OK, let's get past this bit where all my favorite companies disappoint me. Let's talk about one that only disappoints Mike (long story): Looney Labs.
Chrononauts is one of my very favorite card games. I remember demoing it at Origins the year it came out, being instantly impressed and buying it right away. That must have been about ten years ago, because Looney Labs recently announced an eleven card expansion that brings the timeline up to 2008!
"The Gore Years" is out October 23, so they have not yet revealed all the cards. But we do know that the set includes five new timeline cards, three new patches, and three new characters.
Previously, the Chrononauts timeline was comprised of four rows of eight cards each, running from 1865 (Lincoln's assassination) to 1999 (Columbine school shooting). So under Gore Years, the timeline will appear to have an incomplete row of five at the bottom, which just puts on us track for another mini-expansion circa 2015. Assuming something cool happens.
The two new linchpins are the 2000 Florida Recount and the 2001 World Trade Center attack. Kudos to Looney Labs for not only being brave enough to include 9/11 as a game event (they mocked this card up almost right after it happened, if I remember their weblog correctly), but also calling it what it is. IE, it's the history-friendly "World Trade Center destroyed", not the media marketed buzzword "9/11."
If you take a look at the timeline cards, there's already an interesting possibility in view. Gore wins the presidency, then wins again in 2004 (hence, The Gore Years). The McCain/Palin ticket appears to arise four years earlier for the 2004 election... and when Gore's two terms are up, Sarah Palin becomes the first female president of the United States in 2008. 2008 is an important diversity election no matter what the timeline!
As repugnant and frightening as President Palin may sound, this is probably a calculated response to some of Chrononaut's more left-wing-leaning events. Like, the legalization of marijuana and the firearms ban... thanks to Senator John Lennon.
Out of the three new characters, LL has revealed the minifiction for Vincent. He hails from a timeline with no Hitler, President King... but yeah, the Bush vs Saddam Hussein thing happened.
Looking back, it's interesting to see how history has already de-emphasized some of the original Chrononauts timeline. Waco as a linchpin? Really? And as history progresses, I'd tend to think that World Trade Center Destroyed would be a ripplepoint from the formation of Israel, rather than a linchpin event. But the Israel Founded card is a ripple from WWII, so I suppose you have to break the chains somewhere to keep the game structure.
Looney Labs is up to the third printing of Chrononauts, but the only differences (aside from the typos corrected from versions 1 to 2) is the addition of a couple promo cards that I already have. Also, the v3 box is one of those nasty dual-deck tuckboxes that require you to fiddle and fiddle with splitting the deck in order to get the cards back inside. Sure, a longer box looks better on the retail, but once you buy it, it is a right royal pain in the ass.
My favorite way to play Chrononauts is to combine the first set with the second set (Early American Chrononauts) for a game of UberChrononauts. Then you get a massive timeline from 1770 to 1999... and now, with the Gore Years, 2008. Although with UberChrononauts you really need at least four players; with too few players it can devolve into a game with no one ever truly interacting with each other.
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