Weekly Trash - Titan

Jeb wrote:
I love this solo in Colossus, I love it PBEM with fellow ATers and I'll love this in person when that Valley Games bomb finally hits my house. It takes probably three or four plays before you even know what the hell you're doing--but once it clicks, a whole new world opens up. Then when you actually start to get good, it gets that much better.



Weekly Trash is a series of discussion threads in the F:AT forums. Each week a comment from the recommendations database is highlighted here. Don't be shy about posting further comments, questions, answers, funny stories, pictures, "this game sucks", or anything else related to the game.

I've been playing this almost nonstop on Colossus since picking up the VG edition. I took it home for Christmas and taught one of my brothers to play. I think you can learn faster from someone who knows how it works than you can from reading the rules. He got the hang of masterboard movement pretty quickly. By the end of the game he was mustering pretty quickly without having to look at the chart as much.

Although he reached 100 points and got another Angel before I did, I caught his Titan in a short stack when he had some rolls go against him and got sort of stranded near a cluster of my legions. I think he learned some valuable lessons about how to split legions. He's definitely interested in playing again.

I'm hoping to pick this up today. I've been saving up for some months now to justify buying myself a New Year's gift, and it might just be Titan. My big concern though, is how well it will play with 2. I've heard it's good, but can anyone confirm/deny that?

COLOSSUS is much, much better than TITAN. :-P

The game is a bear to play in real life...it's repetitive, too long, and draining in the wrong ways. Don't get me wrong, I love it...but it's like driving a broke-down car that you love even though it tops out at 40 MPH.

COLOSSUS makes the game playable in a fraction of the time and manages all the counter-shuffling for you. You can do a 6 player game in under an hour.

2 players is fine...you miss out on the big elimination shakedown, which is a lot of the fun, but there's some good play for 2 in it.

All that being said, the VG edition is incredible- best reprint of the year.

I just got the VG edition in a trade, but haven't played yet.

It seems really fun, but I can see where it could bog down.

As long as everyone was drinking beer i'm sure it'd be a great time regardless.

Michael Barnes wrote:

COLOSSUS is much, much better than TITAN. :-P

The game is a bear to play in real life...it's repetitive, too long, and draining in the wrong ways. Don't get me wrong, I love it...but it's like driving a broke-down car that you love even though it tops out at 40 MPH.

I know this sounds like an easy get out clause, but this sounds like the comment of someone who hasn't played Titan enough.

The more experienced you become, the faster you play and the more the game reveals the intricacies of decision making available. It's not repetitive: indeed I find it to be a thrilling and challenging play.

The play time is an issue when you play with too many players. The nature of the game is that the play time rises exponentially with more players instead of just adding an extra slice each time. I'd never attempt to play Titan with five or six face-to-face.

Well, I picked up a copy yesterday. A few counters were slightly torn on the back, but they were just the army markers, so it's not a bit deal. No foul stenches, no wet counters. The production values are excellent, although I would have preferred less CG art.

Might get to try it today. I can hope, at least.

I got to play some Titan yesterday as a 2-player. It's interesting, but I can see how poor movement rolls can cripple a player pretty easily in the game. My opponent seemed to be repeatedly getting better and better stacks, while mine floundered. Both of us are pretty new, so I could just be a poor planner of moves.

I did have fun, however.

Titan is an amazing effort. I have played no other games that make such a compelling use of tactics and strategy. MattDP's right--the more you play, the less time the game takes--we're talking about shaving HOURS off. My first game of Arkham Horror took 5+ hours. Now I can bang that thing out with more Investigators in less than half that--Titan is like this. A six player game in Colossus takes no more than 15 minutes.

People fight battles they shouldn't--this makes the game draaaaag. Get some experienced players and you can have two slugathons a night, easily.

I got to finally play this two nights ago, two player. We were limited on time so we went in knowing it was going to be an intro game just to get used to the rules and the flow of the game.

Preparing for my next game, what type of strategies do people use? Do you feel it better to split stacks quickly and often and take more of a swarm approach with lesser creatures? Do you feel it is better to build stacks up and try to get the highest possible creatures and create more "potent" stacks but fewer?

Also, what is the trick to moving around the board to get stacks into positions? Our first game it just felt like "the board took us where it took us". Do you eventually get used to and "see" where the board will take you in a few turns? I guess for me it felt almost like a roll and move game where if you don't have options in the space that you start in, you just have to go with the flow and end up where you end up. Is there a lot of "passing" on moving some stacks just to wait for a more favorable roll?

I'm really looking forward to my next game since early on I did get the feeling that once stuff becomes committed to memory it will free up the brain to actually start thinking about the game instead of just the mechanics.

LvT

So far both of the 2 player games of Titan i've played ended up with Titan vs Titan fights as either the 1st or 2nd battle fought in the game!

Any recommendations on what the initial legion make ups should be?

Depends on how many players are playing. For a 2-3-4 player game I typically split the ogres or centaurs depending on which tower i am starting in and keep the gargoyles together with my titan. The ogres/centaurs not split obviously go with the angel in the other stack.

I do this because I find the titan stack full of serpents sitting in a jungle late game is hard to bust. The green track creatures can also be pretty intimidating midgame and typically only sit around on their home territory, so its a good place to stash your titan. Plus after two or three games in a row of this strategy you can really surprise your opponents by NOT keeping the Titan in your brush/jungle stack.

In a 5 or 6 player game I will split the gargoyles and keep the ogres and centaurs together, because you need to get your titan into the inner ring in a longer game if you want to win.

The smartest default play is:

TITAN GARG (OGRE OGRE) or (CENT CENT)

ANGEL GARG (CENT CENT) or (OGRE OGRE)

You split GARGs so you get that added recruit tree for both Titan and Angel (Brush + Jungle). Take a look at your starting Tower and see if there are a bunch of Marshes or Plains nearby--you really want that Titan stack to get a recruit the first turn--that's how you decide between Ogres vs Centaurs. Also, if you end up sending the Titan stack to the Outer Ring, you really want to have the Brush/Jungle hookup, only two Towers don't have both Brush AND Jungle within one dieroll on the Outer Ring.

As an example, from Tower 300, you have the following options:
1 --> Marsh, Brush, Plains
2 --> Jungle, Swamp, Hills
3 --> Plains, Jungle, Brush
4 --> Woods, Plains, Marsh
5 --> Swamp, Brush, Plains
6 --> Tower Teleport, Plains, Desert, Hills

On a 6, you'd want to Tower Teleport most likely and score a Warlock, so the Angel stack would be best off with CENT CENT so you could get a Lion from the Plains.

LordVonTush wrote:
Preparing for my next game, what type of strategies do people use? Do you feel it better to split stacks quickly and often and take more of a swarm approach with lesser creatures? Do you feel it is better to build stacks up and try to get the highest possible creatures and create more "potent" stacks but fewer?

I have never seen a player win with a "swarm" approach. You are feeding your opponent points and you have to fight him one stack at a time- a lot of stacks doesn't help unless they are all very strong.

LordVonTush wrote:
Also, what is the trick to moving around the board to get stacks into positions? Our first game it just felt like "the board took us where it took us". Do you eventually get used to and "see" where the board will take you in a few turns? I guess for me it felt almost like a roll and move game where if you don't have options in the space that you start in, you just have to go with the flow and end up where you end up. Is there a lot of "passing" on moving some stacks just to wait for a more favorable roll?

Well there isn't a trick. First, you have to know what the purpose of a given stack is. Are you trying to create a midgame attack stack full of rangers or gorgons? Or are you building a late game titan-killer stack? Or is it a garbage throwaway stack? etc. etc. etc. Beyond that, what types of creatures are in it? Those things determine where you need to move a stack. I rarely move a stack unless I can do one of the following 1. muster something useful for the purpose (duh) 2. give the stack a better chance to do #1 next turn or 3. block / annoy opponent without giving away too many points.

This means you do pass a decent amount. If you move every stack every turn you will undoubtedly hurt yourself as well as adding hours to the game by making pointless moves.

LordVonTush wrote:
I'm really looking forward to my next game since early on I did get the feeling that once stuff becomes committed to memory it will free up the brain to actually start thinking about the game instead of just the mechanics.
LvT

Colossus will help with this too.... Titan is a game you have to play a few times to even realize what the fuck is going on, much less start to see the strategy involved on the masterboard.

One of the things frustrating about playing against newbies is that they don't know how to move their stacks, so you can't assess their movement to try to determine what is in their stacks and you have to base 100% of your knowledge on reveals when they muster. Against a veteran, unless they are being tricky, I can forget which of your stacks had those behemoths in it because I will be able to tell from your roll of the dice and how you move the stacks which one contains the behemoths.

jeb wrote:

The smartest default play is:

TITAN GARG (OGRE OGRE) or (CENT CENT)

ANGEL GARG (CENT CENT) or (OGRE OGRE)

You split GARGs so you get that added recruit tree for both Titan and Angel (Brush + Jungle).

Jeb's default setup (which I always use in 5 or 6 player games, and occasionally in 4 player games if playing with especially passive players) grants you slightly more versatility than mine, because all your stacks have brush/jungle recruiting potential, but keeping the gargoyles together gets you to the behemoths and serpents faster, often long before opponents using the above setup have similarly strong stacks.

To split gargoyles or not to split gargoyles is a classic Titan dilemma, and in addition to number of players it also depends on the aggression level you expect around the table.