Chatter Of The Squirrel

Game: Android

April 16, 2009 on 5:18 pm | In Games | No Comments

Someone just cracked open a new box of Android.

The description reads,

Android is a board game of murder and conspiracy set in a dystopian future. Detectives travel between the city of New Angeles and moon colony Heinlein chasing down leads, calling favors, and uncovering the sinister conspiracy beneath it all. The detectives must balance their pursuit of the murderer against their personal lives and inner demons.

Which sounds most intriguing indeed.

But the problem: it’s a fresh new box. No one has played it before. No one has read through the rule book.

And the game comes with at least 16 stacks of cards, and more than a hundred pieces of tokens of varying shapes and sizes.

We took almost an hour just to sort out the tokens. Sort out which cards belong to whom. And then set up the board to play our first game.

First time around, the set up was very befuddling.

“Ok, now place the Corp Tokens on Melange Mining, E7.”

“Erm… what do they look like?”

Halfway through the game, we were still finding game components that we did not put into play. 

Once the board is set up, each player needs to spend time figuring out what his character can do. 5 different detectives, mostly not even the same subspecies of human… An android who can work longer hours than anyone else but require regular hardware maintenance. An old, gruff, bipolar cop with mood swings. A cyborg bounty hunter with daddy issues. A psychic walking the thin line of sanity. A gumshoe with memory blackouts.

The fluff and setting is very enjoyable, borrowing from many sci-fi classics. It feels like Heinlein, Asimov, Blade Runner and Shadowrun all at once. Each detective and suspect has a bit of a backstory. Each player has a set of plot cards to accomplish. Each character has a unique strength to play. Each has a different car that will travel different distances.

Figuring out how to play the game the first time was extremely daunting. But once you get into the flow of it, it’s quite worth it.

To understand the game, it’s easier to work backwards. Basically, the person with the most Victory Points win. Seemingly simple.

A murder has been committed, and one of the six suspects is guilty. Each player has a guilty hunch and an innocent hunch. The detectives move around the city of New Angeles or the Heinlein settlement on the moon, chasing leads, picking up evidence tokens and stack them against the suspect they want to convict. At the end of the game, if the guilty hunch proves correct, that player will receive 15VP, which is a very substantial lead. But if you stack too much evidence on one suspect, it gives the game away, and your opponents can find a seedy character to put a hit on 

The detective may also investigate the underlying conspiracy, in the form of an innovative jigsaw puzzle. By manipulating this board, players can pick up VP or make certain favor tokens to be worth VPs.

You’ll also want to be drawing and playing cards. That’s usually a good way to gain an advantage, or earn favors which may be worth points later. You’ll also be playing negative cards on your opponents to disrupt their objectives.

The plot cards will also be a valuable source of VPs. Each character has an emotional baggage to manage. If the cyborg gets a hug from her daddy, she gets up to 9VPs at the end, but if daddy gets killed, she loses 7VPs.

We started our first game while there was still daylight out.

By the time we finished, it was past 9pm, and all of us were famished.