In Anachrony, players assume the roles of leaders of New Earth’s four powerful ideological Paths, fighting for supremacy through acquiring Victory Points. This is achieved by constructing Buildings and Superprojects, achieving scientific Breakthroughs, and interfering with the time-space continuum. Players must be careful, though - the threat of a catastrophic meteor impact is looming on the horizon, and while it is a significant danger, it may also be an opportunity for the Paths to evacuate the World Capital to their own cities for a massive boost in their struggle for supremacy.

 – From the rulebook

When you first pick up the game of Anachrony – it looks and feels like a beast and the rulebook doesn’t do much to assuage your fears. At a whopping 34 pages learning to play Anachrony isn’t for the faint of heart….

The entire game is language independent. It uses very clever iconography for all of your actions, for your rewards or penalties. If a picture has a black hole underneath the image, it means you have to pay that resource, if the item is by itself, it means you get that item. All locations your mech suits can go to are either small or large allowing either a single worker or unlimited workers in a single turn respectively. Anything with a circle is a free action and anything with a “frame” is an action with a worker.

After reading the rulebook and watching a couple videos of how to play, I was finally ready to teach the game. The game itself flows quite well and makes perfect sense - however, it does have a lot of little steps and moving parts. This makes the instruction take quite awhile to go through, with lots of little questions. While going over the rules I could see my players eyes starting to glaze over. During the game however, questions were easily addressed. The rulebook has a great appendix section with pictures of icons and their meanings as well as a buildings appendix were referenced by building number. Very straightforward and efficient.

Once you start playing the nuances begin to slip into background. Other than a quick check on new building iconography (which won’t be a problem with multiple plays), the game runs like a well oiled time machine. All of the games’ inherent fiddlyness makes perfect thematic and gaming sense which only serves to further pull you into the world of Anachrony.

The exosuits. Are they worth it? On one hand they add absolutely nothing to the game. You can just as easily use the provided tokens and place your workers on top of them. On the other hand… they are incredibly cool and functional. Your people actually slide right into the exosuit before being placed on the game board. Aesthetically they are amazing and really help to pull you into the theme of the capital being a hazardous environment. There are very few games where a deluxe component helps so much with theming and game atmosphere. Are they worth it? This reviewer would have a very hard time playing the game otherwise. A component that definitely increases the overall satisfaction of gameplay!

Gameplay replay ability? The base game comes with A side and B side player boards, A and B side faction goals and A and B leaders choices across 3 factions. It also comes with various end game goals that can be random or drafted, random superprojects, double sided “Era” boards and start game draftable resources. These options lead to a very interesting dilemma at the very start of the game, you need to be able to look forward in time and choose your strategy right out of the gate.

They also give players the opportunity to “create their own factions/faction strategy”. For instance, all players could pick the A side of the player board (symmetrical) but then draft their starting resources rather than all starting with the same thing. This can lead to people going hole hog in on water or people or resources. It also gives your opponents a chance to “hate draft” against you. Oh! You’re playing Captain Wolfe (has a bonus of changing power cores into water and vice versa), okay then I’m taking all the starting power cores. Oh! Your end game evacuation condition needs administrators? Well you’re not going to start with them!

Are all of these variations necessary or needed in every game? No. In fact having too many of them at once may imbalance the game. However, it does give players the option to make their games of Anachrony as vanilla or neapolitan as they would like.

Our first game took about 5 hours to complete, from the teach to the end. This included stopping to check on specific symbols and rules, answer rules questions and taking a break for pizza. It was probably too long for most groups especially for what the game provides. That being said, our first two turns were a bit of slog as we went through them step by step and our end turns were quite quick by comparison. Do I think that all games will take 5 hours? Nowhere near it. I think a reasonable timeframe for the game would be about 2/2.5 hours for a group that has played it once.

Plus (and this is a big one) - you can’t overlook all the “dad joke” puns that can be made about time. (ex) I would have read the rulebook but I couldn’t find the time!) Feel free to use that one in your own games of Anachrony!

So was Anachrony time well spent OR was it simply a time sink? The game has kept me interested, discussing strategy and wollowing in missed opportunities even days after it’s played. A game that keeps you ruminating (or vowing revenge as the case may be) is IMO the mark of a great game. In this reviewers eyes the game was 100% worth it and definitely deserves more tabletime.

• Play Again – 5/5
• Variability – 5/5
• Ease of Learning – 3/5
• Emotional Attachment – 5/5
• FUN – (probably the most important) 5/5

Beige Mage gives this game an overall 9/10!

• With one small caveat: subsequent games should be played with people familiar with Anachrony (as frequent players would have a huge advantage) and you MUST use the exosuits… all hail the component grail, the EXOSUIT!