Played 6 games of Back to the Future last night, all two player.
Negative impressions forthcoming.
Overview of Chrononauts and Back to the Future
The basic premise of both Chrononauts and BTTF is that you have a timeline which consists of "lynchpin" events (IE major events) and "ripplepoint" events (IE minor events). You can flip lynchpin events, and flipping them causes ripplepoint events to in turn flip. It's a pretty simple mechanic. In Chrononauts, flipped ripplepoint events cause paradoxes in the space time continuum which must in turn be "patched" by playing patch cards. In BTTF, flipped ripplepoint events just because alternate timeline stories (George McFly punches Biff versus George McFly chickens out from punching Biff).
In Chrononauts, there are three ways to win. 1) Change the timeline to match your character card. 2) Play a specific set of items. 3) Draw up to 10 cards; you increase your hand size by patching paradoxes, even if those specific patches don't help you match the timeline on your character card. In BTTF, there is one way to win. 1) Change the timeline to match your character card.
In BTTF, each player must flip two specific events to alter history, and keep one event on the timeline the same as it is now. This is also true in Chrononauts, but in Chrononauts you also need to patch the paradoxes, so the actual process from start to end-game is much longer. In BTTF, it's theoretically possible to complete your objective by the end of your second turn.
To compensate for this, BTTF introduces a random mechanic. After completing your objectives, you must stop Doc Brown from inventing Time Travel. To do this, you flip the lynchpin that corresponds to him inventing Time Travel. Unlike every other timeline event, this event has 5 copies of the card in a stack. 4 of these copies flip to reveal "Mysterious forces have prevented you from stopping Doc Brown". As a result, there's this end game phase where you're just flipping that lynchpin up to 5 times until you find the legitimate "Doc Brown doesn't invent time travel" card.
Both games consist of Inverters (flip lynchpins), Items (some have functionality, some don't), Action cards (look through the discard pile, steal item, discard opponent's item, switch hands, look through the draw pile, draw extra cards, interrupt and cancel an opponent's move, etc). There are a few other types of cards in both games but these are the main kinds you need to know.
Why BTTF doesn't really work
In Chrononauts, the deck is stacked with a variety of Inverters. These inverters let you flip either any lynchpin card, or in some cases only certain lynchpin cards. All inverters work on their own and do not require any outside cards. This might seem overpowered, but because you also need specific patch cards to fix paradoxes, inverters themselves aren't really powerful cards.
In BTTF, you flip lynchpin cards using time machines (DeLorean, Time Train, etc). All time machines let you flip any lynchpin, but each time machine has different requirements. One requires you to play a specific item card. One requires you to discard any card to play it. Several have no requirements. There are also non time-machine inverter cards which allow you to flip one specific lynchpin and optionally a lynchpin of your choice if you have played a specific item. One example would be "Flip Lynchpin D-3, and if you have the Futuristic Clothing item, flip any lynchpin of your choice". Any card that requires an item requires you to discard the item after use. This creates a HUGE power gulf; cards like Time Car v3 (Flip any lynchpin at no cost, draw a card) or Time Train (Flip any lynchpin at no cost, play an extra card) are so much more powerful than Time Car v1 (Flip any lynchpin, requires you to have either a crate of plutonium, or a vial of plutonium, both of which there's only one of in the deck) or the specific lynchpin inverters.
Here's where we ran into trouble. There are a TON of cards in the deck that either let you look through the draw deck and play an arbitrary card or look through the discard pile and play an arbitrary card.
Draw Rewind -> Use rewind to fish Time Car v3 (Flip any lynchpin at no cost, draw a card) out of discard pile -> Flip lynchpin. Draw Quick Trip -> Use Quick Trip to fish Time Train (Flip any lynchpin at no cost, play an additional card) out of draw pile -> Flip lynchpin.
As a result, the game isn't about drawing or collecting useful time machine or inverter cards, it's about drawing Quick Trip to look through the draw pile, and then repeatedly drawing some of the many Rewind cards to re-play that same Time Machine out of the discard pile again and again. Items are useless. Other time machines are useless. In four of our six games, we ended up devolving into repeatedly doing this.
Easy wins / Gridlock attrition
Here's the optimal strategy for BTTF
1) Double draw until you've got a time machine card that can flip any inverter without use of external items.
2) Play that time machine card and flip your first needed lynchpin
3) Double draw until you get rewind
4) Play that time machine card out of the graveyard and flip your second needed lynchpin
5) Double draw until you get rewind
6) Play that time machine card out of the graveyard and flip the un-invent time travel lynchpin.
7) Repeat until you flip that lynchpin successfully.
It is possible to execute all of this in three turns. It took me five turns to win the first game.
In our impressions from last night, there are two possible game trajectories. The first is that if the two players have missions that don't overlap, both players just independently do their business with no opportunity for competitive play. The cost of screwing another player is far too great to do it intentionally in this situation, you're better off trying to win for yourself.
The second game trajectory is that if both players share a mission objective (say, I want <timeline card x> flipped to one side and she wants <timeline card x> flipped to the other side), the game is just pure attrition. You draw until you can undo what the other player did. They draw until they can undo what you did. As noted above, often times you're able to do this with every draw, so each subsequent turn is just do->undo->do->undo->do->undo. There's even a few cards that directly say "If the player before you changed the timeline, you may flip any lynchpin". They might as well call that card "Undo the last turn", but that's the net effect.
Psychology
In Chrononauts, it's pretty easy to suss out two of the three victory conditions. Items are not particularly useful unless you're going for an item victory, and in fact playing them frequently ends up helping opponents, so someone who plays a few items is probably building towards an item victory. Also, all of the item victory conditions are themed (play three dinosaur items, play three mona lisa items, play three religious artifacts) so anyone who has played more than once can basically tell if someone is just playing benign items or actually satisfying item victory conditions.
Winning by drawing ten cards is also relatively simple. Is the person playing whatever patch cards they can and not really making any effort to otherwise manipulate the timeline? Consider using a "switch hands" card to knock 'em down a peg.
There's at least some limited opportunity to use your turns to try to stop someone else. In BTTF, the only way to "stop" someone is just to undo the lynchpin flip they just did. There are almost no conditions where this is a better move than flipping one of the lynchpins you need flipped, so thre's almost no opportunity to try to thwart your opponent. As a result, direct clash only happens when you have a muturally shared objective, which as I mentioned above creates a gridlock situation.
Theme / Production
The cards look great, the iconography is clearer than with Chrononauts, and the idea of using BTTF for this type of game is excellent. The fact that they didn't license the DeLorean and half the events end up being bizarro fan fiction spinoffs of BTTF is not cool. So no complaints about the production at all, but the theme really isn't well used.
The game might serve as a good bridge to Chrononauts for non-gamers who are turned off by Chrononauts' real world history theme but like something based on a movie, but otherwise I think it's just not as good of a game. For the $15-20 that it'll cost you, you probably won't feel robbed, but this is not a game with longevity and fans would definitely get more mileage out of Chrononauts, particularly with the expansions.
We didn't play 3 or 4 player. My impression is that more players would mitigate many of the issues I mention but they'd simultaneously make the game devolve into randomness. It's difficult to imagine what a "deep" strategy for BTTF would be. Chrononauts is not particularly deep, but the three separate victory conditions allows for a few decisions in terms of your priorities. In BTTF, I didn't once feel like I was having to make a tough decision between two move choices. :/
