Change history one card at a time
Sep. 15th, 2001 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khaosworksHad a fun time today at the Comics Mart. No, thanks to the 9/11 incident, the shipment won't be in the shop until Monday, but I bought my copy of Axis & Allies: Pacific and broke it out and test-played a few turns. Such wonderful plastic toys! We're going to try to get a game together next week with enough players so I don't nuts playing all the Allied forces by myself against Kelvin's Japanese Empire.
But the real fun was when Andy showed up and we started playing Chrononauts, which is my favourite card game at the moment, designed by Looney Labs, the same guys who designed Fluxx, the game where the rules change according to the cards played.
Chrononauts is a game of time travel - each player is given a secret identity and mission. Each identity identifies the alternate reality where the player comes from, and the mission three artifacts. The way to win is either have ten cards in your hand at the end of your turn, collect the three artifacts in your mission card, or - the most fun - changing history (represented by a 8 X 8 grid of timeline cards), creating paradoxes and patching them so that they reflect your own alternate so you can "go home".
It's a great game - small events can have huge ramifications, for example, saving John Lennon from being assassinated and killing Ronald Reagan paradoxes the Challenger Disaster, which can only be patched by an event where Lennon protests against the criminalization of marijuana on the shuttle launchpad, leading to its legalization and preventing Challenger from launching and thus exploding. If you can patch it right, Lennon also goes on to become a US Senator and bans guns, preventing the Columbine Tragedy. And of course, there's the added value of a Beatles' Reunion Album (available only as a bonus card in the Fluxx expansion pack of blank Fluxx cards) as an artifact from this alternate - playable only if Lennon lives.
I recommend it heartily. It's a combination of luck, smarts and thinking three steps ahead of the opposition, and trying to salvage your strategy when time warps force you to either switch hands with the player beside you, or change it such that Your Parents Never Met and you need to choose a whole new identity, and thus a whole new alternate...
With all that's happening in the world today, one wishes we'd find an alternate where 9/11 didn't happen the way we saw it did.
But the real fun was when Andy showed up and we started playing Chrononauts, which is my favourite card game at the moment, designed by Looney Labs, the same guys who designed Fluxx, the game where the rules change according to the cards played.
Chrononauts is a game of time travel - each player is given a secret identity and mission. Each identity identifies the alternate reality where the player comes from, and the mission three artifacts. The way to win is either have ten cards in your hand at the end of your turn, collect the three artifacts in your mission card, or - the most fun - changing history (represented by a 8 X 8 grid of timeline cards), creating paradoxes and patching them so that they reflect your own alternate so you can "go home".
It's a great game - small events can have huge ramifications, for example, saving John Lennon from being assassinated and killing Ronald Reagan paradoxes the Challenger Disaster, which can only be patched by an event where Lennon protests against the criminalization of marijuana on the shuttle launchpad, leading to its legalization and preventing Challenger from launching and thus exploding. If you can patch it right, Lennon also goes on to become a US Senator and bans guns, preventing the Columbine Tragedy. And of course, there's the added value of a Beatles' Reunion Album (available only as a bonus card in the Fluxx expansion pack of blank Fluxx cards) as an artifact from this alternate - playable only if Lennon lives.
I recommend it heartily. It's a combination of luck, smarts and thinking three steps ahead of the opposition, and trying to salvage your strategy when time warps force you to either switch hands with the player beside you, or change it such that Your Parents Never Met and you need to choose a whole new identity, and thus a whole new alternate...
With all that's happening in the world today, one wishes we'd find an alternate where 9/11 didn't happen the way we saw it did.
Join the lab rabbits!
Date: 2001-09-17 05:48 pm (UTC)Also, check out the proposed 2001 card at wunderland.com this week.
Re: Join the lab rabbits!
Date: 2001-09-18 05:18 am (UTC)It's a cool card, though, sad as the subject matter is...