Titan (board game)

Titan is a fantasy board game for two to six players, designed by Jason McAllister and David A. Trampier. It was first published in 1980 by Gorgonstar, a small company created by the designers, which published only two games in limited quantities. Soon afterward, the rights were licensed to Avalon Hill, which made several minor revisions and published the game for many years. Titan went out of print in 1998, when Avalon Hill was sold and ceased operations. In 2007, Canadian publisher Valley Games announced that it had acquired the rights and intends to publish a new edition of Titan, with artwork by Kurt Miller and Mike Doyle

Each player controls an army of mythological creatures such as gargoyles, unicorns, and griffons, led by a single titan. The titan is analogous to the king in chess in that the death of a titan eliminates that player and his entire army from the game. The player controlling the last remaining titan wins the game.

Gameplay

	Brush		Desert
	Hills		Jungle
	Marsh		Mountains
	Plains		Swamp
	Tower		Tundra
	Woods

The main game board is comprised of 96 interlocking hexes, each with a specified terrain type.

Each player's army is organized into legions of one to seven creature tokens stacked face down. The legions move according to die roll, subject to restrictions marked on the board. No two legions may occupy the same hex on the game board. If a legion moves into a hex which is occupied by an enemy legion, the two legions must fight to the death on a tactical map specific to that terrain. The terrain usually gives a battle advantage to creatures native there.

Each time a legion moves, it may recruit one additional creature if the territory to which it moves is native to at least one creature already in the legion. For example, centaurs may recruit in the plains and woods, ogres may recruit in the marsh and hills, etc.

Each creature may recruit its own kind, but multiple weak creatures may be eligible to recruit more powerful creatures. For example, one ogre in the marsh or hills may recruit only another ogre, but two ogres in the marsh may recruit a troll, while three ogres in the hills may recruit a minotaur.

Titan is well-designed in many respects, but it is most distinguished by the incentives for combat. In games such as Risk it is wise to attack as little as possible, and build up strength, while encouraging the other players to exhaust themselves in endless battles with each other. In Titan, it is possible for the victor of a battle to emerge stronger than before, depending on the circumstances.

Another unique incentive of the Titan rules is the incentive for movement. While players in a game like Risk are advised to wall themselves in as much as possible and build their forces, a player can only build their armies in Titan by moving to new terrain to recruit creatures. This can lead to situations where a player has to balance the risk of moving into a dangerous area versus the gain of a powerful addition to their army.

The victor of each battle is awarded points based on strength of the creatures vanquished. For each hundred points a player earns, he is awarded an angel, a strong creature which can teleport from its own legion to aid an attacking legion in future battles. Also, for each one hundred points a player earns, his titan becomes stronger in battle. And finally, at four hundred points, a player's titan gains the ability to teleport on a roll of six, attacking any enemy legion regardless of position. This speeds the conclusion of games, and makes protracted stalemates unlikely.

Titan plays well with any number of players from 2 to 6, although the character of the game changes somewhat as more players are added. With only two players, the luck factor can be somewhat more pronounced, as an early recruiting advantage or a successful attack on a key enemy stack can be difficult to overcome. But an advantage is that the two-player game eliminates any possibility of collusion between opponents, as well as the chance that mistakes by one opponent could throw the game in the favor of another opponent. Some people dislike three-player games because they tend to remain relatively evenly balanced and go on for quite a long time, while others quite like this characteristic. Four-player games are the most commonly played in tournaments and perhaps offer the best balance of all of the elements of Titan. With five or six players, the initial board can be so crowded that some players are crippled early without doing anything wrong---but many players feel "the more the merrier".

Although dice control the fortunes of the players to a certain extent, skill plays a considerable role. Numerous decision points distinguish experts from amateurs, including:

• Whether to split a legion into two legions for faster recruiting, or keep it unified for more effective fighting.
• Whether to recruit creatures which are better at fighting, or creatures which have more potential for further recruiting.
• Whether to risk losses in attacking in exchange for the potential benefits.
• Whether to defend against an attack in hopes of inflicting maximum damage, or concede, thereby halving the points the attacker gains.
• Whether to use the titan as a powerful attacker, or shield it against any possible danger.
• Whether to hide a weak legion in favorable terrain, or keep moving it in order to keep recruiting.
• Whether to move a legion to a hex where it may recruit, but will be forced by the movement restrictions to move in an unfavorable direction on the next turn.
• Whether to grow a moderately weak legion, or sacrifice it to divert an enemy legion

Also, the tactics and strategy of individual battles invite considerable study. A slightly inferior force under superior generalship will win more often than not.

The only serious drawbacks to the game are the moderate complexity of the rules, the potentially long play time (the 2-12 hours suggested on the box side is no lie!), and the socially awkward possibility of one or two players being eliminated long before the game is over. These disadvantages aside, Titan is perfect for serious strategists who view a little luck as desirable to keep a game from getting stale.

Contents

Titan has a huge number of game pieces to play with. Many players like to add additional characters, usually of even more power than the standard characters, also some such variants can drastically change the balance of the game. Here is a complete list of everything that is originally included with the game:

• 1 Masterboard (22"L x 16"W x 3mmH)
• 1 Law Of Titan Rule Book
• 4 Playing Dice (Standard Die size for most board games)
• 6 Battlelands Sheets (11 areas and 1 rule sheet (8 1/2" x 11"))
• 8 Character sheets (Each character sheet holds 49 pieces that are 1"L x 1"W x 2mmH)
• 1 Hit Counter Sheet

Titan was sold in large quantities and widely distributed, so even though it has been out of print for about 10 years, copies are still widely available on the used-game market (including eBay).

Many players discarded the "hit counters", and use dice, instead, to mark damage on the characters.

Spinoffs

The 1997 card game Titan: The Arena was loosely based on this game. It was co-designed by Reiner Knizia and published by Avalon Hill and was later repackaged by Fantasy Flight Games under the name Colossal Arena.

External links

• Titan Home Page Bruno Wolff's Titan page, with rules errata, tournament results, etc.
• Titan and Titan: The Arena at BoardGameGeek
• ACTS Automated Card Tracking System by Warhorse Simulations, where you can find games and play with people from around the world
• Colossus, an online implementation of Titan
• Titan Fan Page from cheewai, incl. an overview of a lot of variants of Titan and more...
• Gods of Titan, a variant of Titan