. That is if each kick gets three damage past shields. It might be something to operate the hands instead, opening up the legs to keep the Titan pointed in the right direction. Probably depends on the situation at hand...

Oh, and yes, I also updated the Styxx tertiary and quaternary dashboard cards on TableTopSimulator to swap the position of Deflectors and Thrusters in the back-left and back-right stacks of the Titan, with the notion being that Deflectors are supposed to ablate damage and being fewer HR points than Thrusters should be at the top of the stack. 

Hal-con 2024: The Next Round

Hal-con 2024 was, I think, a rousing success in that everyone who tried Titanomachina seemed to enjoy it, or at least they were 'locked-in' by round 3. The Extra Life game turned into two games in the two hour time limit, with a knock-out in round 8 for the first game, demonstrating just how fast the game can go with experienced players. It was also great to see familiar faces coming back to give the game a go, especially with Mario and Luigi bouncing around in their game. I had a great time, and it was fantastic to share the game with new people and friends alike. 

The one specific failure was the same one as last year: no units to sell. However, with this year's improvements (option to not charge systems, changes to collisions) bringing 9-round games in under an hour that it might actually be a blessing, because now I can sell a much faster game. The actual changes that I want to make after Hal-con have dwindled to tweaking the boards to include increased definition of board squares (overlaying a 4pt grid over the map) and adding a little bit of sign-posting in the otherwise empty margins of the board to clarify stuff like arcs and turns. Where these changes have dwindled to tweaking graphic design, I'm making a renewed push to produce something that people can buy. 

What would that be? Currently there is a fantastic company that has produced many of the prototype components that I have used in development, the Board Game Makers, based in China. Here's the plan as it stands right now:

• Box (10.5" x 12" x3")
• Box insert
• Rule book (A5 size, 24 pages)
• 2x 55-card Poker-size decks including 2x dual-sided Dashboard cards, seven Weapon cards, eight Crew cards, thirty system cards colour-coded to each Titan, two Personality cards, two Pass cards, two Damage diagram cards, and two Shield diagram cards. 
• 52x blank 25mm dice (black)
• 4x 50mm tall plastic standees (colour-coded to each Titan)
• 1x Sticker sheet of 48 Titan-specific habitat stickers (12 each)
• 1x Sticker sheet of Titan-specific images for plastic standees and initiative stack dice 
• 40x Shield tokens (transparent plastic poker chips)
• 2x Dry-erase markers
• 4x poker-size card sleeves

This would also include the cost of shipping, not only to the buyers, but also to the distributor warehouse. The rule book would contain a link to the .stl files so that those inclined could print the miniatures for themselves (or use a printing service, which is something else I'm exploring).

Note that the current version has 100 cubes for players, which makes for a pleasantly dense board. However, dice, even blank dice, are not one of those products that gets significantly cheaper in bulk. Having 12 habitat cubes for each player rather than 24 simplifies and speeds up set-up and opens up the board a bit more for interactions between the players. It's not worse for game-play and significantly cheaper. 

Likewise just 48 stickers to mark the blank dice as habitat blocks belonging to whichever Titans rather than 240 to mark and decorate the blank dice seems like an acceptable compromise on cost, aesthetics, and utility. Likewise the extra Titan stickers can be used on the dice in the initiative stack, since the sheet has more than enough for four plastic standees and I'm not sure if I can buy fractions of a sheet - something to explore to see if sheets can be split between boxes. 

Other cost-savings can be found dispensing with boxes for the cards, although I'm much less inclined to do that because the card boxes protect the cards and can look rather nice with a little effort. Likewise the box-insert. Where these things help preserve the set from damage they seem worth it.