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 I'm a gamer, always have been. Problem is for a large number of years that's really just consisted of the video variety. That's a huge mistake on my part, to not enjoy the video game's analog brethren... the board game. There’s actually a vibrant and intense board game world out there that’s been pushed to the sidelines by game players such as ourselves for too long. In this column I'll be diving into this world, looking at games that hopefully you'd like to try out for yourself. Time Travel can be a sticky proposition. Actually, time travel isn't the problem so much as mucking around with the past is. As the great documentary "Back to the Future" taught us, is that it's impossible to go back and time and make out with your mother without your siblings disappearing off your family photos...Unless you know how to play guitar like Chuck Berry. What would you do if you could bounce around in time? What events would you visit? What events would you change? Of course everyone kills Hitler their first time jumping through time, but where do you go from there? Chrononauts explores what would happen if you went back in time and started changing stuff around all willy-nilly. To what end you ask? Just like in Quantum Leap, to hopefully make that last leap home.
 Cards are laid out in a huge grid on the tables and depict various important historical events called Linchpins like Archduke Ferdinand assassinated or the Manhattan Project that you can essentially change (the picture above is just a section of the whole thing. Of course as we discussed earlier it's never that simple with time travel. This linchpin (purple) change causes other events called ripplepoints (blue) to never happen and thus creates a paradox in history.Paradoxes are NOT good to have in your history. Perhaps I should explain why you'd want to be fiddling with the timeline in the first place.  Before the game starts everyone draws a random ID card. This card gives a little back story to a character as well as certain events in history that are different for their particular timelime (John Lennon was never assassinated or Hitler never rose to power for example). To get your time traveler home, you need to get those events on your card to match the board... thus "correcting" time for your character and sending them home. First one to do that wins! There are a few other ways to win that I'll discuss in a minute but this one is the crux of the game.
Each person draws from a deck of cards that contain different actions on them. Some cards allow you to flip over those linchpin events (thus rippling events down the timeline creating paradoxes), some allow you to patch those paradoxed events with other events (If the Great Recession gets paradoxed you can "patch" it with the Mild Recession card). There are other action cards you can play to help you get what cards you need to flip the timeline in your favor like being able to look through the deck for a certain card or preventing others from playing a card. The deck also contains different artifact cards that you can keep and can help you win the game even if you don't complete your ID card story. In addition to the ID you get at the beginning of the game, you also get a MISSION card. This card contains a set of artifacts you need to collect. If you collect them all, you win! The artifacts come from all over the timeline and could be the Crown of Thorns, a dinosaur, the cure for cancer in pill form (from the future), The Beatles reunion album (alternate timeline of Lennon not dying), so on and so forth. There are even multiple Mona Lisa paintings (2 being forgeries) that can be passed off as the real thing so long as the real one isn't on the board anywhere. The third way to win is to have a certain number of cards in your hand but that's a lame way to win as far as I'm concerned. 
The game is definitely a Looney Labs product, and though it definitely contains the chaos of Fluxx this is much more controlled here. Though since everyone interacts with the same timeline if can be a real tug of war to get the timeline into the spot you need it to be. I suppose 4-5 time travelers jumping around reworking history can do that. Events change, paradoxes created, hopefully patched, then canceled out if the original event is restored. For example you could go back in time and prevent the Sputnik satellite from being launched, crushing the Russians. This would paradox the Cuban Missile Crisis (since Russia never grew into the power it should've) and also paradoxes the Apollo 11 moon landing (US got lazy never having to compete with the Russians in the space race). Interestingly, the Cuban Missle Crisis could be patched to go the other way, causing World War III and destroying the world. When this happens an "uberparadox" occurs that keeps the time travelers from interacting with any artifacts or events after 1962 since the world essentially ended. Once this is fixed then the world lives on and you can interact/change events after '62. I had a great time playing the game with a few friends, and found out quickly that like Fluxx the game certainly works better with more people (we had 4). People are flipping events back and forth, rippling the timelime, trying to figure out what events each other needed to change all while trying to hedge their bets with the artifact collecting in case that was the path to victory. The mechanics can be pretty complex when timelines get bumped all over the place, but 90& of the time if there's a potential confusion it's usually spelled out right on the card (just like Fluxx). My one and only complaint about the game is the art. The timeline cards themselves while functional aren't very pretty to look at. Just basic logos to represent each event (Lennon's glasses for his assassination or a mushroom cloud for the Manhattan Project). It works, but the artifact cards and nice and colorful pictures so I guess I would've liked to have seen some of that carried over to the timeline cards. Though the back of the Titanic card (where it doesn't sink) is my absolute favorite. It has a quote from the ship's lookout "We almost hit that!" Makes me laugh every time I read it. The base game covers 1865 to 1999. There is another edition called "Early American Chrononauts" which covers 1770 to 1916 and can be played alone or combined with the base game. Also, there's an expansion you can add that includes 2000-2008 called "The Gore Years." Putting it all together creates an enormous timeline in which to play! Chrononauts was originally published by Looney Labs in 2000 but got a new edition in 2009. It was designed by Andrew Looney (yes, his real last name). You can pick it up at FunagainGames.com or your Friendly Local Game Store. Like this article? Here are links to the rest of the Analog Games Corner write-ups!
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