Post by masterdecoy on Aug 14, 2009 10:33:29 GMT 10
Opening thoughts:
Android was one of those games I read about on the fantasy flight website and just skipped over; it really didn’t look that interesting at first glance. However, my brother read the rules for it, and told me a little of how it plays. Next I watched the trailer for it, my interest was peaked. I couldn’t get my hands on a copy fast enough after that, and when I did, I wasn’t disappointed.
So what’s it all about then? There has been a grisly murder, you choose one of five investigators, and you have to lock up the guilty guy. Sounds simple enough, but trust me, it never is just that simple.
Game Overview:
Android is a confusing game to watch at first, there are just so many things going on at once that it would seem extremely intimidating to the un-initiated. I will do my best to explain how the game works, but to do so; I feel I will have to explain each section in a different way.
The game is set over 2 weeks of your chosen investigators life, starting with day 1, the day after the murder. Each day represents a game turn, in which your investigator will be able to do several actions. At the end of the two weeks, Victory points will be counted, and the player with the highest total wins.
As an investigator, it’s your job to put the guilty party in jail; you do this by building a case against the perpetrator. The real genius with this game is that the guilty party is not determined until the end of the game, that might sound odd, but it makes perfect sense in context.
At the start of the game, each player will be dealt 2 different cards representing who they think is the guilty party (referred to as the players guilty hunch), and who they think is innocent beyond doubt (referred to as the players innocent hunch).
To determine the guilty party, at the end of the game, you simply count up the values of all the evidence against each suspect, and the suspect with the most d**ning evidence is declared the guilty party.
If a player’s guilty hunch proves to be found guilty at the end that player is awarded a substantial amount of VP, and if a player’s innocent hunch is not the guilty party, they will receive a small amount of VP.
A typical day for an investigator will allocate them 6 “time” (or simply just 6 action points). Your investigator can spend their time do actions such as, Moving to a new location, following up leads of evidence, spending time at a location to draw cards, try affecting their karma or the karma of the other investigators, or to use a locations printed ability.
Moving between locations is a simple affair; each investigator is supplied with a ruler representing their car, and how fast it can move. The investigator places one end of their ruler at the location they are currently at, and attempts to reach the desired location with the other end. Unfortunately for some of the investigators with slower cars, getting to your desired location may require moving through several different locations, thus eating up more of their time, to reach the one they want to go to, where as investigators with fast cars may be able to make it in a single move.
To build your case against your guilty hunch, you will follow up leads on the board represented by tokens that represent either documented evidence (such as paperwork, CCTV footage, or some other form of printed evidence), Physical evidence (that represents things like the murder weapon, finger prints, or some other form of evidence that the murderer left behind), or finally testimonial evidence (representing witnesses to the crime, character witnesses about the suspect or some other form of testimonial).
When an investigator follows up a lead they may take a piece of evidence from the evidence pool, on the back it will have a number ranging from negative 5 (evidence that proves the suspect is innocent) to positive 5 (practically d**ning evidence). After secretly looking at the evidence the player may place it on any suspects case files, however, depending on the type of lead you followed up, may impact how useful it is against certain suspects.
Now, all that might sound like a glorified game of cludeo, however there are several different elements to the game that make the investigation extremely hard, As well as building their case against their guilty hunch, each investigator will be responsible for following up their own plot, making sure each progression ends in a happy way, after all, what’s the point of locking up the bad guy if your entire family got murdered in the process?
The plots will have certain conditions for how it can accrue “good baggage” and “bad baggage”. Each players plot will progress every 3 days, and if you’re current leg of the plot doesn’t have more good baggage than bad baggage, your plot will resolve negatively.
Plots that resolve negatively are called sad endings, and will detract from your VP’s at the end of the game. Plots that resolve positively are called happy endings, which will result in bonus VP at the end of the game.
As well as that, each player may play “light” and “dark” cards in an attempt to influence how each characters plot will resolve, as well as hinder their investigation. Light cards are played by a player on their own investigator; these represent nice things happening to their character and events that work to their benefit. Dark cards are played on other investigators, which represents bad things that happen to other player’s characters, and things that just didn’t go their way.
Each card will have a shift cost, and to be able to play that card, you must be able to shift your karma meter in that direction that amount of times. Light cards shift your meter towards the dark side (using up their good karma) and dark cards shift your karma meter to the light side. So to be able to play light cards on yourself, you will need to play dark cards on other players.
As well as the plots, and karma cards, there is also a conspiracy pertaining to the murder, and players can choose to follow up this angle of the investigation as well. When a player follows up a lead, they can choose not to draw from the evidence pool, and instead draw a puzzle piece from the conspiracy pool. The puzzle pieces will have a Varity of different intersecting blue lines, and the object will be to place them on the conspiracy track so that the lines meet with certain parties.
When you manage to link up a party with the conspiracy, it will affect how VP are distributed at the end of the game, making hunches worth more VP, giving bonus VP for having certain favors, and bonus points for happy endings as well as making sad endings more crippling.
If that wasn’t enough to screw with your head, investigators can have suspects killed by trading favors they have acquired at board locations to have hit contracts taken out on suspects, and in doing so, eliminating that suspect from not only being in contention for the guilty party, but will also make that suspect worthless as an innocent hunch as well.
To win this game you will have to manage the evidence, your personal plots, as well as the conspiracy all at the same time, and believe me, you just don’t have enough time to focus on all 3.
At the end of the 2 weeks, the game ends. The evidence is counted up. The plots are resolved, and the conspiracy consulted on how it will change the VP distribution. The player with the most victory points wins. This could be the player with the correct guilty hunch, but the conspiracy could have altered the scoring in such a way, that the guilty hunch was practically worthless.
As I said, a lot going on at once.
Component Overview:
The components for the game are of fantasy flights usual high standards, the tokens are hardy, the board is durable and the cards are of decent quality.
One gripe however was that they decided to print the player’s strategy cards on paper, rather than card. When I saw this I immediately had them laminated, and as with any game that has cards, you will want to have them slipped in order to maintain their quality.
I have also had numerous remarks that the documented evidence looks more like a gun, than a camera, however I thought it looked fine. A couple of the pictures for the dark cards look too similar as well, and I have had more than one accident of drawing the wrong card.
Apart from that nothing game breaking.
Closing thoughts:
Android is a truly stellar game, it does however have a very steep learning curve. One of my favorite aspects of the game is that because there is so much to keep track of, you really can’t be sure who is winning until the VP are counted up. Also there may seem to be a big gap between players scores, however on closer examination, make a few adjustments on a few ending conditions, and you can see how quickly a players score can swing.
I don’t recommend this game for anyone who hasn’t at least played 2 or 3 other fantasy flight games to get a feel for how they generally work, as well as to get a feel for the more complex rules sets that generally accompany them, however, anyone who can get their head around the sheer amount of things going on at once in this game will keep coming back again and again.
Components: 3/5
Game play: 5/5
Replay Potential: 5/5
Theme: 5/5
Price: 3/5
Overall: 5/5
PM me if you would like to schedual a demo game
Trailer:
www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/Android/media/android_trailer.mov
Android was one of those games I read about on the fantasy flight website and just skipped over; it really didn’t look that interesting at first glance. However, my brother read the rules for it, and told me a little of how it plays. Next I watched the trailer for it, my interest was peaked. I couldn’t get my hands on a copy fast enough after that, and when I did, I wasn’t disappointed.
So what’s it all about then? There has been a grisly murder, you choose one of five investigators, and you have to lock up the guilty guy. Sounds simple enough, but trust me, it never is just that simple.
Game Overview:
Android is a confusing game to watch at first, there are just so many things going on at once that it would seem extremely intimidating to the un-initiated. I will do my best to explain how the game works, but to do so; I feel I will have to explain each section in a different way.
The game is set over 2 weeks of your chosen investigators life, starting with day 1, the day after the murder. Each day represents a game turn, in which your investigator will be able to do several actions. At the end of the two weeks, Victory points will be counted, and the player with the highest total wins.
As an investigator, it’s your job to put the guilty party in jail; you do this by building a case against the perpetrator. The real genius with this game is that the guilty party is not determined until the end of the game, that might sound odd, but it makes perfect sense in context.
At the start of the game, each player will be dealt 2 different cards representing who they think is the guilty party (referred to as the players guilty hunch), and who they think is innocent beyond doubt (referred to as the players innocent hunch).
To determine the guilty party, at the end of the game, you simply count up the values of all the evidence against each suspect, and the suspect with the most d**ning evidence is declared the guilty party.
If a player’s guilty hunch proves to be found guilty at the end that player is awarded a substantial amount of VP, and if a player’s innocent hunch is not the guilty party, they will receive a small amount of VP.
A typical day for an investigator will allocate them 6 “time” (or simply just 6 action points). Your investigator can spend their time do actions such as, Moving to a new location, following up leads of evidence, spending time at a location to draw cards, try affecting their karma or the karma of the other investigators, or to use a locations printed ability.
Moving between locations is a simple affair; each investigator is supplied with a ruler representing their car, and how fast it can move. The investigator places one end of their ruler at the location they are currently at, and attempts to reach the desired location with the other end. Unfortunately for some of the investigators with slower cars, getting to your desired location may require moving through several different locations, thus eating up more of their time, to reach the one they want to go to, where as investigators with fast cars may be able to make it in a single move.
To build your case against your guilty hunch, you will follow up leads on the board represented by tokens that represent either documented evidence (such as paperwork, CCTV footage, or some other form of printed evidence), Physical evidence (that represents things like the murder weapon, finger prints, or some other form of evidence that the murderer left behind), or finally testimonial evidence (representing witnesses to the crime, character witnesses about the suspect or some other form of testimonial).
When an investigator follows up a lead they may take a piece of evidence from the evidence pool, on the back it will have a number ranging from negative 5 (evidence that proves the suspect is innocent) to positive 5 (practically d**ning evidence). After secretly looking at the evidence the player may place it on any suspects case files, however, depending on the type of lead you followed up, may impact how useful it is against certain suspects.
Now, all that might sound like a glorified game of cludeo, however there are several different elements to the game that make the investigation extremely hard, As well as building their case against their guilty hunch, each investigator will be responsible for following up their own plot, making sure each progression ends in a happy way, after all, what’s the point of locking up the bad guy if your entire family got murdered in the process?
The plots will have certain conditions for how it can accrue “good baggage” and “bad baggage”. Each players plot will progress every 3 days, and if you’re current leg of the plot doesn’t have more good baggage than bad baggage, your plot will resolve negatively.
Plots that resolve negatively are called sad endings, and will detract from your VP’s at the end of the game. Plots that resolve positively are called happy endings, which will result in bonus VP at the end of the game.
As well as that, each player may play “light” and “dark” cards in an attempt to influence how each characters plot will resolve, as well as hinder their investigation. Light cards are played by a player on their own investigator; these represent nice things happening to their character and events that work to their benefit. Dark cards are played on other investigators, which represents bad things that happen to other player’s characters, and things that just didn’t go their way.
Each card will have a shift cost, and to be able to play that card, you must be able to shift your karma meter in that direction that amount of times. Light cards shift your meter towards the dark side (using up their good karma) and dark cards shift your karma meter to the light side. So to be able to play light cards on yourself, you will need to play dark cards on other players.
As well as the plots, and karma cards, there is also a conspiracy pertaining to the murder, and players can choose to follow up this angle of the investigation as well. When a player follows up a lead, they can choose not to draw from the evidence pool, and instead draw a puzzle piece from the conspiracy pool. The puzzle pieces will have a Varity of different intersecting blue lines, and the object will be to place them on the conspiracy track so that the lines meet with certain parties.
When you manage to link up a party with the conspiracy, it will affect how VP are distributed at the end of the game, making hunches worth more VP, giving bonus VP for having certain favors, and bonus points for happy endings as well as making sad endings more crippling.
If that wasn’t enough to screw with your head, investigators can have suspects killed by trading favors they have acquired at board locations to have hit contracts taken out on suspects, and in doing so, eliminating that suspect from not only being in contention for the guilty party, but will also make that suspect worthless as an innocent hunch as well.
To win this game you will have to manage the evidence, your personal plots, as well as the conspiracy all at the same time, and believe me, you just don’t have enough time to focus on all 3.
At the end of the 2 weeks, the game ends. The evidence is counted up. The plots are resolved, and the conspiracy consulted on how it will change the VP distribution. The player with the most victory points wins. This could be the player with the correct guilty hunch, but the conspiracy could have altered the scoring in such a way, that the guilty hunch was practically worthless.
As I said, a lot going on at once.
Component Overview:
The components for the game are of fantasy flights usual high standards, the tokens are hardy, the board is durable and the cards are of decent quality.
One gripe however was that they decided to print the player’s strategy cards on paper, rather than card. When I saw this I immediately had them laminated, and as with any game that has cards, you will want to have them slipped in order to maintain their quality.
I have also had numerous remarks that the documented evidence looks more like a gun, than a camera, however I thought it looked fine. A couple of the pictures for the dark cards look too similar as well, and I have had more than one accident of drawing the wrong card.
Apart from that nothing game breaking.
Closing thoughts:
Android is a truly stellar game, it does however have a very steep learning curve. One of my favorite aspects of the game is that because there is so much to keep track of, you really can’t be sure who is winning until the VP are counted up. Also there may seem to be a big gap between players scores, however on closer examination, make a few adjustments on a few ending conditions, and you can see how quickly a players score can swing.
I don’t recommend this game for anyone who hasn’t at least played 2 or 3 other fantasy flight games to get a feel for how they generally work, as well as to get a feel for the more complex rules sets that generally accompany them, however, anyone who can get their head around the sheer amount of things going on at once in this game will keep coming back again and again.
Components: 3/5
Game play: 5/5
Replay Potential: 5/5
Theme: 5/5
Price: 3/5
Overall: 5/5
PM me if you would like to schedual a demo game
Trailer:
www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/Android/media/android_trailer.mov
