Android board game(and other scifis)

Other Games
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Anyone played Android the board game? (2008)

does it worth it? or is it a drag?

iv seen cards/board and it looks beautiful, but many people say it’s too needlessly complex/and long

some people say some actions you can do are super useless and you better not doing them, like just using the main way to gain points is better than all of them, so they are never chosen,making many components useless

i’ve found a copy for 55euro but it looks too much for it, what are your opinions?

Also any other fun android or scifi board games?

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oh, there’s a new one called New Angeles that makes you play as a corp from netrunner that looks really deep and fun to play

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I own Android, but it is to messy to play it yet :wink:
It is,like new Angeles will be, a board game with bunch of cards, markers und rules.

The good thing as I read through the rules,
there are some cases to hunt with different subjects (Eve, Noise) and outcomes, plus side stories for each detective
(Nisey, Floyd or Rachel) and rules rules rules…
As I havn’t any play group the the game is sadly covered with dust…
But as far as I know, it needs an experienced group who has no problems with long going games.

Some for Eclipse the board game ore twilight imperium, all BIG BIG Games :wink:

As for the Android Universe: we will get New Angeles in some Weeks/Days
not as complex as Android as far as I see but still complex, where you play one of the big -bad- Corps
trying to maintain power in the “City” and diggin Money out auf the areas.

Then we’ve got Mainframe,
in this Game we play one of our lovely Runners (Kate, Chaos, Noise, Andromeda, Adam, Nero etc)
where we try to access as much space from the Titan Transnational Bank Mainframe during the 23 Seconds Incident
This Game is rather short, easy but non the less fun as every runner got a set of different programs to use during the game. BUT this game depends on some kind of luck, as you can’t plan ahead and with more then 2 player,
it all depends on the next card on the board or the last move made by an opponent.

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I just sold the Android board game on recently, after really wanting to like it for a long time but failing to do so. The amount of effort that has gone into creating the world is amazing, but the actual gameplay has a lot of problems: unbalanced locations, ‘lose your turn’ cards (and you only get 12 turns in the game, so they’re pretty frustrating), a lack of mechanical incentive to actually solve the murder the game is about, and so forth. It can still be a great experience with the right crowd, but you need to accept that it’s an experience more than a game, and approach it accordingly. Think a sort of competitive Arkham Horror, if you’ve played that.

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The game in general is best thought of as an expierence more than a game with winners and losers. I don’t really remember what happened in my games, but I remember my character’s story quite clearly.

Also, I’ve always loved that your collecting evidence and then giving it to people you WANT to be guilty. A friend of mine always called it the best framing-for-murder simulator available on the market.

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I believe the Android boardgame is great story but lacking mechanics, though take that with lots of salt as I’ve not personally played it.

Other sci-fi boardgames:
Eclipse is amazing and the closest thing to playing Master of Orion as a boardgame that you can get, I feel. It’s one of my favorite games, hampered only by the fact that it’s at its best if you have 4+ people that all know what they’re doing. (Twilight Imperium is the same category of game, as a Space 4X, but it feels different because of the Role Selection that happens each round. Certain mechanics also just feel clunkier to me, and I like the ability in Eclipse to customize your ships.)

Tiny Epic Galaxies is Eclipse-Lite, a game played in an hour, period, instead of half-hour/player.

Galaxy Trucker is by the illustrious Vlaada Chvatil, and is a light-hearted fun romp that combines frantic real-time ship building with strategic forward-looking while you’re tying to build the ship. And also random explosions that hit (mostly) everyone causing chaos and carnage.

Eminent Domain is a deckbuilder/tableau builder that captures the essence of building an empire from scratch pretty effectively. Doesn’t take long once you get it going, either. I’ve played with the first expansion, but not Exotica yet, though I do own it.

In the same universe as Eminent Domain is Battlecruisers, which is more of a game of out-thinking your opponents, and really really quick to play.

Race for the Galaxy (and its cousin, Roll for the Galaxy) is a tableau builder where you try to build the most efficient empire you can, first. Once you’ve got the admittedly kinda weird symbology down and you can play the game quickly, it feels a lot like a race, trying to get things done before the other players.

Among the Stars is another tableau builder mixed with a Drafting mechanic. Sort of the 7 Wonders of space games. You’re trying to build a space station and get the best one possible utilizing various adjacency bonuses.

Terraforming Mars is a game that’s very similar in feel to Race for the Galaxy, but the execution is vastly different. It also reminds me a bit of New Angeles, since each player is a Megacorp vying to terraform Mars and do the best to come out on top in public opinion, it seems. An interesting game-end mechanic where most of your cards cause Mars to become more habitable, and once it’s fully habitable, well, you’re done Terraforming Mars!

… I might play a lot of board games. :slight_smile:

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What about twillight imperium?

thanks for all the replies so far people!

ill probably get it for the collection anyway, but ill have small expectations gameplay wise\

board games is one of the most healthiest hobbies imo, keep it up :smiley:

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;D

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It’s funny…I think the Arkham Horror comparison is very apt, in that you’re wrong about Android in much the same way that people are usually wrong about Arkham Horror :wink:
People often play a few games of AH and dismiss it as a storytelling game, but if you watch the really hardcore players who know all the gate frequencies and the items and the checks and rewards associated with the various encounter types, you’ll find that there’s actually an amazingly sophisticated and challenging game there that most people only scratch the surface of.
And in Android, for example, the lose a turn cards can be pretty punishing, but the only players who have them are Raymond and Caprice, who also have cars that are fast enough to avoid going to seedy locations. So if you do lose a turn, it means you either didn’t pay attention to your little strategy card, or you took a calculated risk that didn’t work out. In addition, some groups also get caught in self-reinforcing groupthink about the investigation (sadly perpetuated by BGG), and so on.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely huge and inelegant–in ways that mainly serve the narrative–and very much an old-school KW design, but I still think it succeeds brilliantly as both an experience and a game.

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I looooooooooove Eclipse.

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Android is awesome, get it.

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I love the Android Board Game. I used to have the same complaint about collecting the evidence, and placing it on the suspects you want to be found guilty or innocent. I then had the opportunity to play the game at a convention with the designer, and another person brought it up. I liked his explanation in that players aren’t really solving a mystery as much as directing a movie about the events.

Lose turns can be played around by avoiding certain areas.

I personally enjoy all the small moving parts to the game; movement with cardboard car tools, balancing your light shift to be able to play both positive and negative cards, other players determining evidence placement, the conspiracy puzzle, actually pulling off assassinations, and the characters story lines with karma.

It is definitely rules heavy, but once understood, flows really well. Most people that have played it have 1-3 plays under their belt before it is written off. My group has maybe 30, and have really come to enjoy the smaller parts.

The theme is still the biggest draw though, being Caprice and either failing so the Clones Are Not People Initiative passes or succeeding and watching yourself get those human rights is just really cool in my opinion.

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