Chronos is a game of Time exploration for 3-5 players, inspired by Lloyd Krassner's Timeline.

Game Components

5. "House of Time" Tiles (player home)

2. TimeWarp Tile

36. "Era" Tiles (12 eras, 3 tiles for each era)

5. Leader counters (in 5 different colors)

20. Agent counters (in 5 different colors)

5. Time Portal counters (in 5 different colors)

5. Control counters (in 5 different colors)

The Map

• [TL] a numeric value (from 1 to 12) representing the abstract timeline, where 1 is the prehistory and 12 is the far future.
• [VP] the number of victory point gained when the era is controlled by a player
• [RE] the "resistance" of the era to the control

Every player also controls an "House of Time" Tile: this is the start tile for all the player units; only units belonging to player that owns the House of Time can enter this Tile.

The TimeWarp tiles represent point of non-continuity in the temporal flux: units cannot enter in this Tiles.

Time Controllers

The number of units is fixed: this means that you can have a max of 8 units in play.

Game Setup

Put all the Era and TimeWarp tiles on the TimePool: shuffle the Time Pool and deal 5 tiles to each player. Tiles are kept secret until played.

Each player roll 2D6: high roll goes first and place one Era tile in the table.

Until the table contains a number of tiles equal to 3 times the number of players (i.e. on a 4 player game you must have 12 played tiles) each player in turn must place one tile in the table following the Basic placement rules

1. Each era must be placed so that at least one side of the tile is adjacent to an era whose TimeLine [TL] value is immediately precent or successive. The other sides can be adiacent to any era without restriction (but will be usable for movement only by the Explorers - see below for details).
2. You can always place an era adjacent to a TimeWarp.

If you cannot place any tile you can pass or discard one tile and draw another one (face up so that every one can see it): if the newly drawn tile can be played you must do it or pass.

When all the needed Era/TimeWarp tiles have been placed return all unused tiles to the Time Pool.

Starting with the last one every player can now place his House of Time adiacent to any Era tile. No House of Time can be adiacent to another House of Time.

Each player must then place the Leader counter in his House of Time: you must then choose 3 units (agents or explorers) and place them with the Leader.

Game Sequence

The game proceed in game turns: the turn sequence is the following

• Determine initiative
• First Player segment
• Second Player segment
• …
• Last Player segment

To determine the initiative each player rolls 2D6: high result goes first.

During your segment you can do one of the following actions:

• Movement: select any one unit; you can move it in the TimeMap of a number of eras equal or less to the unit movement capability following the TimeLine sequence. Explorers can "jump" between two adjacent Eras not in sequence if the TL difference between the two tiles is less or equal to the remaining movement points.

• Portal movement: a unit can move from the House of Time the Time Portal.

• Recruit: you can place any one unit currently not in the Time Map in your House of Time. Explorers can also be placed with your Leader.

• Control: one Leader or Agent can try to gain control of a non-controlled era where the counter is placed; roll a D10 adding the unit Influence value and substract the Era resistance and one point for every "enemy" unit in the era. It the result is greater than zero then the era is controlled: put a marker on the era and gain the relative Victory Points. In any case remove your units from the era (you can recruit them later); if the control attempt is successful any enemy unit in the era is also removed, otherwise the enemy units are unaffected.

• Exploration: remove any one unit not in the House of Time to try an exploration of the Time Flux; roll 1D10: on a result of 0 the unit is lost in the Flux. With a result of 1-9 you've discovered a new temporal line: draw a tile from the Time Pool. If you can place it, following the basic placement rules, adjacent to the Era where was the agent you must do it. Otherwise you must place it in the Time Map on any legal position: discard the tile only if there is not a legal position in the Time Map.

• Portal Creation: you can remove a unit to create a Time Portal in any Era. The time Portal can be later used to move units from te House of Time to the era where the portal has been created.

End of the game.

Easy-Game Scenario

The basic game include all the tiles and to win you need 22 VP. Alternatively you can use only the Era with TL 1-5: in this case you only need 15 VP to win the game.

Optional rule: Change control

Variants

You can easily create game variants by

• Creating new Eras, with different TL (higher or lower) and/or using different VP/RE values.
• Create new unit types
• Define a different mix for the TimePool (example: remove low TL tiles, include more "central" TL tiles to make easier the placement, increase high TL tiles).