Mindclash Games appreciated my How to Play Trickerion video so much, they loaded me up with a copy of the Anachrony Esssntial Edition (for which i made a How to Play video), and then they sent this thing: one of the most overboard, ostentatious enties in the annals of board gaming, the Infinity Box. Here’s me putting Humpty Dumpty together again!

(click to view transcript)

(robot voice) The distant future…
Hi! It’s Ryan from Nights Around a
Table. i don’t think i’ve found an
accessory that fits me any worse than
these things.
They don’t ev… like they… (hmm) when you go
like this… (henh!)
ah, there you go. Look: you can’t wiggle
your eyebrows with them, because then,
the blinding… snow reflective light comes…
i don’t know what they’re for.
They’re for future… future stuff! They’re
for… this is… welcome to the future.
What am i saying? i did my first ever
live stream, uh, not too long ago… uh… in
which i took
the Anachrony Infinity Box, and it’s so
big i actually had to pull my camera
view out so you can see the whole thing.
But i, uh, unboxed it on a live stream… my
first ever live stream… boy,
i’m so happy that i’ve lost my live
stream virginity, and now it’s like…
now i’m a… i’m a total live stream hoor! It’s
just live stream h…
live streams all the time! So lucky you, i
guess. i apologize.
i unboxed this thing on a live stream,
and then i got all the pieces out, and it
was like it was as if i had dismantled
an entire automobile, and i’m like “Now
i’m going to put it back together!”
Uh… not in under a few hours, you’re not, you
goofball. So i
i stopped the stream – said goodbye to
everybody – but i promised that i would do,
like, a
quick re-boxing time lapse for you to
show
all of this going in, and thankfully
unlike, uh, another
Mindclash product, the Trickerion
Collectors Edition, which i
made a video of before – i showed you me
re-boxing all of that – there was no guide
for that, but thank goodness…
i mean, first you look at this, you’re
like “Oh my God! It’s got a 6 page
re-boxing manual??” And then afterwards,
you’re like “Oh thank God it has a
6 page re-boxing manual!” because, like,
without that –
and even, like, after you get everything
in the box –
even after that, when you play the game,
you’re still gonna need that 6
page re-boxing manual to remember how
everything goes back in there, even
though,
as you’ll see in the box, some things are
nicely stamped and labeled. i think
they’ve done a really good job.
So i’ll show you that time lapse of me
putting everything together,
and it’s going to go pretty quick, but
please know that it took me
two and a half hours to meticulously
put everything back in the box, and i
didn’t even do it right the first time!
When i was done, it was kind of like Ikea-
you know, when you got a couple of
screws left over, you’re like “Nyah… i
messed up somehow.”
i had… i.. there were missing pieces, and i
thought for sure that they’d shorted me
on a punch board,
but in the naked light of the following
day, when i had
sobered up and i didn’t… i wasn’t drunk
on live streaming fumes,
i took a much more careful dive through
the box and i realized i had misplaced
things, and
everything that was supposed to be there
was there… plus a couple of extra pieces,
which i’ll show you when we dive in. But
here’s the… here’s the time lapse…
you can see it all going back in, and
then rejoin me and we’ll… we’ll take a… a
slower look at it.
[Music]Okay! Look at that: two and a half hours.
So this is what it all looks like, a
little bit slower, when you take the box
lid off. (Duh duh doot doot doot doot doo)
So all of your manuals are on top like
this, and that is the – you know – the
crucial key to how everything goes in
the box.
And then all of your flat stuff, your
boards, go in like that,
and then the cards go in this top tray…
(de doot doot)
and it’s interesting that this tray is
the only one that does this, but it’s
shaped kind of like those… you know those…
uh… the prototype buses in Japan that are
supposed to drive
over the cars? They’re like tunnel buses?
That’s kind of, like, a tunnel bus kind of
thing. So the boards are supposed to slip
in underneath that groove, and the cards
go… go in there. And… so there are your
player boards…
let’s get them out of there… and then you
start in with the trays! And they’re all
very very nicely organized. Every once in
a while, they’ll do, like, a…
they had, like, a one-off piece that
doesn’t really fit anywhere, so they just
cut a special groove for it, and it goes
in there. You know, your dice go in
special places…
Am i missing a die there? Is there
supposed to be a die? No, probably not. Uh,
and
most stuff has finger holes – you see
finger hole here – but every once in a
while there, are a few things that didn’t
have finger holes, but
i’ve been doing these uh Bits, Please!
episodes
(shredding 80’s guitar)
BITS PLEASE!!
Never get tired of that… and one of the
things i keep saying is that plastic has
a distinct advantage as an organizer for
board games over
wood or, uh, foam core because… check this
out:
first of all, it can have lids. Wood and
foam core rarely have lids. They’re
starting to with
some of the designs i’ve seen. But you
take the lid off,
and then things are shaped so that… is
this one shaped like it? No. i picked the
wrong…
i picked the wrong darned box. Let’s keep
going. But i will say about the lid:
look how deep dish that is. So i’ve seen…
what GameTrayz usually does is they put,
like, a little lip, or a groove,
and it catches so that the lid stays on,
uh, tightly.
But one of the drawbacks of that, i
realized, with the… with the Trickerion
Collectors Edition,
is you pass everybody their little box
with their player pieces in it, and they
pop off the lid, and because there’s that
catch there, they go “pop,” and then all the
pieces – because the jolts, the kickback –
they go
flying! So i’m not too sure if that’s why
we’re dealing with
– you know – really deep, or just, maybe, they
needed that depth to be in the tray? i’m
not too sure what the idea
is with that, but i don’t know. It… it
works. It’s… it’s good. i’m happy.
i said in the live stream i said it was
a little bit disappointed because it
doesn’t look like
everybody gets their own tray full of
their parts. i
lied! They totally do, as we’ll see when
we dive in a bit further.
But what i wanted to show you when you
take the lid off here…
IF you can… is that so many of these
grooves
are done like that, with like a… like, a
moat, and so the idea is you’re able to
tip the pieces on the side and pop them
out much easier, instead of digging
your sharp – you know – nicely did nails
down into
the groove and try to pry pieces up and
potentially damage them. So wherever
possible,
they did that a whole bunch, which is…
which is great! Super great.
Good to see. Further in, uh, like i said, i
really like that they embossed
the symbols of the things that go in the
different compartments.
So it might be hard to see – maybe if i
turn it in the light? But you can see
the genius… uh, where the genius workers
go, you see a little brain there,
and where the… i forget… the bossy people
go, there’s a little credit card looking
thing, and
– you know – so they – you know – on a lot of
them, they’ve… they’ve stamped that. Now i
said in the live stream it would have
also been nice
to get that stamped on the on the bottom
of the well that these pieces go in,
because when you’re putting pieces away,
you kind of, like, have to do this, and
it’s kind of, like, a Sesame Street or
Fisher-Price matching game, like “Oh,
top left… top left… these go…” So, i mean,
it’s…
it might have been just a little bit more
convenient to have that embossed in the
bottom of the well.
But again – you know – advantage of plastic
over,
uh, foam core, over wood, is that you can
scoop the edges, so that it’s… they’re
nice and rounded, so it’s easy to get
your finger in there, instead of having
to dig into
right angled corners that you would
would with foam core, where it’s harder to
get your pieces out.
Superb. And then, digging in further,
here’s a tray of
timey-wimey pieces… i wondered aloud
during the live stream
why they built this like this ,and i
haven’t played with it yet, but i think
it’s because
these are the buildings that you put on
your board – you purchase and put on your
board –
and i think there’s, like, a discardy pile
kind of thing happening here, so that’s
why they’ve made it –
i believe – that’s my guess. And if i’m
wrong, of course, the comments section is
down there.
You s… you set me straight, internet! i
could be out to lunch.
So i mentioned that this is, like, Anachrony the Infinity Box. It
contains everything that you could
possibly imagine for Anachrony, but
that’s not quite true, because Mindclash,
in addition to sending this along, sent a
few little, uh,
extras. So let me show you the wrappers
for a couple of them.
One of them was the metal cubes set. So
you get metal cubes in the Infinity Box.
There’s four different resources, and
i’ll point to them: here
there’s unobtainium… or neutronium, is
what it’s called…
and i called them… i called it tungsten,
uranium, and gold, but it’s actually
titanium, uranium, and gold, and we needed
an “ium” in there, and tungsten is not an “ium,”
so get out of here, tungsten!
Plus, it’s a w. What’s up with th… i know it’s
wolframite. Don’t – nerds,
just back off, nerds. i get it. Uh, but
those are the resources. So you get
the fancy one in metal, and everything
else in plastic, but
this is an add-on that you can purchase
that gets you
all of the resources in plastic. i think
that’s really smart, right? They gave you
a taste. Maybe a taste of metal. But these
are all the metal resources in here…
um… plus some promo stuff. Did we already
do the promo box? Yeah, so what they did
is they
they made a box with a recess in it, just
like…
“Whatever other promo stuff we make, you
just chuck it in there.”
And i threw in there… i threw a few of
the extra
little markers. Now, they gave me plastic
ones in one of these promo packs, but
these are really easy to lose, and if i
had one
criticism about this entire production – i
mean, it’s mind-boggling
the amount of effort they put into this,
and it’s super deluxe –
but the one thing… well let’s lift up…
let’s lift up the
the metal cubes box right here. Somebody
mentioned
on the live stream that these, uh… the
thin plastic
vacuform trays are prone to cracking
and breaking, which is true, so it makes
me a little…
little tiny bit nervous to have metal in
there, but
one of the nicest pieces in this entire
thing… i haven’t played with the
expansion yet that uses these pieces, but
these ones
were gorgeous. This is an upgrade pack
they sent me.
Look at that! They’re really beautiful.
They’re translucent. They look really
cool!
And then the painted power hexes to
power up your exosuits.
Gorgeous. The metal cubes, the water
pieces – these come standard with the game –
even the base game,
if you buy it on store shelves, the
retail version, it comes with those… those
water plasticky things.
Ah! Beautiful! Everything’s just… ah! That
whole tray is so gorgeous!
It’s a little bit weird, though, that they
didn’t do… yeah, i guess it makes sense…
special versions of – i guess these are
blip markers,
and you get special, like, spent darkened
versions of them, and they’re like
“Nah – nah, screw that. Those are gonna be
cardboard.” Okay.
Sure. Everything else is amazing. i’ll
give you that
three of them can be cardboard. That’s
fine. But like i was saying, the one thing
that i was kind of like (apprehensively) “Daaaaa…
really? Why?” is i believe that one of the
expansions,
uh, that you get in here adds a fifth
player. i’m not too sure if you can play
five players simultaneously, but you get
a fifth pack of pieces.
So this is what a tray looks like that
you’re gonna
hand to one of the players when you sit
down to play Anachrony. It’s like “Oh,
here’s your tray with all your pieces.”
Which i love.
And you open it up, and so if you’re
playing this faction,
here are all the mechs for that faction,
and
these are the possible leaders that you
could play.
And they’ve added a leader to each faction,
and i should show you…
right here, you get
extra… extra leaders. It looks like you’ve
got doubles of them. What they’ve done is
they’ve redone
the art, and that’s something that i
don’t see too too often board game
publishers
doing. i’m not sure why… well, if we take a
look maybe we’ll…
we’ll understand why they redid the art.
So on the left
is the redone art, and on the right is
the (huh-HYUH!)
original art. A little bit rough. Maybe
that’s why they redid it? They weren’t
happy with the quality
of the original art, so they redid it. So
the way that you can tell
which ones you’re supposed to use is the
new ones
have… let me see… they’ve got wrenches on
them.
So you want to use the ones with
wrenches, and the other ones you can
throw in the fire to keep you warm at
night. i’m not too sure. But i’m getting
to the bit…
the… the critical bit: the one thing that
i didn’t…
i sec… i… i’m second guessing them. i’m
wondering.
Uh i like that the little standees that
have these little plastic feets on them –
look! they’ve got finger holes to pull them
up – they’ve got little plastic feets on them,
which you’ve seen before, but i don’t
like games where i have to constantly,
when i put the game away,
take that off and put it back on, because
i’m always worried it’s going to fray
the edges of the cardboard…. and it does!
You know, you’ve seen really old board
games
where the cardboard gets messed up with
too much manipulation of that foot,
so it’s nice that they’ve made it so
that there’s a little recess in there, and
you never have to take that foot off. You
can just throw that banner back in there.
It’s interesting that they went with a
really big pocket here
that only holds these two marker pieces,
and a
smaller pocket here that the booklet
says is supposed to hold all of your
path markers.
Kind of… i don’t know. It’s kind of
strange. But the… the…
here we go! The one critical bit is that
you…
these pieces are the smallest things in
the entire game,
and they mark your time travel points
and, i believe, your…
um… the morale of your… of your workers.
And they’re little cardboard chits. And now
they’ve been replaced with resin bits,
which is great,
but in the pack, they’ve only given you
enough for four players, even though
we’ve got
five players. And so i was like “Uhhh… would
it have killed you
to put just two more in them so that
everybody….”
i don’t know. So that was the only thing
that was kind of like “Ahhh…
really? Why? You were so close! You’re so
close.” But everything else,
of course, is incredible. Uh, here are the
other…
if you’re gonna be the digger path… i don’t
know what all the paths are called.
There’s the new one
with the really cool purple exo suits,
which i really want to play, because if
purple’s a colour in a game
that you can play, i’m gonna i’m gonna
play purple. Best believe i’m gonna play
purple.
And there’s the path of greens, whatever
they’re called. And then the one thing i
actually wanted to ask you, if you own
this product: the one thing that really
confused me…
is this is the… i believe the chronossus,
which is, like, the villain that you’re
fighting
in solo mode… when you get in here, the
chronossus has
a path standee, just like all of the
other factions, but you get…
they’ve given me two pieces of cardboard,
and one of them is
double-sided, so it looks like that on
one side, and looks scary like that on
the other side,
and then they gave me another one that’s
like identical on both sides,
and i’m not too sure – and the manual
wasn’t too clear –
about which one of those i’m supposed to
keep. So i don’t know. Maybe if you have
this product, and you’ve played
all the expansions and the solo mode and
everything, you’re very Anachrony-
knowledgeable,
you can let me know what i’m supposed to
use.
You’ll find you’ve done this a lot, too: i
took something out of a box, and i’m like “Oh
no – i got to put it back in the box.
Where’s the box? Across the table! Oh my
gosh!”
So much. So let’s put… let’s put this guy
back here.
Put the lid back on… and so when you’re
trying to put it all away, like i said,
you need the manual….
oh, shoot. i was just going to show you
the manual, but i realize…
i realize it’s… it’s a little bit buried.
Hwoah…
there’s so much things… on the table…
here we go. So the way you follow it is
just, like, page one
it shows you what the bottom looks like,
so path, path,
chro… chronossus… chronobot… whatever you what
we call the guy,
and then layer two, you go here, so that’s
the…
the purple faction goes here… and i
assume that they’ve designed this so
that
it’s weighted, so that it’s not going to
cause a gigantic mess?
And another assumption: it looks like
everything’s been designed…
here’s the box that i have to throw more
things in… it looks like everything has been
designed so that
theoretically, you could store this game
vertically, but i’ve been bit by that
before.
i don’t know. There’s still… there’s a bit
of loosey-gooseyness in here that i
don’t know if i would
feel super comfortable trying to store
this vertically, although the box looks
way better when it’s
stored vertically. It’s a big tall thing.
Right: back to the instructions.
So you put those two things in there, and
then the next layer, it’s like a board
game lasagne!
So the… the… right. We put the ones, the
heavy…
the heavies in here,
with the metal cubes and the…
the… this one…
with all the workers… did i do that right? It’s
not fitting.
i may not have. i gotta look at the
instructions!
Ah – no. i got it wrong. It reminds me of…
if you don’t know, i’m very influenced
by Sesame Street, but remember that
Sesame Street sketch where
the kid’s got to go get a loaf of bread,
a bottle of milk, and a stick of butter,
and
his mom says “Remember all the milestones
you pass along the way,” or…
i don’t know if his mom says that, or
some creepy weird dude in a top hat says
that to him,
but uh… so he passes all this weird, like,
70s
psychedelic stuff on the way to the
store, and then in order to find his way
back from the store,
he remembers it in reverse order. If
you’ve never seen the sketch, you’re
probably wondering
“What on earth is he talking about??”
i’m getting better at putting this away,
you know. i’ve done this… accidentally
tried to… i tried to shoot this segment,
and then i
messed up the sound, so now i’m doing it
again, and in doing it again, i’m
remembering where things
go. Look at that: it CAN be taught!
Just like Sesame Street. So at the very
end here, when you’ve got
– you know – all the trays in, you want to
take the
player boards,
lay ’em down, and that’s when you use
this last card tray that has, like, the
bus thing going on.
Did i do that right? If you shimmy it
the correct way….
come on, now… boom. It fits beautifully
over top so they can ride underneath.
And then the the booklet has like a
whole
complicated explanation of how all the
boards go in. i think it really only
matters that these things tuck under
this box, but everything else,
i think you’re safe to just
slam in there, as long as you get the
heights right?
That’s just a guess. Oh no, i’m totally…
am i totally wrong? Yeah – i’m totally
wrong. You can’t just slam everything in
there. What was i even thinking?
You have to meticulously look at the
picture,
and figure out… oh my Lord.
Ah – this is why. Right. They go like that.
Ha ha!
Then these pieces, and these pieces,
and …i don’t know.
Let’s put half of these guys down here…
something like that. And then the
instructions
go on top, and then your box lid goes in
there.
Fagoosh! Ohhhhhh…fwa!
It takes a bit of muscle. There it is! And
i wanted to show you kind of what you’re
left with if you have all those upgrade
packs and everything and you’ve got your
whole
baggie of plastic pieces that you don’t
need anymore,
and… no! Get! Out of there! And you also
have this
huge bag of popped out cardboardy pieces,
and they’ve done the thing that a lot of
board games have done that i don’t quite
understand.
i think they… just because they have the
die and they have the space on the board
so they print blank things,
because why? Because… are you supposed to
make your own?
Like “i’m going to come up with my own…
fragment of time for the game!”
Or is that because, like, if you lose a
piece, you can use this and
redraw it on the piece? i’m not too sure.
Please let me know in the comments
if you know what those things are for.
Thank you so much for watching me re-box
that thing, and then
give you a little tour of it. It’s an
absolutely incredible product,
and… and, i mean, Mindclash does it right. i
didn’t pay for it, i gotta say, so i can
sing their praises all i like. If you paid
for it, you let me know if you
feel that it was a worthwhile investment,
because it’s certainly…
i mean, it’s… it’s got table presence…
because it’s, like, the only thing that
will fit on a table.
Do you like it? Have you… have you… i want
to know this, too: if you have it –
you know – if this is 100%,
what percentage of
all of this have you explored? i’ve only,
myself, i’ve played the base game. i
haven’t
tried the expansion quite yet, or the
second expansion. i haven’t played it
solo.
But i’ve got plans to, in the… in the
future. Uh, but let me know
how much of this – because there’s a lot,
man – how much of it you’ve…
you’ve gone through. 50%, would you say?
Have
you gone through 60% of it? Let me know in
the comments below.
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next one!
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[Music – Board Game Boogie by Ryan Henson Creighton]

Get Your Own Copy of Anachrony: Essential Edition

It may be tough to get your hands on the Infinity Box now that the Kickstarter camapign is over, but the special component upgrades i mentioned are available through the Mindclash Games web store. If you’re just getting your feet wet with Anachrony, get your own copy of the base game using the Amazon link below! Your price remains the same, and i’ll receive a small commission.