Chrononauts is my favourite "light" game. It's one of those games where the random element is overwhelmed by how wonderful the concept is, and, in any case, the random part of the game is far less than a game such as Fluxx. I rather expect that skill does in fact play a part in the game. I think it did in this one, anyway.

I arrived at Randy's place to discover that Randy had Galaxy Trucker all set up and ready to go, with Josh peering at the pieces. We were missing one thing: a Richard.

So, instead of just sitting there and waiting, I pulled out Chrononauts and we had quick game; it is perfect for that purpose.

The most astonishing thing about this game was how unpatched the timeline was. Our initial draws had a great number of inverters and very few patches... well, at least, patches we wanted to play. In my case, I think I drew about one patch all game. Instead, my hand was normally made up of Artifacts, Inverters, Rewinds and Get There Firsts. So, I resolved to play an artefact game whilst keeping an eye out for the opportunity to adjust the timeline so that if the patches did come up, I could win the game quickly.

As I'd been hired to collect the three Mona Lisas (genuine, fake and really fake), it was quite pleasing to see the first come my way easily. I played another artefact first, and then the Mona Lisa.

Meanwhile, Randy had played the Really Fast Time Machine. I had a cunning plan - I'd steal it. No, that wasn't the cunning bit. The cunning bit was by stealing it I'd distract Randy from the fact that I actually wanted the Mona Lisas, so he'd spend all of his time playing cards to recover the RFTM.

Josh is still having a bit of trouble with understanding how patches work, so it was completely bizarre that the one patch he played was one of the 1945 patches! Yes, the Germans won World War 2. Randy managed to also play one patch, which I then discarded by restoring one of the lynchpins, and we were staring at a (mostly) unpatched timeline. There weren't all that many paradoxes, however. Restoring history seemed to be about as popular as changing it, this game!

Randy stole back his RFTM from me, so I played Rewind (I had two in hand) to get it back, using the card he'd played to do so. Randy, a little frustrated by this, played "It Never Existed" to discard it. I could have brought it back, but instead kept the Rewind in hand as a way of picking up another Mona Lisa should anyone play or discard it.

Josh performed a Miracle with "Tomorrow's Newpaper Today". Not to be outdone, I stole his Live Dinosaur (Steggy) and sold it to the highest bidder to gain another two cards. This was a great move as it kept his number of artefacts down, and it also netted me the second Mona Lisa, which I soon played.

The next turn, the third Mona Lisa came into my hand. My one fear was the "Memo to my Future Self" card, which would negate the play... we were over halfway through the deck, and none had been played yet. Thankfully, neither Randy nor Josh played it, and I claimed victory gladly - and just in time, as Randy would have won if I had not!

By now, Rich had arrived, so we repaired to the other table for a slightly more serious, though still delightfully silly, game of Galaxy Trucker!