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Things I Like About Anachrony (Message from the Deep) · Pick Up and Deliver

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Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
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as I step out the door, I deliver an episode do you while I
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walk around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good morning listeners. It's a
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pleasant day here in suburban Chicago. The sky is sort of very lightly overcast.
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It doesn't seem to be in danger of raining on me anytime soon,
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but it could rain today for certain. I've been I'm a little later walking
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around to do my walk than I normally am. I usually go between seven
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and eight in the morning, sometimes eight thirty. It's almost eleven right now,
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which is, like I said, a little later than I usually like
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to do it. But a combination of needing to charge my recording phone and
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not being sure what I want to talk about gave me a bit of time
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a time delay. Today. I did, however, come up with something
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to talk about, and so I thought I would. One of the things
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I do occasionally on this episode is I will do a Message from the Deep
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episode, which is meant to be kind of a deep dive review of a
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game, and generally the idea is that it is a game that I've played
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many times and I'm thoroughly familiar with. So I thought today I was looking
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around and figured out there's a game I have talked about many many times here
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on the podcast, and as far as I can tell, I've never done
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a deep dive review of it. I did a search for this game.
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I would think that if there's an episode that just has the title of this
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game, or has the title of this game in the podcast title, that
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I would find that near the top, and I did not. I went
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through several pages of episodes because that's how many times I've talked about this game
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on the podcast. So I hope this won't be too repetitive because this is
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a game I've covered a lot, but I've never actually done a straight up,
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full focused, deep dive review on it. So that's what I'm doing
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today. Now I haven't said the game yet. If you have in your
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head a thought about which game you think I'm probably talking about, take a
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moment and note that, and then go over to board game geek kild three
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two sixty nine and post that game there, or send me a message about
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it if it's something you'd like to hear about, because I'd be interested to
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know, like, what game do you think I talk about all the time
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that I've never actually done a full review of. It'd be interesting to know
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unless your answer is an Acrony, which is the game I'm going to talk
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about today. So an Acrony is a game that came out in I think
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twenty sixteen, maybe twenty seventeen, it's twenty seventeen. It was designed by
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David Turksy, and then Richard Aman and Victor Peter that you sort of founding
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designers behind mind Clash Games, helped develop it enough that they are also credited
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as designers on the game. Turxy designed the solo mode himself. The artists
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are Villo Farcas Laslo Feyas or Fegis Laslo Forgoch, Martin Gula Kiss, and
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Peter Mezzs Lenny So I apologize if they are wrong, they probably are.
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Nonetheless, Mindclash Games came out, an Acarny came out in twenty seventeen.
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I was a Kickstarter subscriber. I took Kickstarter Backer to the original edition,
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and I also backed the Super Expansion Megabox thing that they did as well,
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And so I thought I would do a message from the Deep episode about an
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Acrony four things I like about an acrony if you're unfamiliar with it. An
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Acrony is a worker placement economic game with a heavy theme. The idea is
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that the future in the future, the Earth is has dissembled into a difficult
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place to live, and so different communities people live in these. There's a
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mega capital city and then there's all these outposts that people have built, and
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moving between them is difficult. People tend to use these mechanized exosuits to get
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around when you're outside of the protected cities. At one point, there's an
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explosion and it damages stuff all around the world. And after the explosion,
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people find that there is a new mineral on Earth that has to do with
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time travel. It has special properties and it allows us to build time travel
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machines. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the reason that that material appears is that
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a giant asteroid hits Earth generations in the future, and the material, because
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it's time travel relative, splashes back through time and causes damage throughout the generations
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before. So the game begins with this damage having been done by this explosion
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in the future, and so we know we need to prepare for the prepare
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for the coming apocalypse by building up our remote societies away from where the CA
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capital city is, because the capital city is going to get destroyed during this
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apocalypse. So the idea of the game is that you are trying to build
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up your civilization, your society to be the dominant or best society in the
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post apocalyptic world and hope that yours wins out. The game takes a fairly
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long amount of time to play on the table, generally between two and a
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half and four hours in my experience, depending how many players you have.
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It is a big, beefy euro game. It's not quite as dense as
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some of the other mind clash games. I feel like Track Carryon is more
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intense in terms of gameplay. I think Septima is about the same. It
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plays very differently, but it has about the same level of sort of depth
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of thinking and strategy to it. I think Cerebria is actually less deep but
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harder to learn, and void Fall, I think is the heaviest of their
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game. Well, the void Fall is not quite as heavy as Trick Carryon.
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Track Carryon is very tense you're playing it, but an Acrony is probably
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my favorite mind clash game, which is why I've played it. I checked.
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I've logged thirty one plays of it, including more Game Arina plays,
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which is the vast majority. I probably have eight to ten plays on the
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table. Maybe that's probably ambitious. I probably have six to eight on the
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table because it takes long time to play. So why do I like it
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so much? Here are four things. First off, the game has different
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worker types. I really like this mechanism. Then the game, you get
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these little chits that represent the workers in your civilization, and they come in
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four types. There's engineers, scientists, managers, and geniuses. And the
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geniuses can do the roles of any of the other workers, so you can
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use a genius in place of any manager, scientist, or an engineer if
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you want now At to be the game. You get a few of these,
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and as the game goes along you get more and more of them.
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You can end up with a whole ton of them if you have the right
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combination of things that allows you to get at them. The game comes with
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enough chits to allow you to have a ton. Now the game also because
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of these different worker types, it has a couple different uses for them.
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One in the big city, where the main worker action spots are the different
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workers can do. Different workers are good at different things. It's like if
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you're going to go excavating material minerals with your exo suit, the engineers come
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back from that fully ready to work again. They enjoy that. Similarly,
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if you're building things, engineers get you a discount because they're better at building
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stuff. I contrast, scientists are the only ones who can do the science
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research, and they also get you more efficient water reclamation if you go to
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do the water reclamation action with the scientists the managers. The scientists are also
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bad at recruiting people. They don't have people skills, so you can't use
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the scientists to recruit new workers. The managers are very good at recruiting workers,
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and you need to use a manager or a genius to recruit a genius
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the regular engineer. An engineer can't recruit a genius. So there's this interesting
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blend of different workers are good for different things on the main board. As
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the game goes along, you're also building action spaces on your personal board that
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you can use, and a lot of those have restrictions about which worker can
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go where as well. On top of that, the game has this mechanism
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of the workers getting tired. When you use a worker, they become exhausted
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and when they come back to your board, they go to the exhausted side
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of your board, and then you have to either spend water, which is
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sort of one of the main currencies in the game. If it's spent water
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to unexhaust them to wake them up, or you can force them to wake
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up. But then the morale goes down, and it's really clever. The
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morale is tied to endgame points. But also like if you use the morale
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option too often, then you actually will start killing your workers. Once you've
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used that I think three or four times without ever using the paywater to increase
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the value, then the next time that you use the then the next time
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that you use the reduced morale option, the workers literally just one of the
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workers just dies. It's pretty funny. So while there are other games I've
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played that have different worker types, it's not very common. It's a pretty
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unusual type of thing. Everdell with the Pearlbrook expansion has the frog worker that
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can go to different spaces, and I know that there's this game Oak where
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you can upgrade the workers into different types actually Dwellings of Elder Veil also has
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this idea of different types of workers, but you only a lot of them.
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You can get one of a particular type. I'd be interested to know
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are there other games that have different types of workers and that can do different
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things and that you get and manage in different ways, because I think that's
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just a really neat aspect of the game. Right. The second thing I
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like about the game is the way that the mechanism and the plot of the
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game interconnect, you know. I think the best demonstration of this is the
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loan mechanism. In the game. You can get loans and you have to
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pay them back, but the way the game works is you get the loan
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by borrowing it from yourself in the future. So you at the bmvach round
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you can basically ask for two things as loans, and it could be water,
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it could be resources, it could even be people, and then they
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show up. And the idea is that we know that things are better in
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the future, and so we need to the future needs to help the past,
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and so you're sending back resources so that the past can survive, but
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then you have to actually do that later. Not only is that a fun
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gimmick, a fun way to have a loan be interesting, but it also
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allows for some really funny elements, like the bootstrap paradox, where you ask
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for an engineer and an engineer shows up, and then later when you have
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to pay back an engineer, you can send back that same engineer, which
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makes the question where did that engineer ever come from? It's pretty dumb,
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but kind of fun too, And that's an example of the way that this
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game uses a lot of amusing mechanisms that seem to tell an emergent story.
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Another one I know I've mentioned on the podcast is in the past, but
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I particularly find enjoyable is one of the leaders is able to recruit people very
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easily, and so every round they can recruit a person to join the thing.
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But then you also can get a part. You can get a thing
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where every round you put a person into a machine and you get a bunch
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of water out, and then that person dies. And so the dark view
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of it is you're recruiting people and then tossing them right in the renderer to
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provide food for you or water for your civilization. It's pretty dark, but
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kind of funny, and you know, the way that the story of the
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game works is that all of these civilizations, it's sort of like the Dune
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movie. The civilizations we're seeing that people were seeing are depicted as great or
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noble, but in fact, when you sort of look at what they're doing,
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they're all horrible. And the sort of horror of these different civilizations is
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pretty compelling as a narrative decision or device. So the way that the mechanisms
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and plot intertwine in the game is very compelling and makes it a lot of
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fun. As I think about other games that do this really well, this
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is one of the place where I don't often find that emergent narrative appears in
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games all that well. I think Tricarrion does it really well. I think
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stuff like Boon Lake we see that pretty well. Mosaic does that well.
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Through the Ages does it very well where the different plays that you're making,
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while tactical and strategic, they also create a narrative around what is your society,
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like, what's it trying to do? And I think Anacrony is top
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notch in the way that it does that. The only big miss I think
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is that the little tiles for the different buildings are not named. I think
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that they should be named to give a little bit more flavor. They would
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give a little more insight into what is it that this place is supposed to
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be, other than that top notch I have considered they do have on board
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game geek people have come up with a list of what those tiles are.
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I have considered printing those out and attaching them to my tiles, but I'm
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not sure to be able to do it neatly enough to make myself happy with
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the way it looks. I still may do it at some point. So
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that's a mechanism and plot combined for compelling team. Next step. The next
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thing I really like about an Acrony The game has variable goals and variable powers.
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Now, there are a lot of games that have this, This is
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not unique to an Acarny, but I think it does a really good job
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of maintaining a very approachable core game while also having the game be shaped dramatically
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by these elements. So when you're playing, the game has double sided faction
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boards. So when you take one of the four factions, you pick side
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AARSIB and that gives you a faction power, and then there are two leaders
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and you get to pick one of the leaders to use, and that leader
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also gives you a power, So each leader has their own power, and
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each faction has its own power. So those two things combined give you a
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significant level of individuation about what's going to happen with your game, and they
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often give you a direction to go in terms of trying to decide what to
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do with your turns and how you want to focus. Then on top of
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it, there are these endgame scoring cards. There are five of them,
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and actually there's like a deck of ten, and five of them will be
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in play each game, and at the end of the game, you evaluate
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those five and you score points based on that. And the combination of those
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cards and those individual powers lead you to significant variance in what you're trying to
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do. They also have the scoring condition that you take when you evacuate.
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One of things that I haven't talked about yet is, like I said,
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there's a big cataclysm. It happens in between rounds four and five, and
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the game can go up to seven rounds, but as few as five.
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I don't think I've ever played a game where it only went five. I
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have definitely played games where it went six. Often the games go seven because
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the way it works is when there's a cataclysm, then all of the there's
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nine worker placement spots on the main board, and once all nine of those
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spots have been used at once each at least, then the game ends that
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round. So you could have if like no one goes to that ninth spot,
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the game could go three more rounds. But the idea is that at
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some point you send an expedition to the city and you evacuate as many people
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as you can from the main capital city, and you do that by meeting
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a minimum. You have to meet a condition that you do, and then
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you get to evacuate people based on some other thing. So for example,
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one thing that might happen it could be that you have to have all three
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of your water facilities built and then you get to evacuate one person. You
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get points for every combination of gold cube and genius that you have in your
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thing, So the more geniuses and gold cubes you have, the more points
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you get. And generally is there are fifteen to twenty points, so it
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could be as much as twenty percent of your score. It's not in common
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to get one hundred, just over one hundred points in the game, that's
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a high score, though you're probably in the eighty range, so you know,
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if you got fifteen to twenty points, that's a big chunk of your
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final score. So and a lot of that comes down to thinking about how
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you want to play those different elements to get off each other in order to
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focus what you're doing for the game. So that's variable goals and powers.
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Another way to think of this is as you're building the little buildings or doing
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other things, you're increasing minor efficiencies in your game. And I think that's
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a really neat aspect to an acrony. Now this is something that a lot
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of complicated Euros do. Of course, something like Great Western Trail does this
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really well. Revive is a recent game that I think is all about stoking
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building up minor efficiencies into major efficiencies and winning because you exploited them better than
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other people exploited their minor or major efficiencies. Underwater Cities is another one that
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does that really well. So minor major efficiencies and individual player powers they give
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you minor a minor advantage. I really like an Acrony does that brilliantly.
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Finally, an Acarny has an amazing table presence. Now, I think that
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the art and design and an acrony is top notch. Mine Clash is one
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of the best companies as far as I'm concerned for iconography, gameplay flow,
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helping people understand how the game works by what's on the table. The art
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and design and an acrony is also top notch. I think the way that
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the game looks is really cool. I think the art is pretty good.
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In the first edition, the people were drawn a little, they weren't the
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best character illustrations. But the second the revised ones that they issued with the
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expansion are really good. And with the updated edition of the game that that's
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top notch. But the thing that knocks the game out of the park are
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the exosuit minis. So in the game, you have these exosuits which are
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the worker There s worker vehicles that allow you to send workers to the main
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capital to do actions there. You can use all the actions you want that
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you have space for on your player board, but the actions that you put
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in the city you have to send these exosuits to. In the retail copy
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of the game, you get a large hex token that represents an exosuit and
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you just put your worker on top of that and sort of move the stack
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onto the game. The Deluxe set or the Minis set, you get a
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very tall miniature that has a slot in the top, and you put your
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worker in the slot. It's a dumb it feels dumb, but it actually
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is really effective as a gameplay method. I think it's really fun. They
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look amazing, The minis are really well made, and they sort of represent
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the characteristic of the society really well, and it makes the game just really
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pop on the table. So thus the table presence of an Acarny is the
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fourth thing I really really like about it. There are, of course,
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lots of games that have great table presence. I'll point to Return to Dark
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Tower. It's very compelling with its gigantic tower in the middle. I will
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say for a couple of other games that have really compelling table presence, I
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like the big double layer tiles or double layer player boards in Revive. I
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think those look really neat as well. And then I'm going to point to
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the game Villagers as having a very beautiful style as another game that's got a
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really compelling table presence, even though that one does not have any minies.
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And isn't big, It's small but beautiful. So those are the three Those
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are the four things that I like about the game an Acrony. So if
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you've played an Acarny, what do you like about it? If you haven't
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played it, you should try it. It's over on board game Arena.
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I'd be happy to play an asynchronous game of it with you. I use
19:59
the name of there is Wombat nineteen nine. My username on board game Geek
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is also Wombat nineteen nine. Feel afraid you to send me a message there
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if you'd like. Well, that's about it for me today. Thanks for
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joining me on my walk today. I hope your next walk us as posence
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as mindless. By bye. Brought to you by Rattle Box Game