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.

Review: Bang!

The Sheriff looks at the men around the table, unsure of who is on his side.  Takes a swig of beer to steady his nerves.  He's suspected Pixie Pete has wanted him dead for awhile now.  Trusting his instincts he quickly pulls out his gun and takes a shot at Pete, but only manages to shoot his hat.  Having run out of bullets, the Sheriff ends his turn.

Bang! is a large group game (7-10 people in my experience) where each player has a different goal based on their assigned Role.  The Outlaws just need to kill the Sheriff.  The Sheriff and Deputies need to kill the Outlaws and the Renegade.  The Renegade needs to be the last man standing.  Problem is, the only role that gets revealed at the start of the game is The Sheriff.  Everyone else's roles are revealed by the actions they take.  And by actions they take, I mean who they shoot at.

Players get character cards as well as Role cards that give them certain abilities.  Maybe you draw 4 cards per turn.  Maybe you can use any card in your hand to avoid getting shot.  The more powerful the ability, the less maximum health you have during the game.

On your turn, you draw two cards, put any equipment cards down in front of you to help you reach other players or get farther away from them.  Your ability to shoot someone is based on where they are sitting at the table in relation to you.  If they are next to you, they are 1 away and you can shoot them by default.  If they are sitting next to those people, they are 2 away from you.  And so on and so forth.  You can use one Bang! card per round to shoot at someone within range.

I love playing Bang! because of its asymmetric goals and its character abilities.  It's a lot of fun trying to figure out who is what with as little information as possible.  The downside is in games where you know who is who, but just don't have the cards to do anything to help your team out.  Or if you're the Renegade.  It's really hard to win as the Renegade.  Especially for me, since people almost always point out I'm the Renegade before I even get my first turn...The other downside of the game is that it is elimination based, so it's very possible for one person to get knocked out of the game very early and then have to watch everyone else have fun until the game is over.  There is an expansion with a few cards to help fix this problem, but it still sucks to get knocked out because someone went on a successful killing spree early on.  One of my personal rules while playing is that I refuse to ever kill someone on the first round because of that.  The other thing to keep in mind is that just like you always get jokes playing Settlers of Catan about people needing or getting wood, you will hear plenty of jokes about someone banging someone else (especially if there is a married couple playing it seems) and I guarantee someone will start to sing "I Shot the Sheriff" before the game is done.

Review: Shadow Hunters

A war is being waged between Shadows and their hunters with some innocent bystanders caught in the middle.  In Shadow Hunters, players are randomly given characters from one of these three teams, which they keep secret.  Each team has their own goal, Shadows win by killing all the Hunters, Hunters win by killing all the Shadows, and Neutrals each have their own goal based on which character they have.

On their turn, players roll the dice to see which area they move to.  Based on the area they land on, players may draw a green, white, or black card or hurt/heal another player.  After that, the player may attack another player in an adjacent area.

Green cards (Hermit cards) are used to try to figure out who is what.  They each have instructions like, "Shadows and Hunters take on damage", so if a player is given this card and they are a Shadow or Hunter, they must move their health token up one space.  Otherwise they say, "This has no effect."  Using a combination of these cards and who attacks whom, players can start to determine who is on their side and who isn't.

White cards are usually defensive or healing items whereas Black cards are offensive items.  Characters also have special abilities that they can use once per game (except for some Neutrals whose special abilities are automatically used at specific times).

Gameplay is fairly simple, but filled with opportunities for strategies, deception, and teamwork.  However, setting up the game is a fairly complicated procedure and takes a lot more time than it should for how simple the game plays.  The game is for 4-8 players (more is better) and takes roughly 45 minutes to play.

Review: The Resistance

The Resistance has missions they must accomplish, but unbeknownst to them there are spies among their organization who are out to foil their plans.  Each side (spies and resistance) has 5 chances to achieve their own goals, the side that achieves their goal 3 times out of those 5 chances wins the game.

At the beginning of the game, players are given a card that determines whether they are part of the resistance, one of the spies, or the mission leader (the mission leader will also get a spy/resistance role card after he reveals he is a mission leader).  Just like in the beginning of Mafia, all players close their eyes and all the spies reveal themselves to each other so they know who they are working with.

The mission leader chooses a set number of players (based on which mission number they are on) to go on a mission.  All the players then vote on whether they approve of the team or not.  If the team is denied, the current mission leader passes that responsibility (and its card) to the player on their left and players repeat this process until a team is approved.

Once a team is approved, each team member gets a mission fail and mission success card.  They pass one of their choice to the  mission leader and the others go in a discard pile.  Resistance members MUST pass a success to the  mission leader, spies can choose either one.  Once all cards are distributed, the mission leader reveals them.  In 4 out of 5 of the missions, a single fail card revealed will be a success for the spies, otherwise the resistance wins.  The other mission requires to fail cards to fail the mission.  This cycle continues until one side has 3 victories.

This game is a very quick 30 minute game for 5-10 people (best with 7 players).  This game plays like a mix between Mastermind and Mafia.  There are relatively clear strategies/methods to figure out who is on which side, but just as many methods of deceiving each other.  I'm not sure how well this game would hold up if you played with the same group of friends repeatedly, but I guess that's a general problem with games of this sort, like Bang and Mafia.