I am really excited about Android but am still not quite ready to plunk down $60 for it.

I know I want it, but I want to feel like it is going to be a good game to play for awhile with my group. After reading all the reviews out there I get the impression that it is very ambitious but doesn't quite reach everything it strives for.

I've read around here, but give me your take - -

Is it fun?

How long does it take to play with 4-5 players (after the first couple games and everyone is knowledgeable with the rules)?

How is the replay factor?

Thanks for your input

anybody? just sell me on the game...

Lemme put it this way. I've had Arkham Horror and Fury of Dracula for 2 years. Played many games of both. I've played 1 game of Android and the one, singular event has blown any of the sessions with Arkham or Dracula out of the water. It's ridiculously great if you enjoy story/setting. To boot, the rules work well and flow together. I love this game.

1. 3 players takes about... maybe 5 hours including setup and packdown during your first game.

2. Replay is huge. Don't take my word for it; check out the other forum topics on replayability.

3. Welcome

Most of your answers are around here as separate threads.

Is it fun? I can't answer personally because I still haven't had a chance to play it. It looks fun and pretty involved. People who don't seem to like it are ones expecting a deductive style game like Clue. Another aspect is the "screw your neighbor" mechanic through the Dark cards. This seems to be the biggest turn-off I am hearing so people who don't like that type of gaming should stay away. If you like that, then go for it.

Time? Well this is another aspect that some people have an issue with. It seems most people think this is better suited for 3 players with maybe a 4th once you get ruiles down. Initial plays seem to be taking 4-5 players 5-6 hours. If everyone gets to know the rules, maybe shave that down to 4 hours. But I haven't heard enough reports yet with repeated plays.

Replayabilty is one of the main threads on here. Obviously, not a lot of peopel have had a chance to replay too many times given the length and the short duration it has been out. But you have 6 murders each with 3 different special cards where only 1 is used. You also have 20+ Evenrt cards where I think 4 different ones are used. Five different investigators that are using 2 of 3 different plots each game. With the interaction of the investigators, the plots, the events, and the number of players, this game should be very replayable. Even if you pull the same cast of characters and play the same event cards, two games with the same setup should play out very differently from each other.

Having played 4 games now, I'm not sure on the replayability. I mean, yes it is replayable, but the games are not that much different.

The game comes with a few cases (6 I think). However, these are generally only minor tweaks to the rules and dont really alter much of the game.

The detectives normally have 3 plots and you use 2 of them per game. A little variation there to which plots you get and in which order.

Your dark / light cards. You will probably go through most of them (if not all) during a game. So after a couple of games, you've seen them all.

The event cards - yes, lots of replay value there, a lot more than you need, so they will always be different, but again, nothing on them which changes the game.

So, yes the game has replay value, but a lot of what you are doing is the same everytime you play. The strategies that you adopt will generally be the same, based on your plot, the case, and your card draws, but overall you do the same thing.

As for fun, I have enjoyed all the games I have played. However, I'm not really tempted to play again until some of the fundamental issues are sorted out. Some of the rules are very unclear and FFG do not seem to be responding to peoples questions about them. Some of these rules questions really need answering officially because they affect the way the game should be played.

And then there is the issue of balance. I personally believe the puzzle pieces are way too powerful and in the 4 games I have played, dont see any point in bothering with the 'lottery' which is placing evidence on suspects unless you have nothing else to do.

Someone brought this out at my last game day and I was lured in by all of the shiny bits. Then we started going through the setup and I realized how MASSIVE the game was. I bailed out before the game started and I'm so glad I did. That was the only game those people played all day! Personally, I don't think there's a game in existence I can stand to play all day long. Plenty of people go for that sort of thing, but my gaming time is precious and I'm not about to use it all on one game.

I plan on playing a solo game of this tonight to get a feel for it. I have read the rules 3 times now and have read some of the cards to get a better understanding about how the game works. During the second reading of the rules I actually had the board in front of me and started placing the starting pieces to see what the rules were stating. Tonight will probably be the same thing, except I will be going through plots, events, etc.

I must say that I am excited to start playing this. Actually having the board in front of me while reading the rules really helped me understand a little more about how things are supposed to work.

4lterego said:

Before I start giving my opinion I think I should just state for the record that I'm not a fan of this game in its pure, unaltered state. Anyway, here's my answers/opinions to your questions:

4lterego said:

It's enjoyable, but what enjoyment there is can be spoiled by what my gaming group consider to be some pretty big gameplay problems:

* A lot of the cards are very heavy-handed in their effects. You can do a lot of work throughout the whole game to achieve something, only to have it all undone by the play of a single card in the last round, making you lose dozens of VPs. I don't care if people say that this is just because you're playing to your character's weaknesses, there are more subtle ways to implement variable character strengths/weaknesses that don't lead to such a negative play experience than the way it was implemented in this game.

* The way the murder works is very random. After a couple of plays you realise that the outcome is determined almost entirely by luck, which can make the whole idea of following up leads seem a bit pointless (which is a shame, because that's one of the main parts of this 3-hour minimum game).

* The way points are allocated is completely disproportionate to the amount of effort needed to put into it. You get 4 points just for completing 5-in-a-row on the conspiracy puzzle (which usually just requires following up a couple of leads in a row), but only get 3 points for getting a Jinteki/Haas token (which requires acquiring two favours of particular types, travelling to a certain location, spending 3 Time to enter that location (unless you earlier acquired a warrant to enter that location for 1 Time instead), then spending 2 Time, the favours and discarding two cards to get the 3VP token). Then at the end of the game players can acquire an insane amount of points - much more than you get from the three main focuses (foci?) of the game: murder, conspiracy and plots - just for saving up favours throughout the game (and being lucky enough to not have a "lose all your favours" card played on you). This again leads to the feeling of many of your actions not having much real meaning.

* The theme doesn't match up to the gameplay *at all*. You never really at any point really feel that you're actually doing the thing that your actions on the board are supposed to represent. The "theme" of the game is entirely contained in the flavour text written on the cards, which is quite extensive (and isn't integrated with the game effect text like it is in Arkham Horror). After a very short time, players (our players, at least) got bored of reading the flavour text out and just went for the gameplay effects, mostly because of the realisation that reading out everything would at least double the play time.

4lterego said:

Our games with three players have taken about 3-4 hours. The amount of time would be directly proportional to the number of players, so you can figure it out from that. I don't see the time going below 2.5 hours for a 3-player game even with thorough knowledge of the rules.

4lterego said:

I have to agree with one of the above posters; although a lot of people proclaim that this game will have high replayability due to the combinations of investigators, murders, plots, events, etc, none of these things really has that much of an effect on the game to make it feel like it is changed significantly. The games we played with the base rules felt pretty similar, even though we used entirely different investigators and different murders.

After yesterday's game I must agree with Lizard above... At first I loved this game, now I feel a bit disappointed.

First of all, with 4 or 5 players, the game gets a bit boring - you have to wait a looong time for your turn, and you can't do much meanwhile, especially if you don't have black cards. But for far worse is the lack of the 'bang'. For example in Arkham Horror you're afraid of the slumbering Big Bad Monster. In Battlestar Galactica you save (or erase) humanity. Here is just solving a murder, which actually doesn't mean that much (as Lizard pointed out), since you can get a lot of points for having favours. The plot mechanic is very interesting though and I think it's one of the best aspects of the game.

With some house rules this game can be really great... for example how about turning the puzzle pieces (a bit like in 'Dungeon Twister') after the conspiracy tokes are exhausted? Limiting favours in hand, or having to spend them by making them temporary? We probably need a new thread for this

Skie - check out the Android: The Director's Cut link in my signature below.

I was also very close to buying this game. After reading these comments I think I'll wait for a 2nd edition.

Thanks everyone for laying out your impressions. I find I'm always consulting these forums!

And thanks 4lterego for getting this great feed back from the group. It sounds like this game has tons of potential but I don't feel good about it yet.

Thanks a lot! This may save this game (and get rid of the feeling of wasting a lot of money on it

Like the OP, I've been on the fence about this game... and the comments here seem to be keeping me there. Maybe the best thing to do would be to play it before I buy it (something I RARELY do). I'm sure someone around here has already been lured in by all of the pieces.

But gosh how I love a game with so many pieces.

So I guess my question is this: What other game out there is most like Android?

Penagain said:

It seems you're already a fan of it: Arkham Horror.

The only other one I've heard of (but not played) that may be similar is Tales of the Arabian Nights. Apparently the game is pretty much entirely about creating a story, with a heavy "choose your own adventure" element.

Well I bit the bullet and went for it - mainly because I love a challenge! Got my copy and first game is this Friday

Wish us luck!

Like many others, I was ready to jump on this game when it was first announced. However, with the huge disparity in reivews, it put me squarely on the fence, leaning ever so slight towards purchasing (mainly because I enjoy and regularly play several other FFG products.

As luck would have it though, I was able to play it at a recent convention. I really had a great time with it, though it didn't hurt that the other three players had just as much fun. I went ahead and purchased it later that same day. With only one play through, I can't gauge how much value I'll get for my money. Hopefully that character strategies and plots will provide enough variety.

Hein99 said:

Well, I ended up purchasing Android.
I've played a solo learning play through and full game with two friends. And I really did enjoyed this game.
And I agree with so many of the comments in this thread.

Even only after one real play through I feel the replayability of this game is just fine. And even though, of the characters and plots and event that will likely change from game to game, they don't really 'change' the game in a huge way. But the game itself offers so many options that I can't help but think that every play through will be very very different. Mostly in part because of how each player might play that day. If a group is more active affecting other players that will feel radically different than if the group is more passive and more focussed on their own plot or suspects. So I do think re-play value is great.
If I could only get one thing from an expansion I would want more detectives.

There's a comment in the thread about how placing evidence on suspects feels like a lottery. This comment worries me because only after one play I can really see what they're getting at. If two players are working the same suspect because this suspect is one players guilty hunch and the others innocent hunch then the out come could really fall on luck.
I'm hoping that after more plays this scenario will end up falling on strategy. If I notice someone working a suspect that I'm also placing evidence on maybe I should consider focusing else where or if I have been randomly drawing very high value evidence tokens maybe I feel confident that I will prevail.

I'm off to try out bleach_lizard's Android: The Director's Cut .

The link to The Director's Cut you've provided there actually links to an old version. If you check on BGG, there is now a v.3 available.

I didn't know there was a v3. But I have found it now. Thanks!

Android: The Director's Cuts v3

I have played it a few times now. Good or bad game?

I would say you need to be a group of players that enjoy two things:

- You like to read out cards that are being played and get into the fluff and story about what is going on, tell the story with your group as you play the game.

- You have to enjoy the screw your friends factor. It is a very competetive game with constant options to mess up your fellow players as soon as they move into the right spot or does something.

I dont think this appeal to the majorty of board game players, buf with the right group its a really fun and deep game with good replayability as well.