Friday, December 21, 2012

Review: Chrononauts

If you have ever wanted to see how saving the Titanic or assassinating Hitler would effect the timeline, Chrononauts is your game!  From the creators of Fluxx and Are You The Traitor?, this 1-6 player game takes between 20 and 45 minutes to play.

At the beginning of the game, each player is given an identity, a mission, and three cards.  On each turn, you draw one card and play one card.  You win if you restore the timestream to match your identity (you restore your proper timeline), you fulfill your mission (find 3 specific artifacts), or you have 10 cards at the end of your turn (you get more cards from patching time paradoxes).  The timeline is an 8x4 grid of cards made up of ripple points and linchpins.  Each linchpin has one of two states (e.g. Abraham Lincoln is assassinated - the true history and Abraham Lincoln was wounded - the alternate history).  Changing a linchpin will cause specific ripple points to flip over to their paradox sides.  Paradoxes can be patched by causing alternate events to take place (America never joins WW2 because they love German cake too much).  Each ID card requires one event to be in its true history side and two time cards to be either patched or on their alternate history side.

This game is a lot of fun because it combines the simplexity (simple complexity) of Fluxx (all you're doing is drawing one card and playing another each turn - that's not complicated) with hidden win conditions.  There are also cards that can cause you to get a new identity (Your parents never met!) or get a new mission, so if someone seems close to their goal (which can be hard to tell sometimes), you can essentially make them start over.  Or if someone has a lot of cards in their hand, you can cause a Discontinuity to rotate hands and you get all their cards.  Having the ability to go for three different goals at any one time makes it really easy to change strategies quickly, which you'll probably need to do often if the other players are doing their job.  If you love Fluxx, but want a little bit more (i.e. any) strategy and time traveling doesn't hurt your brain too much, I would highly recommend this game.

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