TITAN

Today I want to share with you an old board game called "TITAN". It sprang to mind while listening to everyone going on about Steem monsters. I did not have much time lately for games, so I zoned out everytime I heard Steem monster... At some point a few neurons just fired. And they led to this game... It is a fantasy game that can be played by two to six players. It was designed by David Trampier and Jason McAllister over a period that lasted more than a decade. The game was first published by their own company, called Gorgonstar, in 1980. The game got some traction and was soon licensed to Avalon Hill, which changed some minor things from the original.

There is an interesting theory about Avalon Hill being a selection vehicle for the US government. Avalon Hill published many games that relied on the player being good at a single, or two skills, like tactics and logistics. Many of the games had scoring mechanisms built in that yielded a unique code. That code could be sent (by snail mail!) in to Avalon Hill and was, allegedly, a way that many young university student got a very nice job.

The TITAN game board is made up from 96 hexes and looks very complicated when you first see it.

And things don't get better when we look a bit closer

The hexes have arrows, round and square shapes on some of the edges because they tell you how you are allowed to move. Arrow indicate a mandatory direction and rounds and squares allow or disallow certain sides as entrance or exit. Only if you start on a hex with choices do you actually have that choice, otherwise you must follow the arrows.
There is an outer ring that goes clockwise and a middle ring that snakes anti clockwise. In the center you can move in any direction and leave/enter everywhere.

So, let's get to the meat and brains of this game...

In all four corners of the board you see the chart of terrain types and characters. Characters are divided into three classes: Lords, Demi-Lords and Creatures. Each character has two numbers representing strength and intelligence, in some cases they can also fly (*) or shoot (⚡), or even both.

At the start of the game each player chooses a color and gets the 12 legion markers, the Titan and two Angels. Rule 0 states that I play with black :D

The Titan is the Commander and has increasing strength (boosted by taking out Legions) and can teleport (himself and his army) across the board when he has certain level and the aid of an Angel or ArchAngel. If the Titan dies, the game is over for the player and all his Legions are removed from the game and their score is added to the Titan of the one that defeats him. Needles to say this is very desirable...

At the start of the game each player gets two Centaurs, Ogres and Gargoyles and one angel. They are to be placed in one of the Towers in two stacks containing 3 creatures and one Lord.

The game is afoot!

From a Tower you can move in three directions and depending on what you threw with the dice you must move. If you end up in the Brush, for instance, and you have two Gargoyles in your Legion, you can summon another of the same or choose to summon a Cyclops. The numbers in front of each Creature tell you how many you need to summon the next Creature up. This goes for all Creatures and is not trivial, you can go for a Gorgon at some point, but that is the end of the line. If you choose for another Cyclops and manage to end up in the Jungle the next turn you can summon a Behemoth which could become a Serpent. This goes for all Creatures and their respective home terrain. So the choice is short term versus long term. A matter of life and death in this game...

At first you will be trying to avoid the other Legions to be able to grow and split your Legions to have maximum 12 Legions on the board. And you must, because you are not allowed to have more than 7 Creatures in one Legion. Imagine up to 72 Legions on the board! The legion markers are very handy at this point.

Then the moment arrives when you want to take, or must take, someone else on. This is the moment the terrain map gets zoomed in on separate Battle Maps and the individual Creatures, Lords and Demi-Lords get shown and positioned on the battle map. The Legion that was there first gets to enter the map first. There is a map for every terrain and they all give benefits or a malus to certain Creatures.

When the confrontation happens on the battle map a lot of dice are often needed, way cool to throw 18 dice for a Serpent!
But now strength and intelligence will be important. The strength determines the number of hits it can take before it dies, the intelligence what counts as a hit or miss.
If two Creatures have the same intelligence 1,2 and 3 are a miss and 4,5 and 6 count as a hit, equal.
When a Creature is one point less intelligent than it's opponent 1,2,3 and 4 are a miss and only 5 and 6 are a hit. Conversely if the attacking Creature is one point more intelligent 1 and 2 are a miss and 3,4,5 and 6 count as hits.
This can end up in a situation where a Creature with an intelligence of two fights one with an intelligence of 4. In this scenario only a 6 would constitute a hit and everything else as a miss. The other way around only 1 would be a miss and the rest a hit. So a Serpent (18-2) is not a match for a Colossus (10-4) or even a Hydra (10⚡3) which can even shoot from a distance.
During the battle the defending Legion's marker will be used to keep track of the turns and hit counters to keep track of how many hits a Creature has received. If Creatures survive a battle they are healed instantly.
If the defending side survives the 7th round of the attack it wins by default and the opposing party is declared dead.
Good to know if your Titan is on the battle map...

It is said that the game takes 2-6 hours, but the only time i played a short game like that was when i played noobs. Al the other games i played with those who knew the game took at least 12 hours. The longest game took almost 50 hours! And I do mean in one go, no comment on how we stayed awake that long... Erm, COFFEE! Yes, it was black coffee! Look at the stains on the battle maps! :P

I have spent many weekends with good friends playing this game and I hope it inspires you to more Steemit Monster game ideas!

The last picture I made is of all of the game parts. The interior of the box was made by me when the old one fell apart.
All the pictures were made by me...

The game in this form is not sold anymore. But there has been a new edition of Titan, with new artwork by Kurt Miller and Mike Doyle by Canadian publisher Valley Games which was released late 2008. The Valley Games edition was adapted to the Apple iPad and released in 2011.

So, by now I am the owner of 50 plus cards among which a Rare and a few Legendaries and curious what the future of Steem Monsters will be. I hope my post inspires to something good.

@madevi

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Madevi.

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