Looney Labs Early American Chrononauts Card Game - Travel Through Time and Change History...

This is a great little filler game, and I love the humorous touches. It uses the same simple mechanic as Fluxx (draw 1, play 1) but thematically it's totally different. You play as a time traveler from an alternate timeline who's trying to get home. To that end, you have an ID card that tells who you are, what changes you need to make to get back to your timeline, and a little bit of backstory. Getting home is only one way to win, though. You can also complete your mission (shown on a separate Mission card), which is done by having the right Artifact cards on the table in front of you, similar to how Keepers work in Fluxx. Or you can win by having 10 cards in your hand. The timeline cards serve as your game board, laid out in the same order every time you play. You can play certain cards to flip a purple Linchpin card. Doing so alters the event described on the card, and also has a ripple effect, making it so you also have to flip over specified blue Ripplepoint cards, creating Paradoxes. Paradoxes are very very bad, as having 13 of them means everyone loses, but luckily you can play Patch cards to patch up the timeline with alternate versions of those events. One of my favorite things about the game is how the Artifacts often have little jokes or nods to certain time travel movies, like the Sports Almanac from the Future, a clear nod to Back to the Future Part II. I own 5 different versions of Fluxx, and I love them all, and they're great to break out at parties and other social gatherings because of how fast and simply they play. However, I like Chrononauts better than Fluxx, both thematically and in terms of gameplay. Where Fluxx is the Calvinball of card games, Chrononauts takes what's great about Fluxx and refines it by making it actually adhere to a solid set of rules, yet somehow it still feels like a Fluxx game and conveys that same sense of fun.

Fascinating game that really gives your brain a workout. There's always at least three different ways for you to win and you have to balance all three goals with different strategies. What's the most fun are the alternate histories you create along the way. For example, one time traveler identity has no goals past the year 1950, so he doesn't really care if the intelligent cockroaches from a million years in the future cause a World War Three in 1962 that creates the radioactive environment that eventually spawns their race. Or there's the the hippie driving a time-travelog VW who accidentally wins because she picks up so many odd artifacts (like a live dinosaur, the videotape of the beginning of the universe and the piece of German chocolate cake that was the hit of the 1938 Worlds Fair in Warsaw) along her travels that she wins by sheer quantity of items. It's possible to play a solitaire game (different from the one described in the rules and exactly like the multi-player version) if you're comfortable with playing back and forth among many identities. However, the first game or two you play with others should be more of a cooperative experience as you all figure out the rules. I've found that a TV tray table is the perfect size to hold the timeline cards (four rows of eight cards each), but if you combine this game with the American Revolution Chrononauts, you'll need most of a dining room table to hold all the cards. You'll also need a bigger box to hold all the cards -- as it is, you can fit in the two expansion packs ("the Gore Years" and "Los Identities") into this one's box, but just barely. Web site is good for support, though some of the postings are a bit dated.

I play tabletop games on at least a weekly basis. I really like Chrononauts because of the unique gameplay mechanisms. I love the idea of creating your own timeline. My boyfriend always tried to legalize marijuana, no matter what his identity (in the game). I like that there are a few ways to win. There is really no way to know who is ahead in this game. Anyone can win unexpectedly. The text on the cards is cute and funny. The games usually end within a reasonable amount of time (e.g. within an hour) and anyone can win. Even my mom won at Chrononauts because someone else accidentally patched up her timeline right before her turn. I have the Gore Expansion and Early American Chrononauts. I combine Chrononauts with the Gore Years but not with Early American. I tried that, but it is just too much crap on the table. It gets a little hectic.

... and very silly. There are three ways to win the game (collecting the artifacts of your secret mission, adjusting the timeline to that of your own parallel universe, or gaining enough cards in your hard - usually by patching time paradoxes) which helps keep the game from getting repetitive or boring. The game does require quite a bit of table space to spread out the cards of the timeline, so it should be considered as much a board game as a card game. There does seem to be a preponderance of depressing events; it might have been nice to throw in some less depressing ones (or even seemingly insignificant ones to show how chaos theory and the "butterfly effect" might work.) Overall, quite an imaginative and fun game.