From: dmccart@gomez.intel.com (D. J. McCarthy)
Newsgroups: rec.games.board
Subject: Re: Review wanted: Timjim games
Date: 16 Dec 92 01:42:33 GMT
Organization: Intel ASTG, Santa Clara, CA
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]

Steffan O'Sullivan (sos@oz.plymouth.edu) wrote:

> I see three new games listed by Timjim Games, though they may not yet
> be out.  Has anyone seen any of the following, and are there any
> opinions?

> Age of Exploration

	I don't know about this one.  The other two I was at a
playtesting session for, though, so I'll comment on them.


> Mystic War

	Although I didn't play this one, the people that I saw playing
it were having fun.  From what I could tell, it was sort of a cross
between Outpost and Wiz War.

> Time Agent

	I did play this one.  It was not like anything I had ever
played before.  The basic setup is a board with about a hundred
upside-down hexagonal pieces.  The hex pieces, on the "right" side,
have little colored lines ("time lines") that connect the top of the
board (the past) to the bottom of the board (the present).  The time
lines link seven major past inventions/discoveries (like Cold Fusion
and Time Travel) to the present; whenever a time line no longer connects
the invention to the present, that invention no longer exists in the
present.  When the Time Travel time line is broken, the game ends.

	Each player plays one of six races that have different winning
conditions from one another.  The object is to get as many of your
winning conditions fulfilled as possible, then go sever the Time
Travel time line so that the game ends and you win.

	Play starts out slow.  You build up money to send guerrilla
forces ("time agents") back in time (the farther, the costlier), and
flip over hexes.  Time lines take on three different categorizations:
"connected" (enough hexes have been flipped to show that the time line
is definitely connected), "disconnected" (enough hexes have been
flipped to show that there couldn't POSSIBLY be a connection) and
"assumed connected" (not enough hexes have been flipped to decide
either way).  Once you are back in time (i.e. tootling around on the
board), you can move to a nearby hex and flip it over, or rotate the
hex you're on (thus messing up time lines), or spend more money and go
further back in time.

	You can stop the invention reaching the present in two ways:
messing up the time line, or "killing the inventor" - going all the way
back to the Invention space and spending enough money to stop the
invention from ever being invented in the first place.  This is the
route the game I played took.  Needless to say, Time Travel is by far
the most difficult invention to stop.  It's well-connected (most hexes
have 3 or 4 TT time lines coming out of their sides; it's the furthest
one back in time (so it costs more money to kill the inventor), and
there are *two* hexes on the board with alternate TT invention markers
on them (most inventions have only 1)!  One of the players in my game
went back and killed the original TT inventor.  When that happens,
*all* the hex tiles get turned face-up right then, to see what
happens.  None of this pokey one-at-a-time hex turning.  We spent the
rest of the game with all the hexes face-up, which made it a lot
easier to figure out where you should move to and rotate next.

	My final assessment was that it would have made a MUCH better
computer game.  About 30% of our time was spent following time lines
around to make sure they still connected inventions.  Play time was
about 4 hours, if I remember correctly.  It wasn't too complex, but I
really do think too much time was spent doing tedious time line
tracking.

	I'd comment more but I'm late for a dinner date as it is! :-)

--
D. J. McCarthy (dmccart@gomez.intel.com)
Newsgroups: rec.games.board