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Anachrony blew my mind when I first came across it on Kickstarter. A worker placement game with added minis - although you don’t need the minis to play. The game looks amazing, with its sheer size and quality I could not wait to get my hands on it.
At its heart, Anachrony is a thematic worker placement game set in the future where Earth has been rebuilt. The game play has a time traveling twist and fantastic art which is what peaked my interests.
Anachrony - In The Box
The first thing that strikes you with Anachrony is the sheer size and weight of the box - It's very big and very heavy. The version I have is the Kickstarter Leader box, this comes with some added game play modules and the minis.
The game has so many components I would be here all day explaining them all. The box is so full to the brim that once you have spent a good amount of time bagging up and punching out all the tokens you will struggle to close the box again.
Everything is of great quality and a mixture of card and plastic chits give the game a great feel of no expense spared. The exo-suits (minis) themselves are the star of the show. They are large moulds with great detail and the small slot on the top even has a purpose of holding in the pilot chits. I would actually say this is the most impressive game for components, for sheer amount and quality, I have seen.
The Game
As its main mechanic is worker placement, you basically have to place your Exo-Suits on parts of the main board to get resources. Anachrony adds so much more to this though and you have to power up an Exo-suit and select a pilot form a class. Each pilot has a job that they can do with more efficiency so selection is strategic.
The four classes are:
- Engineers
- Scientists
- Administrators
- Geniuses
If you are ever short of a resource you can make use of the time traveling mechanic. You can request workers, water, suits etc from your future self and have them sent to you. This can cause a time paradox and cause problems for you later on in the game.
The game is built around an impending disaster, when it happens it changes the game slightly by removing some of the worker placement slots.
You have projects to complete, a faction goal to aim for, your own player board to place your acquired buildings on, time travel and more….There is just so much going on the game is daunting at first glance. A play-through or two will have the rules nailed down and it’s not hard to learn at all but with so much going on it does feel convoluted.
The four classes are:
- Engineers
- Scientists
- Administrators
- Geniuses
If you are ever short of a resource you can make use of the time traveling mechanic. You can request workers, water, suits etc from your future self and have them sent to you. This can cause a time paradox and cause problems for you later on in the game.
The game is built around an impending disaster, when it happens it changes the game slightly by removing some of the worker placement slots.
You have projects to complete, a faction goal to aim for, your own player board to place your acquired buildings on, time travel and more….There is just so much going on the game is daunting at first glance. A play-through or two will have the rules nailed down and it’s not hard to learn at all but with so much going on it does feel convoluted.
Final Thoughts
Anachrony is great at making you feel part of the theme and the game is very fun at the beginning, but everyone soon got bored as the game dragged on. See for me and my group we like games that are fun, thematic and don’t out stay their welcome.
Great Western Trail is a game that some have moaned about being too long but I always finish that game wanting it to of lasted an extra turn or two, I don’t get that feeling with Anachrony. It’s not a bad game at all but the long-winded way of worker placement, time travel and each faction’s own path makes it over complicated and that really makes it less fun for me.
This game is big, and there are many variants, so replay-ability is high, but the size comes with its own problems. At first the game takes ages to set up and put away which may not be a problem for some but it was for our group. The number of different modules is also great for added replay-ability but selecting which one to use and getting used to the rules again adds time to the game.
I love the Exo-Suit design and the clever way they are used, unfortunately I think the game is better without them. They add an extra element to the already over complicated game and clog up the table even more, meaning one of the main highlights of the game are better off left in the box.
Sadly, this means it’s a bit of a chore to get to the table. I thought I would love Anachrony and play it over and over but, lots of the modules have been left un-played. There are a lot of positives to this game like the quality components and replay-ability but in my opinion, the negatives outweigh these.
