Titan gets a reprint!!

[LilNewbie]

Titan! One of the first AH (Avalon Hill for you young'uns) games that I played and loved it! It's been OOP for a long time but finally Valley Games has announced a reprint of this famous and elusive game:

http://www.boardgamenews.com/index.p..._valley_games/

Here is the BGG entry for the original:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/103

Can't wait to see the new artwork for the game and hopefully the rule changes will keep the original feel of the game while streamlining the gameplay.

Newb.

[mrbistro]

Hey cool. It's not a perfect game, but definitely a fun one and a great reminder of the "old days."

[Hex_Enduction_Hour]

IT's a long-playing game, if I'm not mistaken?
I would like to try this classic if only to see what the hype is about!
Might be a choice candidate for the 'cabin collection'.

[LilNewbie]

It can be a long game but a lot of fun. I'm hoping the updated rules help fix some of the long play issues but it was still fun fighting those huge battles on the battle maps.

Newb.

[Hex Sinister]

I also hope they've made the gameplay faster. Titan is just.... wierd. I'm not sure how to define it. It's a terrible game for someone with a poor memory like me. There are soo many chits, it gets bogged down fast. I play it on my computer a lot though. As you would imagine, the AI is funky but it's playable. You can actually finish a game that way, too.

Download Colossus (Titan) below:
http://colossus.sourceforge.net/

It would be better if it had some sound effects but hey, it's freeware! Being able to look at your unit stacks with a click is just sweet. I really enjoy the variants provided. Undead and Abyssimal are more fun than the original. You could easily make battleboards with Scape terrain to enhance the flavor. Unfortunately, there would be way too many minis to proxy out so you'd be stuck with the old chits.

[Tiberius]

This is the original Titan and not titan arena, correct? The one where you have all the colored symboled cardboard cutouts and you move them around a board with different terrains on a path and recruit different monsters and then split up those piles to recruit other monsters? I love that game but we had a few house rules when I played at my friend's house that made things move alot faster. For example you roll seperately for each stack instead of rolling once and each stack having to move that amount, that way you can pick and choose who moves where to get the recruits you want easier. If I am remembering it correctly. That used to be one of my most favorite games and it sold for 100+ on Ebay so I never bought it.

[mrbistro]

Titan's kind of weird. I read design notes by the guys who made it once, and it's evolution was all over the place. It started off as a more standard chits-on-hexes-based wargame, but the games they played would never end. So to create an endgame they began to make alterations until they had the oddity that is Titan in its current form. Games of Titan are extremely long, especially if you have more than two players. And some players will lose interest when they sit idly by watching others take extremely long turns. Yet there is something wonderful about the game's battles with lions, warlocks, behemoths and trolls.

[teekay]

Hi, I hope I'm not toooooo late in joining the discussion, but I just discovered they are/have re-released the game and knew I'd find a thread about it here.

Back in 1982, I purchased the game because I really liked the concept of the game and the art was done by the artist, DAT. DAT did a lot of artwork for TSR and Dragon Magazine at the time and each chit of the game was individually drawn and there are a LOT of them!

My friends didn't care for the game itself (too long) so I've had it sitting on a shelf the last umteen years. Just threw it on eBay if anyone is interested or wants to see what I'm talking about in regards to the individual art on the chits.

http://cgi.ebay.com/TITAN-FANTASY-WA...QQcmdZViewItem

I enjoyed the game myself and looking over the old components, it's an easy comparison to HeroScape. Looking at the BattleLands (the separate close-up hex maps) you can easily see how making a HeroScape version of TITAN would be possible. But Hex Sinister is right when saying that keeping track of armies (stacks) would be daunting. There has to be a way.

Maybe over the Christmas holiday, I'll look more closely into designing a playable rules variation.

[Taeblewalker]

I have Titan plus both the original and new Arena versions. I am eagery awaiting this.

What will the changes be? Will they have creatures with a Skill of 5? Will they have creatures that the Gorgon can muster? What about adding Undead, or something beyond the Colossus?

Best of all, I like the idea of building Titan Battlelands with HS tiles. The only Battleland not entirely buildable is the Desert, as it has an elevation issue with a cliff that is inconsistent. Other than that, it's possible to cover all the terrain in the game:

Plain: Rock
Brush: Grass
Sand: Sand
Bog: Swamp Water
Tree: Tree
Drift: Snow
Volano: Lava Field
Tower: Road

[UtahScott]

Some links on Valley Games' new issue of Titan are available.

Preorder site (with 30% $$ discount & bonus 3D Titan sculpts!):
Here.

Art designer blog--with pics of the new board, battleboard, counter & monster designs:
Here here. 11/3 and 10/11 entries.

At this point there are no new monsters or terrains. There is always the possibility that these could be addressed in an expansion, I suppose.

I rather like the new artwork, especially the themed legion styles, and the new monsters. I don't mind computer-generated. I have the original myself, but would consider this new one if I didn't.

And the only problem with the latest version of Colossus is that the computer players sometimes fail to field all monsters to the battleboard--for no good reason.

[mrbistro]

Thanks for the blog link US. I like the approach Valley has taken with the look of Titan, and I like the extra info on the battleground maps.

[UtahScott]

As a personal preference, I wish the design team had deigned to keep the blue tint on the meandering counterclockwise track -- so much easier for newbies to figure out where their legions would be going.