After playing this game through several times, I have found I really like it alot (though I go cuckoo for Cyberpunk), however, everyone at the table has noticed a trend.

Floyd seems to be the best character. He has 7 time per turn, and can pull 1 piece of evidence off the board for 0 time once per turn - giving him in effect 8 time. Every time he is used, it turns into a 3 on 1 to try and stop him - usually failing to do so. In fact, the only time Floyd has not one this game happened when on the 2nd to last turn all the evidence got removed from all suspects, and Floyd was nowhere near any evidence for his last turn.

Anyone else notice this about Floyd as well?

Eric

No...in my group it's Caprice who seems to be the powerhouse, which is weird, since it's apparently Louis and Raymond for everyone else.

Some things about Floyd: like you say, he can investigate the murder like crazy, but that's really all he can do. His second directive keeps him from using light cards effectively (and, consequently, it's harder to use dark cards too), and the downside to his third directive usually means that he loses all that extra time unless he spends most of the game loitering around Haas Bioroid. He's atrocious at getting and keeping favors, and is pretty bad at the conspiracy too. Lastly, he has some of the most infuriating dark cards in the game.

I agree that Floyd is the best. Every detective have nasty black cards, but Caprice is the worst in it. You can evade locations as you wish but she can lose much even when traveling through normal ones. I played her most often, because i like her, but mostly I only get frustrated how effective are black cards played on her.

We tried to stop Floyd every time, but usually you draw cards that simply cant use, or do him little harm ... (usually due to directive that he cannot gain trauma !! best defence against his most black cards ). We played about 10-15 games now and Floyd wins most of them. Now we try to stop him everytime, but even we manage to make him lost his turn not to return to haas bioroid, he wins anyway. Last game we played in 4 players and put floyd in the box.

And after all this, when playing the murder which special rule is to place lead from earth on the moon and vice versa, it is complete heaven for Floyd and he cannot be stopped. We dont solve murder with him ... usually we place conspiracy to gain VP and boroid tokens, murder is always tricky - hits, kills and witnesses etc. Usually who have guilt hunch, wins the game... but in some games Floyd wins despite that, and once i win with Luis and collecting favors... Caprice too can win ... conspiracy tokens, and jinteki.. but i think she has same chances as other characters, because she can be stopped by black cards easily.

Hi all!

I played only my third game of Androids today, but i think i can say I found out a few things and I will "spill my beans" :-) :

I played Louis in the very first game and I won, I was surprised. However we didnt get all the rules right so i may have gotten a few VP that i wouldnt have, but so did the others and i managed to get the guilty hunch right and to collect and keep a big pile of Favors which were ALL connected (really i think in the absolute first game, EVERYBODY tries to connect EVERYTHING in the puzzle, not wasting a moment of time to try and actively BLOCK certain VP-relevant connections), so i won by a BIG difference to the second in VP, and here is why I think i did and what I think is also a KEY strategy to follow (and i can only assume for all characters, but of course I didnt play ALL of them yet):

My conclusion is: Try to be good at one thing and do good or at least OK on another thing, ignore and try to minimize your losses on the third thing.

Now what do i mean with thing? Let me explain:

Big victory points can be got by making your guilty hunch guilty, well obviously, thats thing #1 (15VP and possibly more), and everbody tries to do that, so all characters compete here, but some have better and greater tricks in their sleeve (some are dirty LOL) to achieve it.

Big victory points can also be achieved by getting a lots of puzzle rows, columns etc, each giving you 4 VPs, thing #2 (add Favors VP here too)

Getting your two personal stories to the best ending would yield also 13 - 15 (and more possibly) VP, thing #3

also you get negative points for failed personal stories, but ALL characters can minimize that to a certain degree, some like Louis AND Floyd better than the others...

(Ok Ray has only one long story, but his VP points are basically doubled for that to a nice 14 VP)

So if you are good at something and other players need to go out of the way to stop you( basically lowering their own ability to do something for THEM to get VP) they usually wont do it. So if for example you try to get your personal story to a good ending and have a good or common criteria to earn good baggage, while it is difficult to inflict bad baggage on you, nobody is going to waste effort like baggage piece puzzle tiles to give you bad baggage, if you can easily offset that with easy good baggage conditions.

The other player would rather give his own personal story a good baggage (except it is screwed already with a ton of bad baggage) or give bad baggage to a DIFFERENT player who is much closer (as in closer to being tied) in his resolvement of his personal story and doesnt have a clear lead or easy conditions to get good baggage for his story, if he has the choice between you and the other dude.

I managed to get, as Louis, my personal story to a bad ending, - 9 for wife Sarah being killed, however i was very good (and played a lot of dirty tricks on that too) to get the evidence on MY guilty hunch, which as a side effect reduced my - 9 to only - 2!

Add to that, that i got a pile of VP favors (Mr Lee favor is a VERY nice favor for its effect, spend it VERY wisely if at all!), I won by a big margin!

Now, in my second post, i will illustrate the mistakes and "achievements" I did when I played Floyd, which is the character I played in my second and third game (and this time we got all rules right!)

And here is my conclusions about Floyd specifically:

Here is my SPECIFIC thoughts about Floyd: (I hope you have read my previous post, so...)

I played Floyd in my second game, as I was influenced about all this threads about Floyd having more time and having an advantage about gathering clues and all and how gaining 4 VP each for completing columns, rows and diagonals at the puzzle seem all to overpowered (read for yourself, dude!) So I choose Floyd as my char in my game #2 ( i was allowed to choose), simply to find out (OK, maybe I wanted to have found a strategy for a foolproof WIN with a certain character, but read on, LOL!) if this was really true.

To say in advance, I FAILED miserably, and here is why (and remember : By failure you learn MOST LOL!)

Personal stories:

After all 3 games i can conclude this observation: Each character *seems* to have its personal story work like this:

Well all personal stories have a part 1 and a part two, even if ray´s parts take longer to resolve, as he has only one personal story (lets call it PS for convenience)

It seems that if you resolve part 1 of PS positive for your char, it is "harder" for your char to get part 2 to the optimum result: If players gang up and try to give you bad baggage, you have a hard time to bring it to a good end.

It also seems that if your resolve of part 1 of your PS ends the "bad" way, you have it easier to get good baggage to make the story end "somewhat" beneficial than to end it bad. In either case, your story ends "less" bad if it took the wrong turn in part 1 and end "bad" as compared to if you end part 1 all positive and end bad afterwards. The bad End VP loss is higher if you started good than if you started bad. (The reward for solving both parts positive is also higher than resolving part 1 bad and part 2 good, obviously). However what I am aiming to say to you: It may happen (with clever oponents anyway) that if they succeded to turn your PS "bad" in the first part, that they would "leave you in peace" for the second part and here is why :

1.: you have an "advantage" to get good baggage vs them giving you bad baggage overall (thats how i feel it) IF your personal story goes "bad" in the first part. (kind of a balancing thing)

2. OTHER players who got their PS work fine for part 1, are much easier targets to get their PS disturbed by other players than YOUR PS having taking a hit in the 1st part. (At least thats my impression, have a look for yourselves for the criteria!", and also the "reward for doing so is higher.

Also keep in mind that the VP effect is greater for a player that starts his PS with a good first part than the VP effect of a player who started his PS with a first bad outcome. Lets assume, you are a player who has the option to spoil another players PS that gives or takes away from him 7 VP minus or plus, or, as the other choice would be, inflict the player who had a "bad" first outcome of his personal storie´s paths to either get a small minus or a mediocre plus, who, is the obvious choice (if effort to achieve bad baggage on each of them is somewhat even?(I even say its harder for the already "slowed-down" opponent))? You choose the guy (or girl, LOL) who had a POSITIVE first outcome of her PS, as it is a difference if you can prevent your competitor( and thats basically what your other players are) to gain a big bonus or give him a big malus instead OR prevent a different player, who has a much smaller bonus to gain and also a much smaller malus to be inflicted on him, from gaining a few points . It is to be assumed that one player cannot prevent every other players PS, so whats his logical choice?

In the light of that, is choosing a bad (first) twist of your PS such a bad choice (if you are better at the "other things"?(see post before)

My answer is not at all!

My mistake with Floyd was that i thought: " Well i can choose the outcome of the PS as positive in the first part, so why shouldnt i do it?

I failed bc of that miserably and here is why:

My general conclusion is that if you make your first part of the PS go to a positive outcome (which all characters except Floyd need to work on, but generally its easy), then YOU BETTER BACK IT UP, in the second part of the PS with all the effort that you can, or ELSE you should choose to ignore the PS part at all bc it is easy for the other players to to spoil your second part and with mediocre effort and it is somewhat harder for you to gain an edge above that efforts. (it is easy if your PS gets ignored if opponents are busy doing other things, which, in general might be a concept in itself, to hope nobody takes care bout your chars PS and it sometimes works.)

Here is where Floyds Choice comes in: He can *choose* to make the first part of his PS go positive or negative.

Now that seems like a big advantage to him, BUT remember, Floyd has no positive conditions to gain good baggage in his first part, (except the cards that are played for or against him that have "traits" like duty or such things that work on all chars PS.

All his baggage in his first part (positive and negative) are carried over to his "second" part of the PS.

Well, what does that mean in effect? It means that

1.:

It is very unlikely that someone will place bad baggage on you on your first part, as he would have to trigger one of the bad "traits" on your PS.

2.:

It is very hard to place good baggage on Floyd (as playing Floyd) on his first part, only by playing light cards as Floyd or getting maybe Puzzle pieces that give good baggage to yourself. It may not seem necessary to you, as being Floyd, you choose the first outcome, hover choose wisely: The parameters for doing one thing or the other may be:

a: if Bad baggage is given to you even in the first phase before your choice, you might say: "well whatever, i can still pick the less choice and loose a few VP. In his PS i think floyd ends with -1 VP if he chooses to keep his directives and the story ends bad.

b: if you manage to place some good baggage on your PS in the first 3 days of each weak and have no bad baggage on it yet, you have a good headstart and might consider choosing the good outcome of the PS. You should however invest ressources to back it up in the second half of the weak, or else you will suffer very severe VP Penalties for a bad outcome (High price, high risk)

The first time i played Floyed i picked the good outcome for both PS and ended up with - 14 VP for that choice.

The second time i played Floyed, i chose the other outcomes and ended up with -2 VP.

to be continued...

More about Floyd:

Floyd starts at the moon, in lot of games alone, as only Caprice starts up there too, the other characters start at the earthside and probably stay there for some time. Floyd also needs to end his turn at Haas at the end of day 3 and 10 or lose his next day completely (he gets a free teleport to the moon though).

Also for a very big number of your whitecards, the techupgrade cards, you need to be in Haas on the moon (ok if simmons is alive, you can tech also in NAPD on Earth, but simmons dies if you choose a bad first twist in one of Floyds PS, see last post).

So what does that mean for Floyd?

It means you are basically stuck on the moon for at least till day 4 (unless you get the PS at the start where you can switch it off, but that is risky business, as it is a *good* outcome of PS and you risk high VP loss if you cannot finish your PS good). After day 4 you have 7 days of free going anywhere, but you will return to the moon on day 10 one way or the other, so your last turns will very likely be on the moon again.

Now Floyd is a real powerhouse in his ability to move to a lead, pick it up, move to another, pick it up (even though his car is somewhat slow), BUT consider the following situation: You have Floyd upgraded with two tech cards, say you get an extra free move for 0 time and you can get two evidence tokens and choose which one to put on the suspect. Considering the one free move and the one free following a lead you have the equivalent of 9 time compared to the other players, if all you do is moving and picking up leads. That sounds great and overpowered, but if you are really the only one up in the moon, who is going to place leads there except you? Now assume noone else puts leads on the moon after they are followed, only Floyd does, when the detective after him moves and investigates, then the result is that the moon gets rather empty rather quickly, bc you remove 3 -4 leads a day and return only about 2.

In my second game the detective to the left of me was louis blaine. he can have nice things on his personal stories like he spends time to get good baggage telephoning his wife, so no leads for Floyd to place, or the other one, where louis gets to place the leads he follows, himself.

Other players may find other things to do that take time on earth and are beneficial to them, if they are player to the left of you, so this will slow Floyd down.

All that limits Floyds ability to rush after the leads like a madman to a degree.

So, eventually Floyd has really no choice but to rush down to earth to get to the juicy, elusive leads, and should probably do so beginning on day 4.

Cards:

Floyd can only play one light card a day, if his directive is active. He has some very nice light cards, but some are conditional, like the one where you can save your suspect and remove hits from it, for that father michael needs to be alive.

As dark cards i can remember there is a very nasty one that cancels your dropship pass should you have planned to use one to return to haas in turn 10 quickly, and you get stranded and loose one day.

If you realize that one player is holding a dark card of floyd for a long time not using it, it may be exactly that card. A visit to snitch, if he is nearby could be useful.

Also of course there are several cards that make your techupgrades go.

Strategies for Floyd travelling to the earth in midgame:

I have already explained that you need to go to earth in day 4. (This situation would only not apply if at least 1 other player sits on the moon with you.

In that case staying on the moon might be the better idea as you are closer to Haas and some dark cards of you have less potential to hurt you.)

If you stay there longer, you will eventually run dry on leads.

Now how to get there and back?

1. obvious use the beanstalk, place all the leads that you are allowed to place on the way you will take, the rest you can put on the moon, you will come back eventually, but dont overdo it. Remember that thumbprints and cameras will stay there but are subject to extra-movement by opponents who place puzzle pieces with that bonus, while the npcs are being moved anyway at end of week 1, so you cant place them for later pickup on the moon before day 8.

Now the options are: Get a dropship pass or 2 (to play safe against the darkcard cancel) and run after the leads then teleport back and finish your run.

or go back by normal meaning, picking up the leads on the beanstalk, but plan in the time you need for that.

or ignore going back, for example if the way back is rather empty and dry on leads, and you spend much time moving there without having the ability to pick something useful up, then just use your time on the earth for things that you need do there and return in turn 11 with all time lost then

or, in case you really dont want to loose turn 11, and your PS is the right one, switch your maintenance requirement simply off. However you still *loose* Time bc now you have in turn 11, 12, 13 ,and 14 6 time per day, (24) compared to having 7 time per day in 12 , 13 and 14 (21).