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: 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: Clymene Debut Battle

Time for a bit of inter-generational strife, as gracious Clymene takes the field against pugnacious Eurybia, with my esteemed opponent selecting the Gun Munitions as Clymene's specialist system. I chose Eurybia's quaternary configuration of plasma howitzer, gun battery, and buzz saw, mainly mixed-strategy adaptability, but also for brute damage. 

Despite a few points where I can safely quality a choice as an error, this was a tense game that saw Eurybia start at a deficit in habitats (20-23) and work hard to offset that by causing as much damage as possible. In the lead position my opponent did a good job ducking, dodging, diving, and detecting just enough previously undetected habitats to end the game with 19-17 victory points; Clymene suffered only mild dismemberment, almost losing Her vulcan gun but saved by Her grace, and definitely losing Her left leg to a constant barrage of kicks, buzz saw slashes, and elbows thrown by Eurybia. But the fact that She had detected two habitats, borrowing Tethys' pink habitats for this game, meant that losing a leg was not enough to throw the game. Similarly Her gracious repair of Her own vulcan gun likewise prevented another 2 victory points falling in Eurybia's pugnacious lap. Eurybia also came up just short of a ring-out, because that would have resulted in a 1 point loss, and the loss of Her frontal armour meant She was 1 point short of a knock-out. When things are this close, there's always the temptation to push a Titan just a little further and a little faster, and then find it venting heat and struggling to re-load, which is to say out of cards and at the mercy of an opponent! 

Also, I just noticed that we went for yellow for Clymene's initiative marker, but pink for Her habitats, in case things get confusing. 

As this is Clymene's first outing and She starts ahead in identified habitats, She deploys carefully, sighting offensively green habitats for pruning, and preparing for an angry green cousin to come storming into contact. Eurybia has deploys to a less obviously aggressive vector, out of range of Clymene's vulcan gun and out of arc of Her rocket pod, but with Clymene in range and arc of Eurybia's plasma howitzer. The idea was to even out the habitat situation before engaging directly...

Both Titans continue on their approach vectors, with Clyeme sidling south (north is the bottom of the board here, with the round track in the east) to kick the green habitat top off a building in tile 69. Eurybia, by contrast, goes full Kool-aid man through the buildings on tile 74 (bottom right is tile 11), netting -1 habitat for Clymene at the cost of four shields. As Clymene swings south, Eurybia's master crew gets those shields back up, bulking them over Eurybia's arms. Clymene's own master crew is activated...

Clymene reveals Herself with a massive full spread of rockets into the row of buildings in tiles 67 and 76 Eurybia guided by Her master crew. Eurybia responds by lashing out with Her plasma howitzer, deliberately ignoring Clyene and blasting two pink habitats in tiles 74 and 73 at the cost of a green habitat in tile 73. As Eurybia's initiate crew gets Her gun battery up to an optimal firing solution Clymene's own initiate crew gets Her specialist gun munitions system feeding the vulcan gun with both high explosive and armour-piercing shells. Eurybia's gun battery blast two more pink habitats to smithereens, and then She holds for what is coming next. Specifically Clymene walks around the remaining pink habitat in tile 67 and opens up with an adherent crew-operated vulcan gun, bursting Eurybia's shields and driving deep gouges into Her frontal armour. Eurybia's reaction is to suffer the assault, and to waggle the exhausts of Her coolant systems, to emphasize that Clymene needn't get much closer. At this point my opponent realized that Clymene might have been able to push Eurybia through the buildings in tile 73 had Clyeme walked to tile 77 instead. Of course, there is an argument to be made for exiting the 'danger zone' of the outer ring of three tiles around the edge of the board, but the amount of damage would have been far worse. Not a fatal error, as it turns out. 

Despite being rattled about by the hail of high explosive armour-piercing projectiles and down to 50% shields, Eurybia is just getting started. She swings around right and steps in to threaten Clymene with Her buzz saw, and Clymene steps back to play for space, and time to re-power Her systems. Taking advantage of Clymene's flagging power levels, Eurybia seizes the initiative!

Eurybia's pugnacity and momentum sees Her sliding after the retreating Clymene and raking Her buzz saw down Clymene's side to burst shields, tear open armour, and mangle the vulcan gun. Clymene's defense is half-hearted as She has detected a two-habitat pink building in tile 14, and Her gracious personality restores function to Her vulcan gun (if not a shiny finish). In a fit of seeming rage Eurybia discharges one of Her coolant systems to super-cool the buzz saw, and to immediately load it for another blow!

Things are accelerating now as Eurybia's master crew takes over the buzz saw from the adherent crew and rips it down Clymene's flank, shearing off the armour and deflector array that Clymene wears like a holster on Her hip. Clymene's own master crew grips and rips the armour packages remaining on Eurybia's prow clean off, despite an emergency venting of coolant by Eurybia. Eurybia rolls with it and aims a kick to Eurybia's de-gloved leg, but Clymene blocks it with Her other leg, bursting its shield and cracking its armour, but leaving Her standing. Eurybia then smashes through the pink habitat left in tile 67 and again kicks Eurybia, who manages to block the blow with Her sponson, leaving it lightly damaged. Clymene manages a quick elbow to Eurybia's gun battery as She lurches backwards on Her damaged leg, rather than resting in front of Eurybia's guns. 

Eurybia is expecting this and attempts to kneecap Clymene with a snap-shot from Her plasma howitzer. Clymene catches the shot on Her back armour instead, taking only light damage and the 20% loss of shields, but still finds Her power system overloaded by the dollop of energized matter eating through Her back armour. Her initiate crew is activated and on deck 

Clymene's initiate crew races to get the gun munitions system pushing shells into the Vulcan gun as Eurybia's own initiate crew swings Her around for punch to Clymene's damaged leg. Clymene takes it, disabling Her leg, and staggering Her, but Her sponson activates to compensate! The crews of Titans activate their respective gun weapon systems, but Eurybia has the initiative, spraying shells at Clymene, and forcing Clymene up against the edge of the battlefield as She attempts to block the attacker with arm. Clymene's own firehose of shells misses Eurybia and devastates the green habitats in tiles 73 and 74. As Eurybia activates a coolant system to re-load Her gun battery, She warns Her crew that pushing Clymene out now would result in a technical loss...

Perhaps all the gouts of coolant steam coming from Eurybia really do indicate Her temper, as She closes to tile 87 and lets Clymene's master crew deftly operate the damaged leg to slip around behind Her and kick the green habitat top off of a building in tile 88. Making a terrible choice, Eurybia goes west along the road to get on Clymene's right, rather than Her damaged left, and elbows the pink top off the remaining building in tile 76 when She realizes her mistake. Clymene isn't pausing though, and now steps back and turns to bring Her own armaments to bear on Eurybia. 

Eurybia has the initiative, but Clymene has escaped to the center of the battlefield, and fights effectively to defuse Eurybia's fury as She gives chase first with a kick and then with gouts of gunfire and clouds of coolant. One last burst of gunfire and Clymene's left leg is finally destroyed, but as the smoke clears Her valiant efforts to defend Herself and Her city become apparent. Both are still standing, and both have survived Eurybia's onslaught. Was it the detected building? Was it the grace of Clymene Herself? Even now with the benefit of hindsight it's hard to tell. Certainly there may have been some teething problems with calculating the optimal first shots using a vulcan gun with a gun munition system feeding it, and Eurybia rushed in where cooler heads might have prevailed, but it's a great debut for Clymene in a tense game!

Glory to gracious Clymene and glory to my opponent!

Titanomachina: Kinetic Angel

I wonder about this configuration of Arms x2, Plantigrade Leg x2, Wings x2, Sponson, Sensor, Coolant, Crew x4, Extra Armour x5, Shields x2, Harpoon Gun, Pincer. It is oppressive? Yes, that is something of the intent. It's going for board control and not giving up card advantage. 

It can dole out a number of attacks, something like ten: Arms, Legs, Wings are 6, Harpoon gun is 1-2, the Pincer is 1-4 attacks, counting collisions as 'exploding' damage. There can easily include a body slam attack, maybe even two given two wings; a jump action from a wing still requires another limb to be activated to convert collisions into body slams. That seems likely if an arm or leg has already attacked. 

Power-wise, the arms, legs, and sponson are 0 charge, so they don't require any sacrifices, but the wings are 2 charge, so probably one use every four rounds unless there's some emergency or clever double-jump available, although diverting power from the sensor, coolant, and a couple of extra armour systems might do it. The shields can be used to power the weapons, and may otherwise be disposable in the sense that they aren't going to be activated, and just held to power other systems. 

Titanomachina: Quaternary Quarrel

After last week's scaly violence, last night's donnybrook saw Sagacious Rhea knock out Rapacious Eos in round 9, for a score of 29-25. Instead of the battlefield being flattened in an egregious display of collateral damage, only four habitats weren't detected, and actual increase in the number of surviving yellow habitats prior to Rhea's arrival. Eos only lost one habitat from the 24 They came to protect from Rhea' opportunism, although the loss of an arm, armour, and both gun batteries perhaps has Eos regretting Their choice of configuration. My plan, such as it was, was to use Eos quaternary configuration's arms and light weapons to methodically chase and dismantle my opponent's choice of Titan. My opponent went with Rhea's quaternary configuration, something packing more armour and heavier guns, but slower and perhaps less agile. 

The armour wasn't an issue, as I had planned to knock it off Rhea with Eos' guns and hand, and it was this notion of maintaining the initiative that caused me to succumb to temptation and line up my senior crew behind the laser battery and take the opportunity to stab Rhea through both layers of frontal armour and and render Her sensor too heavily damaged to effectively function. The idea was to eliminate Rhea's protection and initiative so that Eos could deliver a knock-out blow. My opponent, however, took the initiative and did something similar to Eos, utilizing the high explosive effect of Rhea's macro-guns to disable first Eos' superior mobility, and then chew off the armour protecting Their gun batteries. While both Titans where capable of using their sensors to detect buildings, and were well suited to clearing buildings, stabbing Rhea in the eye with lasers and being ahead on buildings meant that my opponent's option for winning was a direct confrontation, and I had been gambling on my opponent trying to win on buildings. I think Eos quaternary would have been a good choice had I not had the first choice of Titan, as a reaction to a Titan like Tethys quaternary from last week; I certainly found myself wishing Eos had brought some plasma howitzers. 

I had the initiative and perhaps deployed too conservatively given how I was packing both guns and the laser battery in the initial load of systems I drew to my hand. I wasn't terribly interested in getting into an immediate exchange of fire though, and figured I could go right or left depending on the direction of ambush. I think setting up closer to the middle of the board like my opponent ultimately chose was the better more as I would have the first shot and then could manoeuvre. I'm not sure this was a mistake, but given my opponent chose a gun-boat, and what happened the last time I had set up there, I'm not sure it was a great idea either. 

Round 1 was something of a battle of nerves, which is to say I don't think either of us wanted to go first. Me because I was in cover and had the initiative, which meant that my opponent could react to me leaving cover before I could shoot, and my opponent perhaps because he didn't have the initiative and was well-wary of wasting Rhea's limited power supply and allowing Eos to overwhelm Rhea's endurance with capacitor-fueled action. Sometimes it's two samurai squinting stonily at each other, and sometimes it's two fighters shaking out theirs shoulders and stretching their necks...

Well, Rhea wasn't going to exhaust Herself, so I announce Eos' presence by caving in a yellow habitat, hoping to give the impression of preparing to go on a rampage. Rhea understands the taunt, but replies by detecting a two-habitat-tall building behind Eos; "Look," she seems to say, "I have two more just like it." Eos cracks out Their back, flexes Their front armour, and curtsies. Rhea directs Her master crew to aim the right macro gun in a rude gesture, but not to fire. 

Rhea has shown Her hand, so to speak, and so Eos comes charging through the pink habitat left from Their initial attack on that building, and locks in for a shot; Rhea aims Her left macro gun at Eos' laser battery and staggers Eos back as They block the shot with leg armour, with the blast catching Eos' exposed back-left arm. Eos is patient though, this was expected, and keeps a Rhea in Their sights while Their master crew helps the adherent crew aim. As Rhea stomps closers, Eos unleashes a precise set of laser beams that burst Rhea's front shields, and carve deep into Her front like claws raked across the face and chest of a human. Rhea isn't phased as She blasts Eos again, and punches Them as Eos tries to capitalize on the gaping holes in Rhea's front; Rhea still has plenty of armour, and in Her wisdom (or perhaps in the wisdom of Her master crew) has not fired Her vulcan guns yet. Eos' elevated rate of activity will come back to haunt them in later rounds as card advantage has been sacrificed... 

Now as Eos attempts to suck wind and re-fire Her ichorplasma spiracles Rhea seizes the initiative and unloads with Her vulcan guns. Eos gets Their shields back up, somewhat, and isn't knocked off the battlefield, but They waste their rapaciousness and perhaps power turning around somewhat...

Eos needs to get away from the edge of the battlefield to avoid a ring-out, and has a hand available, so They chase Rhea and try to smash Her into buildings in tile 37, but only succeeds in tearing the armour off Her side. Rhea holds Her patience, if not Her dignity, and kicks Eos for good measure.

Now my tunnel vision starts to tell, as I get Eos to keep firing in the hopes of capitalizing on Rhea's loss of armour: if I seize the initiative now my opponent can't get it back for Rhea until the sagacious personality is loaded to his hand in round 8. But first I have another crack at taking Rhea's head, but Rhea has the initiative and in the exchange of fire damages my gun battery, and I fail to destroy Rhea's back armour as She takes the shot on Her back armour. Here is where I think I made a major mistake, something easily identifiable as such, which was turning to face Rhea. Admittedly it meant that I had shields between Eos and Rhea, but taking cover would have helped more next round where Eos had lost card advantage. 

Now that lack of cover starts to hurt as I scramble to minimize incoming damage and Rhea keeps hammering Eos with perfectly functional systems. It's worth noting that while Eos is defending themselves, and I'm actually still winning at this point, Eos is out of gas and rapidly running out of functional body parts. 

As Rhea keeps beating on Eos I keep trying for an offensive solution to a defensive action, and while raising shields on Eos' damaged sponson helps absorb some of the damage from a hefty kick, Eos is down to 10% shields and is one good hit away from something bad. 

A pair of kicks from Eos does not prevent Their dismemberment, and fails to stomp in Rhea's vulnerable, tenderized face. Eos is bracketed and battered by Rhea, first losing one gun battery, then an arm, and finally the left gun battery to an enthusiastic stomp from Rhea. With the loss of the second gun battery the score of destroyed systems was 8 VPs for Rhea and 2 VPs for Eos, scoring a knock-out win for my opponent and mighty Rhea! Unfortunately I managed to lose the screen-shot that would have recorded the exact end-state of the board, perhaps related to this final position shot that I have used here, as it would help readers understand some of my post-game thoughts. 

The first of which is that Eos Quaternary is not meant to exchange heavy hits with another Titan, but instead is supposed to go for board-control, using Their suite of light-weight, low-powered weapons and unusually high number of limbs to dance around opponents while laying waste to their habitats. For the purposes of a punching match, this configuration of Eos is under-powered. Could I have done that with my opponent attempting something similar? I think so had I started the game more centrally and more aggressively, so that each weapon could be activated three times in the course of a 9-round game, and perhaps spread my shields out to protect Eos' rear arms to maintain mobility. Where I had planned to absorb hits on my leg armour, I should have expected my opponent to use the high explosive trait of the macro-guns to slip that damage in. Losing the armour would have been less painful that losing the arms. 

Additionally, despite the utter temptation, I should not have made that laser shot. I could have done something similar with the left gun battery, and either done damage to Rhea's guns (initial target) or knocked Rhea back into the habitats at the center of the board. Likewise I should have used the hand to bottle Rhea instead of grappling, as exchange of leg armour for facing benefitted Rhea much more than Eos.

Most of all, and this happens in most board games and wargames, is that I need to remember that I am not fighting the last battle, but the next battle. It's one thing to suppose that because an opponent turned left in the previous game that they will then turn left in the next game, particularly as the local conditions change. It's more a case of remembering the tricks and tactics that they used in the previous game so that they can't pull it over on you in the next game. Which is funny, after a fashion, because having flattened the board in the previous game this was the slug-fest I was planning on having. 

From a game designer perspective this game was fantastic for how I have envisioned the game to play and to be experienced, in the sense that I had a material strategy (Eos quaternary) that might have worked out but for my mistakes, effective counter-play by my opponent, and a critical switch in the initiative that I had anticipated but not fully prepared to counter (the idea being to knock out my opponent's ability to control the initiative). Plus a knock-out win!

So glory to my opponent and glory to Rhea! Maybe revenge needs plasma weaponry...