~Rob Fenimore
Dice Drop Games
BREAKING NEWS: Fantasy Flight makes fantastic games. If you play table top games, you already know this. But I figured I would remind you just in case you forgot. As with most things in life, I think we take constant excellence for granted sometimes. It happens in sports quite often. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning were so good for so many years, it was no big deal when they they would throw 40 TD’s in a season. Their excellence became a non-story. And in this Golden Age Of Gaming, with so many other quarterbacks in the industry, I think the same is true for Fantasy Flight Games.
When I saw Android: Mainframe scroll across the bottom of my 24/7 gaming news screen (man I wish that existed) I was intrigued. It was supposed to be a game that was light on rules, deep on strategy, with a short playtime, and scales well with any of its 2-4 players. And while it was set in the Netrunner universe, it was said that knowledge of the theme was not required in order to enjoy the game. (Full disclosure: I have not played the Android: Netrunner living card game and know little about the theme.)
So, I finally got a copy of Mainframe, cracked it open, and immediately dove into a two player game. First of all, the components are solid and sleek. The all-black game board is made of thick plastic, as are the blue partitions which players use to form the sections on the board. The cards have nice art and the access point tokens are big enough so that you can see the characters’ faces on them.
In Mainframe, (designed by Jordi Gene’ and Gregorio Morales) players are cyber criminals who are competing to control a vulnerable bank’s unsecured accounts. The goal of the game is to secure sections of the map (the accounts) so that they contain only your agents. Secured sections give that player a victory point for each square in the secure section. Android: Mainframe is very similar to the game “Dots and Boxes” that you probably played when you were a kid. Think of Mainframe’s board as the graph paper and the partitions as the lines connecting the dots. The difference here is that in Mainframe, the placing of partitions is dictated by choosing cards with various patterns and instructions. Since players alternate choosing a card and executing its “program,” most of the strategy lies in being able to choose not only what is best for you, but also to prevent opponents from having access to cards that will score them maximum points.
Additionally, each player has three unique cards that no one else can see. These cards can be used to interrupt other players’ best laid plans, as well as break some of the rules. This provides a bit of a “take that” element to the game, but that is easily foreshadowed by the theme of the game – elite cyber criminals are still criminals, after all. Each of the 6 characters in the game has 5 unique cards in their deck. Choosing only 3 to use each game increases randomness and replay-ability.
I really enjoy the way Mainframe strikes a nice balance between rewarding logical thinking, while still preventing players from over-thinking. This was done by inserting some randomness with the character cards and the program deck. Since you don’t know ALL of the cards that might be available at any given time, you really don’t get too much benefit from analysis paralysis and math-y thinking. And again, the best laid plans can also be thwarted by a hidden card. I don’t think Mainframe was designed to be like Chess. It feels more like Connect Four and Dots and Boxes had a baby, and then fed it milk laced with steroids. Mainframe is a game that could be taught to a non-gaming grandparent (they usually love spies) but could equally find its place as a warm up or nice pub game for hard-core gamers. And while the theme is not the most important aspect of the game, it is woven nicely into its fabric.
In short, I really dig Android: Mainframe. Kudos (once again) to Fantasy Flight/Asmodee for another 40 TD performance.
Thanks for reading and keep nerding on!
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