You can level a lot of complaints at the business model that Kickstarter encourages. Too many fingers in the pie of game production as backers demand their say? Sure, there’s plenty of that. Or how about all those utterly crap games that get produced on the promise of big miniatures and gorgeous artwork? Yup, there’s a whole lot of that, too. The biggest crime of the model, I think, is that it ignores retail distribution and marketing.
With all the mediocre, overproduced crimes against my hobby it’s pumped out into the world, by far Kickstarter’s worst offense was keeping Anachrony out of my hands for so long.
Anachrony is a worker placement game that provides some fabulous twists on the genre. In a typical worker placement game, you simply grab a worker and place them on a spot (such a clever name for the genre, no?), then you do whatever action is associated with the spot you picked. It’s a simple concept that makes for some fabulous board games, but David Turczi’s Anachrony pushes in bold and interesting directions.
Instead of just a generic workforce, you have four types of workers, and they have jobs they’re best at. Scientists are aptly the only ones who can perform research, Engineers are enthusiastic about digging for raw materials, Administrators may as well be called “HR Reps” and are best at recruiting, and Geniuses are your wild card that can perform most other jobs.
The unique take doesn’t stop there – if you want to get your workers doing something besides working on your board, they’ll need exosuits to brave the elements. Finally, where a standard worker placement game gives you a handful of people to get the job done, you can wind up with well over a dozen workers to manage to your heart’s content. Anachrony showers you with people to do the work, and yet you rarely feel like you have enough to get the job done. Whether you can’t quite power up enough suits, or it turns out you needed just one more scientist, there’s still a sense of scarcity in this post-apocalyptic world. To add to your woes, most of the time your workers will be coming back from their task exhausted, and in need of water to get back to work.
While water is supposed to be a stand-in for food and necessities, Jeni has imagined splashing water in their faces to get them back to work. Note to self: Don’t work for Jeni.
You could just force the lazy bums back into the laboratories, factories, and wastelands, but your workers’ morale will suffer and so will your score.
As neat as the intricacies of how workers come and go is, by far the game’s most famous element is its incorporation of time travel as a mechanic. At the start of every round, you reveal between zero and two chits with an icon, basically snapping your fingers and receiving the needed materials or workers immediately as a gift from your future self. Just imagine what you would have done in high school if your future self could warp something back to you…
Or better yet, don’t. This is a family friendly site.
Of course, failure to live up to your own obligations and send stuff back to the past when you asked for it is bound to cause problems, and the game represents these through growing paradoxes that eventually become anomalies, spawning in your facilities to take up space and lower your score. In reality, this time travel business is nothing more than a bank loan, but the thematic coat of paint they put on top of it elevates the game in a way that’s purely joyful.
Which brings us to properly reviewing this beast. And I do mean “beast”! In and of itself, Anachrony isn’t the most complex game on my shelf. In fact, it’s fairly intuitive, with most of the rules highlighted on the board in some way. If you consider yourself “good” at learning games, this one should click for you pretty quickly. If, that is, you can get a good rules explanation.
Look, maybe it’s because I spend so much of my free time writing, but I’m beginning to appreciate that there’s a lack of good writers out there willing to work on board game manuals. Even the YouTube tutorials that I could find were incomprehensible, getting themselves lost in describing edge cases and exceptions when generally the game is pretty straightforward. In fact if you could just teach the meaning of the symbols used on the board, that would encompass MOST of the rules right there. So while you should avoid this if you’re only into light games, don’t think that this is a very big and crunchy affair – the manual just makes it seems that. This is a meaty medium-weight affair.
Beyond some amazing artwork and unique hook, what really got me interested in the game was the solo mode, and it doesn’t disappoint! David Turczi created a full-blown bot to play the game against. You simply set up as a two player game, and roll a single six-side die to determine the Chronobot’s actions. But beyond the die, you have a full-blown logic board. The first time you roll a five, the bot gets two water. You move the number five chit, and next time you roll that number it’s going to build a building. If numbers stack on top of each other, you now have a pretty good idea that the Chronobot has a 33% chance of taking that action – so if it’s something you need to do you should probably get on that before it takes the most valuable spots.
This combination of randomness with a hint of predictability gives you all the feel of a human opponent with an automated player that really takes very little maintenance. Solo players will need to spend some time with the manual getting used to exactly how the Chronobot does certain things, but it’s well worth the investment. I’m not yet sure whether or not I’d call Anachrony my favorite solo game of all time, but it’s certainly got my favorite solo mode of all time.
Creating good solo modes for worker placement games has always been a challenge. Uwe Rosenberg famously makes almost all of his games solo capable, but they’re usually a beat-your-own-score system with a single target score to best. That’s fine, and still quite fun, but it misses an element of the genre. Worker placement is also about deciding when to take certain actions. The mining spots can only be used three times in a round, so can you afford to wait or do you need to move on those spots before your opponent? Up until the development of this logic board, worker placement games couldn’t give you this in a solo mode, and the Chronobot might well be a big step forward in how we think about soloing Euro games. Other developers take note: This is what you should deliver for the solitaire player.
There are, however, some limitations. The game comes with one expansion right in the box, but the bot can’t work with it. There are other expansion modules available for purchase, too, and the bot also don’t work with those. I don’t know if the development of a more advanced bot is even possible, but I’m willing to bet there’s someone on Board Game Geek doing the work even as you read this.
There’s also a couple more generalized issues with the game. First, it DESPERATELY needs an organizer in the box. Getting the game set up on the table takes roughly half as long as playing a full solo game itself, and there aren’t nearly enough bags provided in the box to keep your components properly separated. I needed an extra ten or so sandwich bags just to store everything efficiently. I’m not saying they should invest in a full-blown Broken Token style setup, but they should probably look at a basic plastic organizer of the sort that comes with Star Trek: Frontiers. It’s not perfect, but it’s helpful enough to get the game to your table.
Also, we need to talk about this Kickstarter model. While I will happily concede that crowdfunding created a successful product here, you don’t get the full experience if you weren’t a backer. There are some lovely miniatures that just don’t come in the box. You can buy them separately, but the high-tier backers of the project got them right out of the gate. The world is always going to split between the haves and have-nots, but when you have a successful product there’s nothing wrong with traditional retail. People will pay for quality. Oh, I don’t mind my hexagonal tiles for the exosuits and will probably never pay for the miniatures, but there’s no denying they’re a beautiful touch. If you’ve got the cash to burn, you should grab them separately.
Final verdict? This is the future solo gaming. There are a few very minor flaws: long setup and tear down, only one game mode the Chronobot is compatible with, and a difficult to understand rule book – but otherwise this is a must-own for any serious solitaire boardgamer.
4.5 out of 5 cups of coffee!
The real joy of getting your friends to play this one, though, is in the elevator pitch. Each time I’ve explained the rules, or even just told a friend about the game, their eyes light up with the words “time travel.” And seriously – it’s something of a joy to watch people wrap their hands around the innovative idea of borrowing something against your future self
But speaking of teaching the game – this is one of those experiences you’re going to teach your friends. Don’t expect them to understand the rule book, and the dearth of YouTube tutorials means that you’ll be short on help. The gameplay itself, though? Every bit as buttery as the solo mode. In fact, it’s a testament to the solo bot design that you’ll hardly feel a difference in your multiplayer experience.
Unlike certain games (looking at you, Mage Knight) the downtime in Anachrony is completely reasonable between your turns. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot to do when someone else is taking their go, but players don’t typically have so many options in front of them that they’re going to be plagued by analysis paralysis. It easy enough to plan during other players turn, but at four players the time could start to feel like a drag, particularly if your friends are overly… thoughtful.
Or if we’re playing with He Who Shall Not Be Named, amirite, Jeni?
The variable player factions get their chance to shine when there’s more than one player, but I do wish they’d shine just a little more. The differences between player faction abilities are best “subtle,” while the differences in available victory conditions feel pretty substantial. I firmly believe the imbalance is noticeable at larger player counts, but experienced players can find a faction that matches their own play style best, as well. I still jot this down to being a minor gripe in an otherwise excellent game, but ultra competitive play groups may want to take notice.
Also present in multiplayer is the expansion that comes right in the box, or some of the available modules that are available in the wild as well. These expand some of the gameplay options and definitely give the game some legs. After repeated plays, things can start to feel a little samey. This is where designers like Uwe Rosenberg show their experience ahead of Turczi – significant randomization in setup and play. Sure, there are dozens of buildings you can add to your board, but for the most part they all generally do sort of the same thing at varied costs. There’s engine building, for sure, but you’ll note that your engines often look a little similar and accomplish similar goals. There just isn’t a variety of paths to victory in Anachrony, and expansion modules will definitely add a layer of interest once you feel like you’ve mastered the base game.
And don’t get me wrong – there’s a lot to love in the base box. Anachrony is an engaging game with an incredibly unique theme that you’ll get many plays out of before you feel like you’ve extracted everything it has to offer. It provides a premium, high-end board game experience without being overly complicated. It’s generous, giving you handfuls of chits, cardboard, cards, and puzzles… all with a fairly straight ahead ruleset that’s easy to understand once you wrap your head around just a few basic concepts. It teaches easily, plays faster than the average medium weight worker placement game, and is really quite unique overall!
A solid entry to your collection worth exploring with your friend. 4 out of 5 cookies!