Review of Anachrony: Exosuit Commander Pack

Blurb from the publisher: 'Pioneers of New Earth Module

The Guardians of the Council adds 6 Exosuit miniatures and a whole new module to Anachrony. You may also use the Guardians as the Chronobot's own Exosuit army, or an alternative to yours!'

What you get: Your EUR 40 or equivalent will buy you the Anachrony: Exosuit Commander Pack, an expansion for Anachrony, the asymmetrical one to four player worker placement game that lasts approximately half an hour per player, and which took the world by surprise last year, skyrocketing into the BGG #100 within a year of its publication.

In addition to the game's rulebook which can be found on the publisher's website free of charge in three different languages (English, French, and German), the expansion also contains the following: (for the base game) 24 plastic Exosuit miniatures, (for Pioneers of New Earth) one Adventure board, 24 plastic Exosuit miniatures, 36 Adventure cards, 4 Exosuit Upgrade boards, one Adventure Reference card, one Adventure die, one Endgame Condition card, (for Guardians of the Council) 6 Guardian miniatures, one Endgame condition card, and one Guardian board.

Gameplay: The Exosuit Commander Pack is as much about fluff as it is about crunch. The plastic exosuit models can be used as is with the basic game without utilizing any new rules. They replace the exosuit hexes, and host the workers that operate them.

The Pioneers of New Earth includes the Adventure, a new action available on a separate mini-board. It allows players to use their exosuits to venture out of the safety of their path capital to face the perils of the Outback, like giant sandworms or deserted carriers. To do so, they will need to upgrade their exosuits, which can now provide more power depending on resources spent to them. Idem for updated sensors, which can provide victory points or more power, depending on the path. To successfully complete an adventure, a player tallies his exosuit's power value and pays both power and water depending on when he takes the action. He randomly takes adventure cards depending on the number of breakthroughs on his exosuit, chooses one, rolls the die, and compares his value to the adventure requirements. Success leads to one-off rewards, permanent benefits or free actions while failure has costs (e.g. water or resource expenditure).

The Guardians of the Council introduces the Guardian, a new type of exosuit that is not path-dependent. Guardians operate without Workers, and have their designated action spaces where they can take uncontested capital actions. Powering one up is the same as a regular exosuit, even though the Guardians' initial cost is always one worker plus something else, which is different for each guardian.

The strong points: Anachrony goes to a whole new level when it comes to its aesthetics by providing awesomely sculpted minis. Each faction gets its own exosuit, with designs that could have easily stood their ground in high quality miniature wargames. They omit a strong retro sci-fi feel, with one of the designs being an evolved take of the tripod design (now with octopus-like tentacles). Even more so, the Chronobot gets its own line, and it is the most menacing of them all. These minis are not small affairs: with the base, each stands at a height of 55 mm! Each has a slot on top in order to insert its worker in its cockpit; that's fantastic component design right there. Setting aside the cool factor, having miniatures on the board instead of hexes with cardboard workers on them gives the board a much needed breath. Things feel less busy than before, and the game's expansion into the third dimension helps the players understand and analyze what's going on faster.

I enjoyed the expansion's two modules. They serve a very different purpose even though the idea behind them is to add options. Yet, the first relates on having something additional to do, while the second is about having more means of doing things. In one and two player games the Guardians might not be that interesting a choice, taking into account the number of capital actions and the minor cost later ones entail. In fuller games however they are valid options. The obvious modularity of the expansions means that you can combine them in any way you want, or take them out when you are teaching the game to new players.

Leaving the miniatures aside, the remaining components are of a quality as high as that of the basic game. Even better, they are made to fit the basic box for the space-starved amongst us who wish to retire as many boxes to the basement as possible. That's how boxes and inserts should be designed; douze points to Mindclash Games on this.

The weak points: Were the expansion only about crunch and not fluff, it wouldn't have cost more than EUR 15. Clearly, one is paying for the miniatures which take some 90% of the box. In that sense, this is an official pimp-my-game product more than what we usually mean by expansion. Some will find it irksome, others won't. I don't, seeing how basic Anachrony's price remained contained, instead of exploding near the EUR 100 mark just because of minis. With or without minis, the game remains accessible to more people.

I liked the Adventure aspect, yet its main mechanic of picking multiple cards and choosing on the spot which one to use is yet another trigger of analysis paralysis in a game that already has quite a few. I don't know how I feel about this. I am not likely to remove that module when I play, yet it's another drop of water in a glass that has been overflowing for quite a while.

Conclusion: In my eyes Anachrony means incredible plastic miniatures on the board, making the Exosuit Commander Pack a sine qua non. The extra crunch and options it contains are a nice way of rounding things out, and give to those unlikely to spend money to pimp up their game a nice incentive to do so. The ratio of fluff to crunch is in obvious favour of the former; the miniatures is what you are really paying for. Ultimately your wallet will decide.

To find out more about Anachrony: Exosuit Commander Pack and Mindclash Games, take a look at http://anachronyboardgame.com and http://mindclashgames.com respectively.

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