(thing) by Wntrmute Sun Aug 15 2004 at 15:20:53

Better check your ID. Your world is gone again.

Whilst Britnodermeet staple and all-round good game Chrononauts had been reinforced in 2001 with the Lost Identities expansion, what everyone really wanted was more time itself to mess with. Although a stand-alone game in it's own right, the prequel Early American Chrononauts can and most probably will be merged with the original to form a double-length Überchrononauts game spanning 1770-1999.

Some refinements to the game have been made, but not enough to majorly break compatability- a handy inverter-converter summarises what the old cards are now additionally capable of, and some new ones are introduced such as the start a fight inverter. A new subclass of Artifact, the Gadget, has been introduced which allow for repeated use of special effects (e.g. playing an extra action/timewarp). These are likely to inspire infighting, but the danger is that someone else will just win whilst you're scrabbling for the fancy toys. A few rules tweaks have emerged: the timeline only collapses if there are 13 open paradoxes on 4 adjacent rows, and the order of the trash pile matters (due to the introduction of the very clean time machine, which gives the option of using the top card of that pile instead of the draw deck). Solonauts still works for EAC itself but could prove rather easy for the 64-event timeline. It's the juggling of conflicting dates that introduces the single player challenge and this is reduced by having effectively two time streams that won't clash: although there is a new super-evolved cockroach to try!

As the name suggests, the American bias noted of Chrononauts by Grimace is now total dominance, with other nations only figuring as far as their involvement in the emergence of the United States. Fortunately the artifacts remain as mad as ever, with a general theme of exotic foods and more wonders from the future. Generally however it's unlikey you'd obtain EAC without having first got to grips with Chrononauts, so unless the focus is teaching/learning early American history it's the combined experience you'll usually be playing.

Official rules for such a combination are supplied on a summary card and updated through the Looney Labs website, but are classed as a work in progress and will probably give way to house rules if you play with the same group with any regularity. The suggestion is to require all three objectives (matching one ID and mission from two, and holding 10 cards) to be met before a victory can be declared, along with a faster churn rate through the deck. This makes it harder for a well placed Memo from your future self to ruin things, as you'd still be two-thirds of the way to success; and also prevents the game from ending too rapidly through dumb luck if you're the only one working on a given half of the timeline or find all the desserts you wanted.

Of course, the complexity of the experince can be varied by the amount of EAC you incorporate into the Chrononauts set. The gadgets are a shoe-in; with the other new artifacts and corresponding missions being fair game at the price of decreasing the odds of ever drawing all the patches you'd need for the ID-victory. For a really swingy game experience, just add Gadgets and Timewarps, allowing for potentially obscene chains of fast forwards, quick trips and re-use of trash. Extra actions are again discretionary but vital if you're running the full set of everything else.

Do not exceed maximum capacity of 13 dinosaurs

Inspired by Tiefling's effort with the original Chrononauts node, here's the complete early-American timeline and its potential variations:

In case of itching or excess deja vu, discontinue use.

I like it! 2 C!s