Titan!

Well, it has finally been done. Titan was reprinted by a company called Valley Games. I had pre-ordered it in January, and it was supposed to ship in July. There were some printing problems, which pushed it out to October. Well, I got it yesterday, November 22nd, 2008, 5 days after my birthday, so YAY! Here's a picture review of it.

Fresh out of the box, shrink wrap still on.
Two boxes, the Titan game, and the Titan Figure Expansion set - free because I pre-ordered the Titan game. More on these later.
But my first impression was that the box is bigger than the original box set. And the Titans figure box is awful huge, too. What else should I expect? The box looks like great amounts of time and effort went into these. I am excited, so I grab a blade, and open up the shrink wrap.

I gotta see the board, so I pull it out, and this is the NEW titan board. I awe at it a bit, and I think it is a little dark. It's cool and all, but the dark gray / black base of the board seems to be hard to see and read. We'll see when I actually get to play it. But it has features the original didn't. It still has the muster charts, but it has masterboard movement rules.

From left to right: player aids, rulebook, scoring chits. I normally use really small dice to mark damage on creatures, and I'll probably not use the damage chits. I'll try the scoreboard, though.

Chits!! left to right again, but tough to see due to overlap.. I wanted to give a view of the stuff, but not every single sheet; let's keep the post somewhat reasonable in length. Legion Markers, and creatures, creatures, creatures, creatures! I have mixed feelings about these markers. They are bigger than the original, thicker and the images seem a little less obvious. I looked at one, and it said Guardian. I couldn't immediately recall the creature. I said to myself, Guardian? What is that.. Oh yeah, 3 of anything in the tower, 12 2 and it flies. The original used a Blob figure, this set uses a horseman with two swords. Other than that, all the creatures look similar to their names. The colors are kinda muted, I guess updated. The original crayon color scheme was classic, but a new revision I guess gets a new vision. The Legion markers are both new in color, and have different images. The new markers use wings instead of a star to indicate flying, and a bow and arrow instead of a lightning bolt to indicate range striker, but those aren't bad either.



BattleBoards! Two-sided, just like the original. Again, the boards are thicker and bigger. The original was based on 1 inch square creatures; all the new markers are about one eighth inch bigger, and so the battle boards and Masterboard got sized accordingly.. Again bigger! but better? I like the thicker cardboard over the cardstock battleboards, that's for sure.



So, I get all the stuff out of the box, and this is what is at the bottom, a plastic tray with pictures of the markers under each little spot. A storage tray for the counters! Way cool. Previously, I used plastic baggies, and friends of mine used some generic plastic trays, but this one is custom for all the tiles, and pictures for what goes where. Oh, and look, dice, we'll look at those later, too.



Counters in place. I punched 'em all out, and put 'em in place. A few issues: some of the spots are too tight, particularly the right side where the color legion markers go; there's only room for 11 instead of 12. I tried jamming 12 in one, and I thought I had ruined the last one I was jamming in.. I moved some to the sides of other places.. I was disappointed that it was such a tight fit, but still mostly happy that there is a storage solution built in - very cool.



Dice! First question I asked myself was.. "Hmm.. how many??" The original came with like 6 or something - it's been such a loooooong time, I think I bought my original set in '89 or so.. Anyway, you should have a minimum of 18 dice, for the serpent, who of course rolls 18 dice for attack. Guess how many come in the game?? 20! Yay! They aren't bad dice, definitely usable.



Okay, now on to the Titan Figure Expansion, here's what the box looked like upon opening, and my first thought was.. Wow, those are BIG. These are huge, I figured a 2" tall mini at most, probably a 1" or 1.5" mini.. these are 3" tall, and from swordtip to swordtip, 5.5". I think they are a little too big.. But again, I'll try 'em before I just dismiss them.



Here's a size comparison. I grabbed one of my D&D minis, and put it next to the Titan figure, and a ruler. It's kind of a bad pic; I used white paper for the background.



Bad news!! My red figure arrived broken (in 3 pieces) in the box! I can probably glue it back together, but I am going to also contact Valley Games about a replacement.

Well, that's it! That's my new Titan game. I like it, and I love it. I was looking forward to a newer reprint, but I'm torn between my nostalgia of the original, and the excitement of the updated version.. Well, I am one person that has both, so I guess I do have both worlds. Anyone for a game of Titan??