This past Wednesday (Feb 11) there were 6 of us: me (RussW), Marty, Brady and James had all planned in advance to play Titan. Kevin and JP (from Go club -- hmm, I really should be plugging the Go club -- we meet every Tuesday night in the Dobie Mall food court, and newcomers are welcome!) also showed up and decided to join the Titan festivities since there were no other players available. Wednesday night regulars Ken and RussD had work commitments that night, hence the lower than average attendance.

The game started slowly, but not just because of Kevin & JP being newbies to the game. There just wasn't much combat for a while. It took about 4 or 5 hours before the first player was eliminated! James knocked out Brady, and soon thereafter James knocked out Kevin. And on we played.

Around 2am, I put on Eve's Plum and the Cranberries, in homage to the 14 hour Titan duel Randy Paul and I played a few years ago from 8pm until 10am (listening to those same 2 CDs over and over).

At 4:30am it was decided to adjourn and finish next Wednesday.

Ok, so maybe it wasn't the brightest idea to start a Titan game on a weekday evening! But sometimes you just have to stay up too late playing Titan. It's the glory of the thing.

As it stands, James has the strongest Titan, but only 1 legion! (Ironic, since he now has 36 legion markers to use...) JP has many stacks with Behemoths and Gorgons, but doesn't yet have Titan Teleport like James. Russ and Marty each have 4 or 5 stacks. Russ got a Giant, and Marty got a Dragon. At this point, I'd bet on JP winning (damn beginner's luck!) but it's still uncertain. It's far enough along, though, that we don't expect another all-night session, so we Titan players should get to play some German games afterward this coming Wednesday.

Since there were NO completed games at RussCon this week, there are no new devil ratings to report!

OVERLOOKED RULE OF THE WEEK:

"If a player mistakenly rolls more dice than he was due, he must reroll with the correct number. The second roll in this case may only count hits equal to or less than those achieved by the first roll, all additional hits being ignored."

(Kevin had rolled 9 dice scoring 5 hits versus James. We noticed he should have rolled 8, so he rerolled with 8 dice, now scoring 6 hits!)

I found Bruno Wolff's Titan Errata web page which notes that in such a case the victim has the option of letting the first roll stand and not forcing a new roll with the correct (lower) number of dice. This page has some explanations of some quite obscure rule questions, such as exactly which moments in the turn sequence one is allowed to resign or to concede a battle. Or one of my favorites:

12.4: You are never forced to carry over damage, even if you took a penalty (forsaking a benefit is the same as taking a penalty) in order to allow carry over.

I suppose this could make sense if you wanted to do damage without actually killing a creature, just so he'd still be a live roadblock preventing the opponent from getting a stronger creature up there. Still, I'll be impressed if I ever see someone use this rule and it actually appears a rational thing for them to do.

RULES LAWYER OF THE WEEK:

When you kill a Titan, you of course get half points for all that player's other legions which are immediately eliminated. However, "Points scored in this manner add to the respective Titan's Power-factor, but will not add Angels... regardless of the multiples of 100 points attained."

James was most delighted when Marty thoughtfully remembered this rule, ensuring that James would NOT get his Archangel for passing 500 points... Well done, Marty!

NEXT GAMING:

Nothing at my place Sunday -- I'm out of town this weekend. So see y'all Wednesday at 7pm as usual at xxxxx Barchetta Drive, where there should be plenty of non-Titan players available this time...