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: 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?

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: Myrmidon Mega-Ants Part 5

Updates and changes to the info used in Part 4.

Ant Decks are composed of unit cards, platoon cards, and support cards. The unit cards apply to all units of that type, so a Tactical Ants card enables any one unit of Tactical ants to perform an action or two. Platoon cards enable multiple units of the indicated type to share the card’s actions and cogs. Support cards enable a unit with the model pictured on the card to perform actions.

Ant units have unlimited stacking but occupy target locations on tiles like buildings. Ants cannot stack with enemy units, or share buildings with enemy units. Each ant unit can take one point of damage before it is removed from the board.

Actions include:

• Attack – The unit of ants chooses a range and rolls 1D6 per cog. The target must be in range, line of sight, and arc (arc is 360º). Each dice result that rolls over the range does a point of damage. Ants in buildings gain line of sight from that building. Ants in a building are destroyed if that building is destroyed. However, they won’t be destroyed until the entire building is destroyed, not just individual habitats. Each point of damage removes one unit of ants from the target stack.
• Walk – The unit of ants moves a tile per cog. Ants can move into buildings, An additional Walk icon allows the unit to move one more tile in addition to any cogs.
• Reinforcement – One unit of destroyed Tactical, Assault, or Support ants may be placed on a road tile on the edge of the board. The Gracious personality is a reinforcement for ants.
• Detect Titan – All ant swarm units have line of sight to a detected Titan until the end of the round, or the location of a stack of ants – moving ants away from this location on a tile will disrupt automatic line of sight to that stack, but not to anything in that location until the end of the round.
• Detect Habitat – Place a habitat within line of sight of the unit.
• Scan – Increase the swarm’s initiative.
• Operate – Increase the cogs of the next action to be declared.

Reactions Include:

• Fall Back – enables a unit of ants to move one tile directly away (‘directly’ by overkill rules). This may take them out of range (attack fails), or into a different range band.
• Block – enables a stack of ants to switch the attack to a different target on the same tile.
• Covering Fire – enables a unit of ants to shoot back at an attacker with 1D6 at Range 4 simultaneously with the attacker.
• Take Cover – enables a stack of ants to ignore one point of damage that turn.

End-Game/Victory Conditions

• Knock-Out: All Command Ant units are destroyed.
• Ring-Out – All Tactical, Assault, or Support Ant units are destroyed at end of round.
• Time-Out – the usual 9 or 18 rounds.

Units

• Command Ants (Walk, Attack, Scan, Cogs: 2, Range 1, Range 3)
• Tactical Ants (Walk, Attack, Cogs: 2, Range 2, Range 4)
• Assault Ants (Walk, Walk, Attack, Cogs: 2, Range 1, Range 2)
• Support Ants (Walk, Attack, Attack, Cogs: 2, Range 3, Range 4, Range 5)

Platoons

• Onslaught – Up to three units of Tactical ants can each walk or attack at range 3.
• Charge – Up to three Assault ants can each walk or attack at range 2.
• Firestorm – Up to three Command, Tactical, and Support ants can each attack at range 4.
• Redeploy – Up to four units of any ant unit type can walk with a movement bonus.

Support

• Command – Add two cogs to one unit during the next action played.
• Spotting – Add a building to the board or gain line of sight to a Titan or ant target location.
• Reinforcements – Up to three locations on road tiles around the edge of the board may have x cogs-worth of ant casualties redeployed onto the board.

Titanomachina: Myrmidon Mega-Ants Part 3

Like Aristotle before you, many of you may be wondering what the telos, or purpose this all serves. After all, the Myrmidon Mega-Ants are playing a different game than the Titans. Or rather, they are playing the same game of coordinating parts to achieve victory. Which makes one wonder, does it not, what exactly victory looks like? Titans have time-outs, ring-outs, and knock-outs, one for each of the victories of time, space, and material. Obviously the Myrmidons should have the time-out, as fighting an enemy to a standstill, while scoring a strategic advantage in material is suitably heroic. Also, no changes need to be made to the rules for timing out. You play 9 or 18 rounds and then score habitats and destroyed systems. A knock-out will depend on the human resources needed to include each card and matching squad in a swarm of Myrmidon. I think 1 for Tactical ants, 2 for Assault and Support ants, and 3 for Heavy ants. Ring out is obviously impossible in the sense of pushing an enemy Titan off the board, but where Myrmidons have the following actions, perhaps there's some way of there being a risk of shocking a swarm of Myrmidons off the board.

Reinforcement Action

The player rolls xD6 for each action rolling x cogs. If they can roll above the number of reinforcement actions being called, the player can place that many Myrmidon squads on tiles around the edge of the board. 

Retreat (Reaction)

The Myrmidon squad may move one tile when attacked, before contact is resolved. 

In terms of a knock-out then I think I want a set ratio or fraction indicating that Myrmidon players ending a round with that few units on the board is knocked out. I think knocking them all off the board would be a knock-out condition, because otherwise a play may use a Command and then a Reinforcements action, using 4D6 to get 3x 4+ dice results. That could be 18 units of ants, potentially. On its own Reinforcements would be 2D6 to 2x 3+ dice results. 

How would the ants knock-out a Titan? They're going to hit Titans hard, doing between 2 and 6 points per attack. With 16 units of ants, all of them activating in four rounds, that would be 23 actions. That's nearly six actions a turn. Which is a good number because players are going to be throwing a lot of dice. Dice to move, dice to attack, dice to spot, dice to reinforce; the tension for the Myrmidon player should come from this stochastic machine. Because shots may do devastating damage, but the real play of Titanomachina is developing that damage past armour and shields, with ants not only surviving to do damage, but being at the right place and time to do that damage. 

Speaking of, when a Myrmidon force has the initiative and surrounds a Titan right off the bat, then it was probably a good idea for the Titan to set up in a corner of the board to avoid attack from every direction. Once again Rhea Quaternary would be the gold standard for massacre.  

Titanomachina: Myrmidon Mega-Ants Part 2

More first-draft thoughts about Myrmidon Mega-Ants!

Players activate types of Myrmidon Mega Ants, so playing a Tactical card means you can choose to activate any unit of Tactical Ants for the actions on that card. Players also get the choice of distributing the cogs as dice to any actions they choose, like Titans. 

Moving and attacking is resolved using D6s. Like a D6 to move, D6 to attack. Each cog is a D6

Tactical Ants  Walk 1 | Attack 1 | Cog 2 | Range 2 | Range 4 |

Assault Ants  Walk 2 | Attack 1 | Cog 2 | Range 1 | Range 2 |

Support Ants  Walk 1 | Attack 2 | Cog 2 | Range 2 | Range 5 |

Heavy Ants Walk 1 | Attack 1 | Cog 2 | Range 1 | Range 3 | 

Ants can attack up to one of two ranges, rolling a D6 per cog, picking the highest, and subtracting the range to determine damage. Likewise they can move by rolling D6 per cog, picking the highest, and moving that many adjacent squares (no diagonal movement for ants). 

Some of the cards will not activate ants directly, but enable things like aerial/orbital support, command & control to 'operate' the next unit of ants, and to summon reinforcements from the pool of dead ant units that have been removed from the board. Each Ant unit would contribute an equivalent card to the deck, so increasing those extra cards would run up against the 22 card limit. 

Ant movement through habitats would be slowed down, so one point of movement would let them enter a road tile, whereas it would only allow them to enter one habitat, and so would need 4 movement points to attain the roof of a 3-habitat building from an adjacent road. Quite how we might track them inside of habitats I'm not sure.