TACTICAL TITAN

Tactical Titan was invented in the 1990s as a variant that lets you focus on the really fun part - the tactical battle with all the dice rolling. I think some players, possibly me included, were frustrated with the strategic board and just wanted games that got down to the combat. So I came up with these rules. I played a lot throughout the 1990s, mostly with one particular friend who really liked the game, but I did manage to get a couple other guys to play a few times.

Playing the game required some kind of big map with terrain like what is on the Titan Battlelands, which I painstakingly made by hand. Alternately, you could construct a map out of photocopied and trimmed Battlelands, as is suggested in the rules. I also invented new monster types to go with the revised mustering rules. There are a couple of examples to the right, and I scanned all of the counters I created if you want to see them. They definitely look homemade!

Here's the summary of the game from the rulebook:

1.0 SUMMARY

TACTICAL TITAN is a tactical battle game based on Avalon Hill's TITAN. The game uses the character counters of the original game along with maps which are like mosaics of TITAN Battlelands. As in TITAN, each player starts with a Titan character and a small force. New characters are mustered by different mechanics, but using the same progression. Turn sequence proceeds like a TITAN Battle-Round on a much larger scale. New rules allow characters to heal damage taken during combat.

 

 Earth Elemental
Manticore

The complete rules are at the link below, or you can download them in PDF format.

Tactical Titan Rules

One noteworthy thing about these rules is that they don't specify number of players. I only ever played with 2 players at once, that I can recall. You could tell whose pieces were whose based on their orientation. Theoretically you could play with more than 2 players, but then it might get harder to tell everyone's pieces apart, since that would be based on subtler differences in rotational positioning. But wouldn't a 4 player battle royale be a blast, if you could pull it off?

I also came up with this idea of Scenarios, which involved custom maps, new rules, state changes and a goal of some kind. They might be strung together to form a sort of campaign. But there wasn't much interest in this from the other players, so we just played lots of slugathons.

Below is an scanned image of a home made map. It's just a part of the map. The label A1 is to help with putting it together with the other parts. The color didn't come out to too good on the scan, but I think you can tell that there is a marsh region, and a woods region, and a plains region, all next to a tower region. You would start the game with a small force in the tower, and spread out from there. Here's the complete map and here's the map showing a game in progress.

Tactical Titan Map Section

Adapting Tactical Titan Rules to the Strategy Game

Many of the new rules in Tactical Titan could easily be added to the base game. The Healing Phase fits in easily, for example.

The rules for Overstacking could be optionally used, though they were really designed for the large Tactical Titan maps, which turned out in playtesting to be difficult for Rangers. Without the Overstacking rules, there is no way to set up a front with defenders shielding a line of rangestriking Rangers. Overstacking takes care of that problem, but might be less significant on the small Battle Lands.

The new rules for mustering, where dice are rolled, don't really work with the base game. To incorporate the new character types, revised summoning and master mustering rules could be used. For the master musters, the rules could simply be that two of the character type at the top of the regular Masterchart will muster the Master character type. For example, two Rangers in the Plains or Marsh will muster a Ranger Captain. Two Gorgons in the Brush will muster a Manticore, and so forth. Counter limits apply, as always. I created two of each character type, except for Ranger Captains, of which there were four.

The summoning rules could be adapted as a new kind of muster as well. These musters would be instead of the normal muster in a Land, so each Legion can still only muster at most one character each turn. Here's a suggested revision to the Mastercharts:

Alternately, there are rules for mustering and summoning in Campaign Titan. The muster rules are a little more strict than what is above, and summoning requires a dice roll. Since summoning requires a dice roll, there is a chance of the summon failing. However, an advantage over the above muster rules is that the summon can be attempted with only one Warlock. In addition, it is possible for a Titan to participate in the summoning, since they might have a magic item or spell which allows it!

Steve's Titan Corner



 This page by Steve Barrera 2022

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