Great Scott! Biff has stolen the DeLorean and is messing with the time stream. He has taken stuff from the future and brought it to the past and vice versa. If this mess does not get fixed soon, time will unravel and we all will be wiped from existence. We need the help of Doc and Marty from all the timelines to get this cleaned up and fast!
In Back to the Future: Dice Through Time, from Ravensburger, 2-4 players take on the role of a version of Doc and Marty in one of the 4-time eras from the movies and are racing through time to collect the items that Biff has placed out of time and return them to their proper place in time. It is a fully cooperative game where players win or lose as a team. While working together, they must be careful to not bump into each other or they can create a paradox causing even more problems!
To start, lay the board out and place the 4 Biff markers in their starting positions in the 4 timelines. Determine the difficulty that you want to try and select the number of items for each timeline and place them in the matching areas on the board. Give each player, a player board, matching DeLorean marker, and 4 dice. Set the Einstein markers and paradox tokens aside. Finally, shuffle the event cards and place them in their area on the board and place the OUTTATIME marker at zero. All players start at the clock tower in their respective timeline, determine the first player, and give them the first player marker.
There are 6 steps on a player’s turn. First off, the first player draws a number of event cards based on the player count and lays them face down, revealing and resolving them one at a time. Events are either special (cards with a yellow border) or timeline events. Timeline events are placed on the board in the indicated space (the clock tower, Lou’s cafe, Marty’s house, etc)
Each timeline event has a series of symbols that need to be rolled to complete and remove the event from the timeline, In addition, events can also move Biff to their location, or cause multiple events in the same area, increasing the challenge to accomplish.
After the events, each player rolls their 4 dice and use the symbols rolled to complete actions. There are several symbols but here is a brief overview. The symbols will allow a player to do the following: Move from location to location in the same time, move to the same location in another time, remove paradox tokens, reroll any unused dice, move one space in the same time, use any symbol, or move Biff to another location. In addition to solving events. Players, in turn, order, spend their dice to take their actions. When a player has taken all the actions, they wish, the next player takes their turn.
If a player solves an event, they can pick an item from the item deck for that time. They then can return the item to the proper place in time. It is important to note, that players can only carry two items at a time. and that when returning an item, this takes place after resolving an event, and drawing an item. This is important when solving an event at the same location where returning an event. Once an item has been returned to its proper place in time, the player may move the OUTTATIME marker back one space and draw a random Einstein token and place it on the board. These tokens may be spent just like spending dice and assist in solving events.
After all of players have taken their actions, look at the board and find the timeline that has the most events, not the number of events, but the most areas with events. They then move the OUTTATIME marker that many spaces, and an additional space for each paradox token in that time. Then add a paradox token to each area with an event that does not have one for that timeline.
Finally, players take all their dice and pass the first player marker and repeat the same steps. There are some additional steps players can do, one is rippling dice. A player may leave a dice at an event location and any other player can use that dice to assist for any events at that location in the future, but cannot assist with events in a timeline before that one.
One additional point to consider is that if a player ever meets another player, there is a paradox and the OUTTATIME marker advances 2 spaces. If the OUTTATIME marker ever reaches the game over space, the players have lost and time is unraveled. The players win if they return all the items to their proper place and time.
Simulating time travel in a board game is a challenge, and Back to the Future: Dice Thorough Time manages to solve that with a simple fluid set of mechanics. In addition, making games from an intellectual property presents additional challenges, as players and fans have certain expectations on the presentation of the franchise. Ravensburger has met that challenge before with Villainous, Jaws, Wonder Woman, and Horrified; creating challenging games rich in theme and a strong game under the hood. Back to the Future is no exception, the events are right out of the movie franchise, the artwork and style are very true to the movies as well. For fans of the movies looking for a good board game transition, Back to the Future: Dice Through Time will satisfy both needs very well.
Written by Ed Carter
