Session - Le Havre, Titan | Review - Titan

30th of April 2011 (Saturday)

Game(s) played:
Le Havre


Titan



Player(s):
Da Panda
Mo
Nitsuj

Game 1: Le Havre
Da Panda had plans to watch a movie with other friends (family just ain’t good enough for her anymore) giving us only 90 minutes to play a game of Le Havre (which was Da Panda’s choice some more, I tell you some people). So we played the short version of the game and here’s the session report:



Da Panda went for her usual wood heavy strategy of using the Joinery & getting high point buildings. She grabbed wood early whenever she could and mostly used Francs to settle her food woes, only building two wooden ships after discovering for the first time that they provide food at the end of each round (… … … There is no appropriate comment I can give here). She hardly harvested any grain or cattle and then only in the last 5 rounds or so. Don’t really remember how she made her money but she did have quite a lot of it at game end. Think it was all that wood she fed into the joinery plus the legitimate move of stealing the Franc offer when Mo and I were not looking

I went for a shipping strategy and honestly, there must be something wrong with the way I do it because special buildings or no special buildings I just can’t seem to win with this strategy even though it’s supposedly recommended and even when I’m the only one implementing it. Knowing the game would be short on wood, I stocked up on bricks and iron to get the lead on the Shipping Line and two Iron Ships. Still need to figure out why shipping doesn’t work for me

Mo tried to pull off his usual stock up on cattle for food and steel for Luxury Liners but just couldn’t seem to pull it off resulting in frus-ness for him. He claims being last in turn order worked really badly against him although I think it was because I kept taking offers he wanted / entering buildings he wanted, being second in the turn order before him. Although he would’ve closed the gap significantly by building one Luxury Liner (he forgot about the final action at game end), it would’ve still left him in last place.

Results:
Winna - Da Panda (104 Points)


2nd – Nitsuj (103 Points)


Last – Mo (72 Points)


** Drat, need to work on the lighting since my cards are sleeved

Game 2: Titan
Da Panda had left after confirming that she was indeed the winner (winning by only 1 point makes everyone nervous and demand recounts… kinda like our by-elections). I suggested Titan to Mo, mainly because he’s the only person I know in Malaysia (so I don’t know that many people) who plays the game well and seriously, the latest edition is such a beautifully crafted game that I wanted to post pics of it on the blog. And for such great game that’s such good eye-candy, it doesn’t get much plays ‘cos Da Panda and Milo don’t know how to play it

My uncle owns an original Avalon Hill release and taught me and my brother to play since we were kids, this is probably the first non-Monopoly boardgame I was exposed to. We play a game once a year during Chinese New Year when we go back to Singapore to visit my grandmother and the experience gets better and better (although the game time gets longer and longer) and I’ve played countless games on the Java application “Colossus". Here’s a short write-up on what the game is about:

This game is…:
About amassing large armies of monsters which within hides each player’s Titan (a small juggernaut himself) which other players attempt to find and annihilate to remove that player from the game.

How is it played?
Each player starts with a handful tiles depicting low ranking creatures, an Angel and a Titan with which to form two starting armies (tiles stacked facedown). These armies move around the board in a very snakes-and-ladders style of movement (using dice and following arrows) and each movement hex on the board depicts different terrain.

Terrain works in two ways in the game, the first being that different terrains allow you to recruit different creatures. Recruitment is done via a ladder ranking approach (i.e. In the Jungle, 2 Gargoyles in your army allows you to recruit 1 Cyclops, 3 Cyclopes to recruit a Behemoth, 2 Behemoths to recruit a Serpent) with the monsters increasing in skill and hp the higher up the ladder they are. The second way terrain works is as the battleground of epic bashing and brawling between players. Naturally the terrain map of the battleground favours the local beasts that are native to that particular terrain. Battle is a literal dice fest to determine how many hits your creature deals to another creature and taking turns to move & attack, move & attack.

As you go around bashing other armies, looking for that hidden Titan of your opponent, you gain points (exp if you will) for armies you conquer and this exp makes your Titan stronger (levelling up) and gives you Angels / Archangels each time you level up.

Let new players be warned that there are other rules concerning movement, army size, recruitment and a TONNE of rules concerning resolving battles (i.e. movement, penalties, range & melee attacks, turn phases etc.) that makes the game very difficult to play without an experienced player to show you the ropes.

[Nitsuj vs Mo] Game Start 00:00
I tend to favour having my Titan in a jungle group so I start with Army 1: Titan, Cyclops (2), Troll / Army 2: Angel, Lion (2), Troll. I’m pretty sure Mo starts with Army 1: Titan, Troll (2), Cyclops / Army 2: Angel, Lion (2), Cyclops.



Notable recruitments
Mo gets a Griffon early followed by a series of Minotaurs from his forays into the mountains and a Unicorn which ends up in his Titan army. He also manages to get a Warbear from the Tundra but that goes unused until game end

I grab an early Guardian and Behemoth which go into my Titan army. I managed to grab a late Griffon which also went unused and a whole army of Rangers which didn’t manage to terrorise anyone unfortunately

[1st Encounter] Approx. 00:45
My Titan army comes into contact with one of Mo’s castoff armies containing some Trolls. He naturally concedes the battle (conceding is an automatic loss with the victor not taking any casualties but only yields half exp to the victor) but not before getting to take a look at my army and discovering that it was my Titan army (honestly, I forgot about that rule but would’ve attacked him anyway because that army was just in my way).

[2nd Encounter] Approx. 01:00
His Minotaur-ish plus one Unicorn and some Rangers army descends from the mountains and decides to attack my Titan army (also because it was in the way) revealing to me that his Titan is part of the group! An epic final battle ensues! (If a player’s Angel / Titan is involved, they cannot concede and must do battle)

Mo’s army: Titan, Ranger (2), Unicorn, Griffon, Minotaur (2)
Nitsuj’s army: Titan, Behemoth (2), Gorgon (2), Guardian



I try to use the terrain to my advantage by hiding my Behemoths in the brush, giving them an extra skill level when attacked, protecting my Titan’s flank. Mo naturally goes for the Gorgons for two reasons: (1) Gorgons are native to the brush terrain allowing me to recruit an additional Gorgon into battle should any of my Gorgons survive until round four (2) Gorgons being my weakest creatures were easy prey for him as his requirement to summon an Angel into battle is to kill any one creature of mine.



He took down one Gorgon in short order although I take the Griffon in return. Battle goes on with Mo making significantly better dice rolls than me and Mo using range striking (attacking with no counter-attacks from your opponent) to good effect. I take his Unicorn, Angel and Ranger but lose all but my one Behemoth. He corners my Titan with two full strength Minotaurs and it was over before I knew it.



[Results] 01:30
Winna – Mo
Loser – Nitsuj

What I Think About This Game:
Once again I lose this game to Mo, probably because he has a much more devious and cunning mind than me. But as you can see from the time stamp (I put them there for a reason), Titan is a very, very long game. Each battle can take anywhere between 30 – 60 mins making anything more than a two player game a game with very significant downtime. If I have a gripe with the game, this is the biggest one. I also have a tendency to roll my dice poorly so if you tend to lose games of RISK due to just crappy dice rolling as opposed to tactical blunders, this may not be the game for you.

But if you have patience, good memory, willing to spend a whole night on one single game and just love the notion of Giants vs Dragons vs Hydras vs Serpents (You know like when Jiraiya summons Gamabunta, Tsunade summons Katsuyu and Orochimaru summons Manda), you will be rewarded with a game of surprisingly deep strategy and epic battle savagery in this package. That it looks really good is just the cheesy sauce on your wedges, it doesn’t have to be there but it just doesn’t feel the same anymore without it.