About the fractures of time
What are your plans for the weekend? Let’s start Friday with some thoughts on the Fractures of Time expansion for Anachrony!
We have had the Infinity Box for a while now, but it took us some time to finally try Fractures of Time. 🙈 Expansions for Anachrony are all mostly modular - which has its pros and cons. The thing I dislike is that not all are compatible, and it’s not always clear which works with which. Fishing together rules from different rulebooks and setting everything up can also be a hassle.
However Fractures seems like more of a “normal” expansion, that integrates very well with the game and changes some things in a fun way.
First thing you notice is a new game board, the Amethynia Valley, and the Fracture Device player board extensions. This of course makes the game even more of a table hog 😄, but it also introduces new mechanics. The overall number of rounds is actually reduced, but you can use a new resource called Flux to blink with your Exosuits - basically moving already placed workers to another slot. So you can take more actions, and occupied slots will also free up every now and then.
The new Blink mechanic also uses some dice 🎲 output randomness, so luck could influence your success - just like with anomalies and research in the base game. (Which is still a strange design choice in a euro to me.) Still, the new board extensions have some fun actions on them, and provide a cool risk-reward system: you can be more efficient, but risk causing some Glitches - which disable certain spots or buildings for you. You can also upgrade your Fracture device, so you can more safely blink, which gives a new usage for research tiles, which otherwise weren’t overly important.
Other important additions are a fifth Path you can play as and a new worker type, the Operators, who specialize in Flux and the technologies surrounding it. On the new board you can get Technology cards which are also new to the game - these give all sorts of useful abilities and scoring conditions to spice up your games even more!
Fractures of Time is definitely the biggest and coolest expansion for Anachrony. I’m pretty sure we will always include it now. 🥰
