A space rocket is beautiful to look at in that industrial metallic kind of way. One can enjoy space rockets not just for their sleek style and raw power but for the promise of what they may achieve or discover on their journeys to come. And so with all this talk of time travel and three stellar looking boards I felt quite excited about the promise of Khronos.

Time travel is a difficult thing to implement in any shape or form. Does 'Doctor Who' really work, what about all those paradoxes in 'Back to the Future'. The question of time travel becomes, can you make a believable story out of what you’ve done. This question is particularly hard when it comes to board games because there is so little opportunity to explain yourself. You want to avoid the situationwith Bus where the time stop mechanism destroys the plausibility of the game.

Well Khronos does a great job of the time travel by keeping it simple. The basic effect is that buildings ripple through time. So by building in age 1 you will see effects in ages two and three. The concept is simple, it impacts greatly on game play and there are always ways around problems. The whole effect is a set of complex thoughts that take significant practice to readily understand and implement. The complex problem solving makes me think most readily about Tigris and Euphrates in that the problems become simpler with time. And yet the mechanic and rules governing this aspect of the game are difficult to explain and take time to settle in your mind.

Khronos is an attractive game with simple components and little fuss or trouble. The game makes use of cardboard tiles, wooden cubes and is solid and modern in its implementation if not remarkable.

The game is something akin to area control, in that domains are formed and scored by the person with control. In this case control equates to the biggest building of a particular type. The size of the scoring depends on the number of a different type of building and each of the three boards scores separately. The concept of playing over three domains is certainly interesting and forces some interesting tradeoffs. No player scores on more than two of the three boards either, encouraging diversity among players.

The game becomes easier over time. If at first you are a little overwhelmed by the rule instruction do not fear. Perhaps this is a game best learnt by playing because in the application comes the understanding. The process of understanding how an action on one board will affect the later boards in the time sequence takes time, but it is well worth it. It is worth noting the game plays better with the optional card replacement rule as well, otherwise you can be left feeling powerless to the cards when you really want to do something.

Khronos offers a new experience. No one can accuse it of lacking originality. What perhaps it lacks is a little umph. In a sense it seems to meander along and could suffer from a dose of AP. Everything seems good about it but it just didn’t make a strong impact on our group. Perhaps it is just an intangible ‘playability’ that it lacked I’m not quite sure. Still even if the them is simply tacked on I like the thinking behind this one and it offers more on subsequent plays. If you have ever been on date and come away thinking … “shes a nice girl but there was just no chemistry” you might now how I feel.

My conclusion? Khronos is a good friend and not a passionate lover but heck beauty is in the eye of the beholder so this might just spin your wheels.