Zen Fairborn
Australia
Perth
Western Australia
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You have a gift. Time Travel has been made active to you and you are assigned to travel, as you need, to collect priceless artifacts as per your assignment. Once you have collected them, recall yourself back. You will receive a paycheck sizeable enough to retire on in luxurious abundance.
However; the time stream can only resist a SINGLE recall. Attempting a second will theoretically rip a hole in our reality which would destroy our universe. No organization, our included, is going to risk this. Also, know that other groups have activated their own Chrononaughts on missions similar to your own. If any of them complete their mission and make a recall, all Time Travel WILL be suspended. So unless you want to be isolated in a technologically inferior period of history, I recommend you finish YOUR job before anyone else finishes theirs. As soon as a recall is made, we will be locking the timeline so it can’t be manipulated further.
We know you will likely need to manipulate events to access your targets. Just remember every change you make to our history will create flexible temporal periods - paradoxes they are called. While a few Pardoxes are harmless, too much damage to the time-stream will theoretically rip open and destroy the universe. We recommend you do NOT let that happen.
However, by creating and PATCHING paradoxes (as you’ve been trained to do to maintain the continuity of the time-line despite its changes), you will increase the speed you are in completing your mission. Do a good job of patching up the timeline and improving our history, we may not even need you to finalize your mission.
One last word of warning about your time-traveling rivals. Not all of them are going to ignore the power they have been given. While they will all be rewarded for completing their mission, some may be more power hungry. They may reshape history to create their ideal future. If they do this and then time lock the past by making their recall, they will be free to live in a society of their own desire and creation while the rest of us will have never existed. Not even you.
All of them are out for themselves. Trust no one. Complete your mission, come home, and please don’t destroy us all.
Good luck... Chrononaught...
While everyone has their own way of explaining the game, I like my above version. It summarizes the gameplay in a creative fasion and creates a more gothic mood (while I appreciate the humor of Chrononaughts, if I’m playing a compeditive game I’ll treat it with a cold military mindset!).
Regardless of that however, Chrononaughts is REALLY REALLY fun and I would recommend it to anyone!
So, let see what this game (and all my creative blabbering) is all about:
WHAT IS IT?
Chrononaughts is a fun and fast card-game that (for such a small box) takes up a sizeable amount of space! There are no dice, no tokens, no markers, no recording sheets, just cards. And not even a lot of cards! Yet, of these cards, 36 will be laid out to create the ‘Time-Line’ which will take up a bit of space. Beyond them are three decks, two of which are only used in the setup stages to let players know how they can win the game. The third should be in easy access to all players as it will see a lot of action.
Incredibly a game of Chrononaughts DOES resolve in under an hour. An average game runs for close to 30 minutes. During this time all players must seek to finish their goals, while trying to deduce what everyone else is seeking to do and prevent them from doing it.
This is a competitive game. Yet, due to its speed, simplicity, sillyness, and slight luck focus (there is strategy in this game - more on that latter) it’s very hard to get frustrated with this game even if you don’t win.
HOW TO WIN
Chrononaughts is a game with multiple victories. Each player is given x2 cards at the start of the game – a MISSION and an IDENTITY. These govern x2 of your x3 ways to win the game, and they are shuffled and dealt out randomly. This immediately offers great REPLAY VALUE as you will almost always have a different combination of goals each time you play - offering different strategies on how to earn your win.
So what are these two ‘goal-setting’ cards?
- Your MISSION card is the reason you were sent back in time. You are asked to find 3 (or more) Artifacts. These are somewhere in the only deck of cards in the game and you need to find them and have them in front of you at the end of YOUR turn. Chances are of course other players will draw them, or even throw them away (not realizing their value to you) OR even put them in play towards completing their OWN Mission. This can sound conflicting to your goal. Fortunately, with the power of time-travel available, all characters are excellent thieves and there are many cards that will help you salvage discarded artifacts or steal them from your rivals.
- Your IDENTITY card could be renamed your ‘Agenda’ card. It describes what your character considers to be the ‘Ideal Future/History’. By manipulating the time-line, creating Paradoxes and Patching them, you can create your desired history. Should the time-line match the requirements on your IDENTITY card at the end of your turn, you win the game.
In addition to the above two cards, there is a final way of winning (if a bit rare). Should a player have more than 10 cards in their hand at the end of their turn, they win the game (because since they have so much influence over the timeline, they effectively can make it do whatever they want on a whim). In most other games this would be easy. In Chrononaughts however, it is not the case (at least no in beginner games).
It should also be noted there is one last END GAME condition. Should there by more than 12 Paradoxes on the board at ANY time, the game ends and NO ONE wins. Unless you are Crazy Joe (the only IDENTITY to benefit from the universe ending... yup... he’s THAT crazy!) no player will want this to happen.
HOW TO PLAY
As mentioned, this is a simple game. Each turn a player draws a card from the deck (getting a new card). They must then do one of the following:
1) Play a card
2) Discard a card
3) Discard x2 cards and draw 1 new card
While simple at first, on close examination this system maintains the number of cards in a player’s hand which makes it difficult for any player to reach 10 cards. However, it does let the player shuffle the cards from their hand to seek new cards which reduces the time any player ever feels they are ever in a standstill.
Given this is all a player does on their turn, each turn is resolved in around 20 seconds. This results in a VERY fast moving, but stress free, game.
STRATEGY
For such a simple game, Chrononaughts is brimming with strategy and tactics based on a single action/ per player/ per turn rule. To win with your ID card, you need to create paradoxes and the Patch them with the required Patch. Thing is this requires x2 actions, meaning you must create a Paradox on one turn and apply the Patch (if you have it) the following turn.
However, since no one want the universe to blow up, players can create Paradoxes on the events they WANT Patched in the hopes other players will Patch them for them. Why would any other player do this though? Because whenever a player Patches a Paradox, they DRAW A NEW CARD (and any player who has 10 cards in their hand wins the game). Of course they may have NOW helped a player get a step towards the reality the desire, and a step closer to the game. A good way to fix that is to reverse the fate that caused the Paradox. This resets the timeline, puts the rival a step back, and leaves the ‘temporal maintance worker’ with the bonus card reward.
There are other ways of faking players out. For example You can play artifacts in front of you to make players assume you are seeking to complete your mission, while you focus on drawing cards to manipulate the time stream. Since there are 3 paths to victory, players will need be mindful of each other to focus on preventing anyone else from winning. This gets the game involved with some player interaction and keeps the game on the table. However, there are far too many other strategies to consider in this game to be written down in this (already long) review. So I’ll leave it to another post to list them off.
RESULT
As mentioned, this game is simple. Its fast. Its fun. Its light. Its finished in under an hour (sometimes under half-an-hour) which makes it a GREAT game between long games, or to kill time will early arrivals to a game-night while waiting on the rest of the number to arrive. It’s simple and can be learned in minutes, but requires a few play sessions to master every tactic and strategy. Its very hard to think how this game in its design alone could not appeal to anyone, as its almost a link between common games such as UNO and the more exotic and complicated Magic the Gathering - all with a feel you are almost playing a RPG and a Boardgame without moving and figurines or rolling any dice.
In the end this is a game of what you want to make of it. I find it fun and for a small travel size and reasonably low cost, I would recommend everyone to buy and try it. At the worst, it’s likely someone else will want it from you - even if it’s as simple as a gift to the neighbor’s kids.
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Byron Olson
United States
Ramsey
Minnesota
Soiled Short (n): A short film, often a commercial or PSA, that has been riffed MST3K style. See soiledshortz on YouTube for more info.
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I love your intro.
This really is a fun little game. Even people who might not like Looney Labs other games might like this one. I quite enjoy the idea of Time Travel (preferably in a TARDIS!) and this game quenches my appetite for it.
Until the real thing of course...
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Marshall Miller
United States
Medford
Massachusetts
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soiledshortz wrote: I quite enjoy the idea of Time Travel (preferably in a TARDIS!)
I would so shell out for a Dr. Who themed Chrononaughts (actually, just a Britian-centric card set would do the trick).
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Adam Douglas
Australia
Forestville
NSW
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Dammit! That DrWho variant suggestion needs more promotion! It's an excellent idea!!!
Is the developer still looking at these forums?
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Byron Olson
United States
Ramsey
Minnesota
Soiled Short (n): A short film, often a commercial or PSA, that has been riffed MST3K style. See soiledshortz on YouTube for more info.
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wile wrote: Dammit! That DrWho variant suggestion needs more promotion! It's an excellent idea!!! Is the developer still looking at these forums?
I hope so. I heard that they are making a "Back to the Future" one. I wish they would have gotten the license for the Whoverse instead...
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Andrew Looney
United States
College Park
Maryland
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Hate to break it to you-all, but I'm not much of a Dr. Who fan, and I also don't think it would work very well as the basis for a Chrononauts game, so I'm afraid it's not likely to happen.
(However, BTTF is an incredibly good fit! Just you wait and see!)
As for a British-centric version, that's something I have thought about (albeit very casually). One of my favorite Linchpin ideas is to go to November 5, 1605 and stop that other time traveler from interfering with Guy Fawke's plan to blow up Parliament. But at that point, my lack of expertise in British history always gets in the way. Because the question then becomes, how would history be different if the Gunpowder Plot had succeeded? Discuss.
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Byron Olson
United States
Ramsey
Minnesota
Soiled Short (n): A short film, often a commercial or PSA, that has been riffed MST3K style. See soiledshortz on YouTube for more info.
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Well, first off, "V for Vendetta" probably would have never been made. That would truly suck.
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Posted Wed May 5, 2010 9:44 pm
