Hey all,

I finally got around to playing Android and it was a lot of fun. At the end looking at the scores and considering what the players were up to and where points game from I was curious about other people's experiences. Below I have some details about my game and I would love to see something similar from other play groups. Even if you only remember your final scores. But other details are welcome like maybe some highlights about what won or lost the game for you. Or what turned the tide on a close game... stuff like that.

3 players:

Louis Blaine --> Final Score: 45 (Me. Yup, the loser!)
Raymond Flint --> Final Score: 77
Caprice Nisei --> Final Score: 95

As the game progressed I thought for sure my guilty hunch was going to work out. And I was pretty sure Caprice's innocent hunch was the same suspect as my guilty hunch. Because We were the only two working this suspect.
Raymond of course could also see all the activity on this suspect and he was able to have him killed! So much for our points there.

Both Caprice and Raymond managed to get a lot of street favor. And they did this because there were 3 links on the conspiracy track leading to street favor.
Louis (Me) was the only one who managed to get my innocent hunch and there were 3 links from the conspiracy that lead to +2 / link for innocent hunches. For some reason the other two players thought for sure this would win the game for. I did score some good points (28 VP) but that was by far my best category.

Louis Blaine:
+05 innocent hunch
+14 personal plot
+28 Conspiracy, 14x2 (3 paths to innocent hunch for +2 VP / link)
-02 Trauma

Raymond Flint: (obsessed)
+15 guilty hunch
+14 personal plot
+44 Street Favor, 4x11 (3 paths to Street Favor for +1 VP / link - 11 total links)
+04 Bonus VP

Caprice Nisei:
+14 personal plot
+66 Street Favor, 6x11(3 paths to Street Favor for +1 VP / link - 11 total links)
+15 Bonus VP (some from major location I forget where how others were earned)

So the winner was Caprice who didn't resolve the murderer or her innocent hunch. But she really did work the conspiracy.

Raymond did well to kill my guilty and Caprices innocent hunch (same suspect). Costing me +15 and Caprice +5 VP.

All of us were secretly chomping at the bit to play cards on each of the others when someone entered a seedy location... but everyone heeded the advice of our characters hint card and did not risk entering seedy location beyond very early turns in the game.
So I was not able to play my dark card that would have cost Raymond all of his normal favor. Had he lost his street favor he would have lost 44 VP and I would have at least come in 2nd!
I found out after that Raymond wanted to play the same effect card on Caprice to cause her to lose her normal favor to put him in the lead! But she didn't enter and seedy locations and she too was safe.

Great game. I look forward to seeing how it changes as we learn it better. And believe me we have a lot of learning to do.
Raymond actually place a secret alibi on his guilty hunch because early on he didn't really understand what it meant! But despite this his guilty suspect was still found to be the most guilty.

Hein99 said:

With help from other forum members I have discovered a big scoring mistake I made in this game. I'm going to see if I can remember enough to correct it.

When I calculated the conspiracy VP points I was counting each puzzle piece as a link to determine the final conspiracy multiplier for Street Favor and for Innocent Hunches... Instead of counting each path as a link. So I'm sure this resulted in much higher multiplier values than it should have been.

If I remember right, there were 3 links (paths) to both Street Favor and Innocent Hunches on the conspiracy puzzle portion of the board. So that would mean a multiplier of x3 for each.

Street favors are worth +1 VP
so, Street favor +1 VP x 3 links = 3 VP per Street Favor token

Louis Blaine would still have 0 VP for Street favor because he didn't have any.

Raymond Flint who had 4 Street favor tokens would then have +12 VP and not +44!
(4 Street Favor tokens x +1 VP x 3 links = 12 VP)

Caprice Nisei who had 6 Street favor tokens would then have +18 VP and not +66!
(6 Street favor tokens x +1 VP x 3 links = 18 VP)

Louis Blaine was the only one who got his innocent hunch so from the conspiracy he would have earned +6 VP and not +28!
( innocent hunch +2 VP x 3 paths = 6 VP)

So my scoring should have looked like this:

Louis Blaine (me)
+05 innocent hunch
+14 personal plot
+06 conspiracy
-02 trauma
Total: 23 VP

Raymond Flint
+15 guilty hunch
+14 personal plot
+12 street favor
+04 bonus VP
Total: 44 VP

Caprice Nisei
+14 personal plot
+18 Street Favor
+15 Bonus VP
Total: 47 VP

I'm still the loser but I still loved the game. And in one game I think I've very very close to having these rules down solid!

I've played this game either 3 or 4 times.

I'm still a little on the fence about it.

The experience is fun overall, but I think it takes too long for the payoff.

It does really put a damper on your strategy when you can't play a dark card on someone which means you can't play a light card on yourself.

I'm glad you caught your scoring mistake, but as you pointed out, it didn't change the winner in this case.

I think the best part of the game is that every investigator plays completely different.

I've played Rachel twice now and both times I was able to kill at least one of the suspects.

Thats very satisfying, especially when you know who's person it is (both times ended up being Louis' suspect, which is Rachel's strategy, kill louis' suspect)

I see lots of good things with Floyd and would like to try him out.

I actually discovered another error we made. When I was speaking with my group about the game they came to realize that they had used a major locations trait more than once in a turn; which is not right. The rules are clear only once per turn. But being our first game I can see how this was over looked.

Unfortunately I wont be able to back track and find out what the real score should have been but I do know they shouldn't have had as many street favors as they did. What I like about this news is it will bring down their scores a fair bit making it a much tighter game. I like this because it makes me feel that this game will really rely on strategy and planning. I see luck as having only a small role in this game.

• Achieving or failing your happy ending is entirely up to you playing better than your opponent(s) who may have tried to prevent your happy ending.
• Connecting the conspiracy to a bonus you want involves a wee amount of luck based on the shape of the puzzle path you draw, but really, if no one tries to block you, you will get it. And there is nothing stopping you from drawing more than once piece per turn.
• Placing evidence on a suspect would in my opinion contain the most amount of luck. But if nothing else you'll have a good idea of the odds. If you're not drawing very high (or very low; depending if you want guilty or innocent) values and other players are actively placing evidence as well you have to know that you're odds aren't great... possible, but not great. You have to decide to stick with it or find another place to earn VP or to deny them from the others players.

I'm very keen to getting some more experience like you have to see how things evolve.

About not being able to play dark cards (because conditions have not been met) affecting your ability to play light cards on yourself... I found that very often I would discard twilight card in order to pay for light cards. Maybe I had to give up some that I wanted to hold on to but I always found I could play something. And I really liked the options for paying for cards. If I could play dark cards to light shift, excellent! If not, there were still options.
You just have to be sure to spend some time to draw cards during your turn.

I also love how each investigator plays so very differently. I've said in this forum before; if I could only have one thing for an expansion it would be more investigators.

And yes, I agree! Killing a suspect is very satisfying! At least it looked that way to by buddy who killed my guilty hunch (which was also the 3rd players innocent hunch).

Thanks for the thoughts. I'd love to hear more.

We've played this game two times now, altho we have yet to finish it. The first time through was pretty much only a testplay to get a feel for the rules, and we stopped at the start of the second week. The second time we made it a few days further but at that point had already spent close to 5-6 hours, since it's so immensely complicated, just setting up the game and explaining the rules to new players takes like two hours.

That and the fact that I'm the only person playing who has read the complete rulebook, so the other players' turns take like 10 minutes each whereas mine usually only takes 2-3 minutes which can be a little frustrating. However, I do quite enjoy the game, especially the Blade Runner theme. The amount of tokens and different cards for each character is ridiculous though, so I'm torn between loving the complexity and tactical intricacies of the game, and dreading it.

As a sidenote, we did a VP count when we quit at the second game (around the third day in week two), and I came out on top with Louis. Although most of my points where from my suspect's hunches (I had both guilty and innocent hunch for a suspect that was hugely ahead of the other's guilt score), since said suspect already had two hits on him, I'm sure the final scoring would have been something completely different.

As you said in your initial post however, I also feel that the huge difference between the investigators definitely gives the game an extra dimension.

Hey there.

I first encountered Android at Gen*Con '09 and, although we didn't make it through a whole game (we started setting up at 11 pm), was intrigued by the complexity and story elements of the game. At Gen*Con '10, I got my own copy and my gaming group finally tried it out last week.

All things considered, the game is not as difficult to play as I was remembering from the '09 experience. After a thorough read of the rulebook, I had it down pretty well and was able to explain the rules to my group in short order. Looking back later, I think we made only one mistake (regarding removing evidence before scoring).

I don't remember final scores, other than the fact that I (Rachel) came in last and the winner was Raymond. Raymond won, even though the rest of us spent the entire second week trying to gang up on him, by completing his plot with the best possible outcome and through the conspiracy puzzle (he gained Innocent Hunch VP, but no Guilty Hunch VP). It turned out that, on one of Raymond's turns, he was able to complete 4 rows/columns on the puzzle, thereby gaining 16 VP in one fell swoop. Aside from the tactical errors committed by the rest of us to allow this to happen, our main complaint was the difficulty we had describing these VP in the context of the story. The +4 VP tokens make no sense thematically and seem to be a simple "mini-game" bonus just to add another element to the puzzle. For a sort of throw-away concept, though, it can have a major impact on the outcome of the game, with no way to imagine the result. Although it's obvious to my why the player won the game, I'm unable to come up with a story explanation for why Raymond was more successful than the other investigators in solving the crime. Can anyone out there help with this?

Outside of this one criticism, we had a good 6 hour game and will certainly play again.

O

DavidG55311 said:

This was my only problem i would say i had with the game I would sit there for 3 turns with a dark card i could play because the triggers to play the card were not being met and so thusly i had to discard card to play light cards slowing me down quite a bit this went on for about two thirds of our game. But seeing this was out first game of android i think one more play is needed to make a clear judgment as to if this will be a repeat problem.

shinokaze said:

I dont think this is much of a problem. I try to get a high fluctuation on my cards, so it is ok for me to pay the certain cards I want to play via other cards, if necessary. Its quite good to go through all the cards and therefore get access to the best and most fitting cards to play.

So far I could manage to do this only once with Caprice, but that worked quite well.