A: The cardback for the ID cards is made to look like the Employee ID badge worn by middle-aged Marty in the year 2015. Therefore, Cusco is the company he works for in the future. It’s never been made clear what that company actually does.

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A: There’s no time-limit on how long someone may take for their turn, but annoying the other players by taking forever to make decisions may make them decide they don’t want to play with you very often. In other words, the only time limit is the tolerance of your fellow gamers.

We’d suppose this applies to… almost any game, though what is considered a reasonable amount of time for a turn probably varies from game to game. As long as you are within what is considered average for that game, you’re probably fine.

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A: Well… yes, technically that’s probably true. Another possibility is that it would create a major paradox, the results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space time continuum, and destroy the entire universe! The point is, it just makes for a better game to imagine that everything freezes as last altered. Basically it comes down to Artistic License.

It’s kind of like how things worked in the original movies: did it really make sense that images of people would be gradually erased from photographs, from bottom to top, during time spent in the past? No, but it made for a better movie. So it is here: Un-inventing time travel makes for a great end-game moment, even if it doesn’t quite make sense from a temporal physics standpoint.

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A: No. Most of 10 characters in the game are entirely new. The idea is that these are people from further into the future – characters we can only guess about: guys like Marty McFly III, or descendants of Biff with names like Buffy Tannen and Tiffany Tannen. The only exception is Verne Brown, the younger of the little boys seen at the end of the last movie. He’s all grown up now, and getting into trouble with his daddy’s Time Train…

Can you give us more specifics on the new identities?

Here are Andy’s thoughts about each character’s backstory:

Verne Brown: Verne is the younger son of Dr. Emmett Brown. He can only exist if Doc and Clara both avoid death and then get married in 1885.

Marty McFly III: This is Marty’s grandson from the timeline where Marty was a corporate flunky not a rock star, but Marty Jr. did not go to jail as a youth.

Buffy Tannen: Both Buffy and Tiffany Tannen depend on Buford being arrested for stagecoach robbery, not murder. But otherwise, the Tannen girls are very different, with Buffy descending from Biff & Lorraine in a rather mundane timeline in which Biff is George’s boss and Marty McFly never existed.

Tiffany Tannen: Tiffany on the other hand is the daughter of Lorraine and Biff-who-got-the-Almanac. Although her existence is difficult to imagine, she’d be Marty’s half-sister!

Clay Strickland: Clay is from a timeline where Clara Clayton survived the ravine, and yet never met Doc Brown. Instead she ends up with Marshall Strickland (or maybe his brother or uncle) and after a few generations we find a guy named Clay Strickland who somehow gets involved in the unwritten future adventures that tie all these characters together. Clay is from a family of teachers, lawmen, and school administrators, so he’s not going to tolerate any slackers!

Clara Wilson: This character is a descendant of the Clara Clayton who survived the ravine, and someone from the family line of Mayor Goldie Wilson. Her future depends on Biff not getting the almanac because otherwise he interferes with Goldie’s campaign to become Mayor. Clara’s middle name actually is Progress.

Darlene Needles: Darlene is from a family with a troubled history. She grew up in the world where Biff was rich, her mother did twenty years in jail for attempting to jailbreak her uncle, and her grandfather is Marty’s shady friend Needles. Watch out for her!

Marlin Berry: This guy is rock-and-roll royalty. Not only is he the son of next-gen rock legend Marlene McFly (whose father was the lead singer from Marty and the Pinheads), Marlin also traces his family line back to Chuck Berry’s cousin Marvin (of whom we caught just a glimpse during his performance at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance in 1955). Marlin even has famous sci-fi author George McFly in his family tree! He’s the coolest.

Electra McFly: Electra is the daughter of rock star Marty in a timeline where he grew up as the stepson of Biff Tannen. Note that Electra’s timeline requirements aren’t really quite right, since it’s possible for her to win the game with Biff marrying Lorraine in 1973 even if George fails to kiss Lorraine at the dance. But since her name is McFly, it means that in her timeline George still finds a way to woo and marry Lorraine — and also eventually suffer an untimely death — before Biff swoops in to marry Lorraine and become her children’s stepfather.

Jules McFly: Jules is a descendant of a rock star who was the son of a noted sci-fi author. His first name also suggests some sort of relation to Doc Brown’s son Jules, though that’s not actually indicated in his timeline requirements.

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A: Note that this question is entirely hypothetical. We didn’t think about this scenario because it doesn’t make sense for it ever to happen. Why on earth would anyone even try to prevent time travel from being invented unless their win conditions were in place? Only if someone was just really sick of the game…

Andy concurs, and gives the following possible options: If you choose to un-invent time travel when you won’t be the winner, it can only be because you just want the game to end. If that’s the case, then that player isn’t having fun, so for them, the best thing is just to end it. Sounds like no one is winning to me! You could also just say the other two players tied. It’s a draw. Your choice.

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A: It goes back into your hand because of the Case.

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A: Yes, the wording on “It’s a Science Experiment” is a little tricky. The other player does still get to flip a Linchpin, but they don’t get the extra card play they would normally get after playing the Time Train.

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A: To review: On the Double Back cards it states, “Flip X linchpin to whichever side you prefer.” In this case “to whichever side you prefer” can mean leaving it the way it is, if that’s the side you prefer.

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…Do you add it back into the identity stack and reshuffle (giving a chance to get the same card again) or is it just removed from the game?

A: It should be placed face up at the bottom of the stack of ID cards. If by some chance the game goes on so long that the whole stack gets used, it should be reshuffled when a face up card appears at the top of the stack.

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A: Yes, if you play a Time Machine, it gets discarded. If you do this without meeting any special requirements the Time Machine has, nothing would happen except that you would lose the card. You probably don’t want to do that.

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A: Yes. Any time you are called upon to play a card (Draw one/Play one, a Time Machine effect, etc), you may instead choose to draw a new card.

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A: The card is set aside.

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A: Absolutely. You could even start with just 2, a real one and a dud, if you want a really short game.

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A: You can Memo the v4 at any point during the sequence. As noted in another answer, you can save the other player the trouble of deciding what to discard, or you can wait until they’ve discarded their card and even announced what they are changing. That’s all one big game action and as long as you announce your Memo before the next game action, you are fine. However, no matter when you Memo the v4 Time Car, they do not lose the discarded card, just the v4 itself.

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A: You can wait. If someone plays a card like a Rewind, you can choose to cancel the Power Action itself, and save that player the trouble of going any further, or you can wait until they choose a card, and then cancel the card they selected as they use it.

In the Back to the Future card game, similarly, you can stop someone from ever even going on a time trip by canceling the Time Machine card outright, or you can wait to see what they do with it, and then cancel that. Either way, the Time Machine goes in the trash and the Timeline remains the same.

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A: To refresh, the Mr. Fusion card states “Once per turn, if you have this on the table, you may discard any other item you have on the table and draw 2 cards.”

In this case, it is a free action. (If it replaced your turn action, it would say so, as it does on the Pizza Hydrator promo card, which requires a turn action to be cashed in.)

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…Does the Time Machine go back into the discard pile?

A: To refresh, Engine Trouble states that it can cancel a Time Machine and send the relevant card back to the hand of the player using it.
When someone Rewinds a card, it is as though the card they pulled from the discard had been played from their hand, so, if Engine Trouble is played on a “rewound” Time Machine, it goes back into the player’s hand.

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…For example: Player A changed the TimeLine. Then Truck Full of Manure is played and Player B’s turn is canceled. Can Player C use Hitch a Ride now?

A: No. Even though Player B’s turn was canceled, they are still “the previous player,” and they did nothing during their turn (except for dealing with all that manure.)

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A: No. Cancellations only work on cards as they are being played, not cards that are already in play.

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… For example: Can one play the Time Car v1 when he does not have some form of Plutonium?

A: No. When you use Rewind, it becomes the same as if the card you got from the discard pile had been played from your hand. So playing the Time Car v1 via Rewind would be exactly the same as if you played it normally. If you do so when you don’t have the needed Plutonium on the table, nothing happens.

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A: Yes – as long as they successfully changed the timeline.

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A: No.

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A: Using the Lightning Prediction is a free action, but can only be used on your turn, so you can’t suddenly decide to “use it up” when someone starts to take it from you. So, yes, it can certainly be stolen with So Gullible.

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…If someone uses the Time Car v3 to flip B-2, must they still play an additional card before the game is over?

A: No, the game ends as soon as time travel is un-invented.

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A: TLDR: Officially, no… BUT, when playing in any of our games which include interrupt cards which cancel a previous play (Surprise, Memo From Your Future Self, Stop Time) it’s good practice to play a little slower if you happen to be executing multiple plays, so that your opponents have plenty of time to play one of these cards, should they so desire.

Deliberately playing super-fast, “shotgunning” as one fan put it, is just rude, and, rather than avoiding arguments about interrupts, actually ends up causing them. So if you have someone who insists upon playing that way, feel free to implement a requirement of a full one-hippopotamus silent count between card plays. We think those worried about their second-to-last winning play being foiled by an interrupt will find that others are not as psychic as they feared. Read on…

So here’s a typical Surprise situation, which can cause a bit of controversy:

I recently won when the rules called for Play 2. I played my first card, a Keeper, and then a moment later I played a Goal card that caused me to win. My opponent then showed me that he had the Surprise card in his hand that could have stopped me from playing the Keeper, and we had a brief discussion about whether I should have left him more time to consider playing it.

(Related question: A player doesn’t have to “announce” or “report” their play out loud, right? They can just play their cards and if other players aren’t paying attention, that’s the fault of the other players? We all want to have good sportsmanship, but you know how games can sometimes get, in terms of either other players not paying attention, or in terms of being very competitive!)

Here’s our response:
While we don’t have any official guidelines about exact timing of card plays, We recommend a slight pause between a two-card play like this when the active player knows it’s going to make them win. It’s rarely the case that the person with the Keeper-stopper will intuitively know that the necessary Goal is coming… until it gets there (or vice-versa: if they had the Goal-stopper, and you’d decided to play the Keeper last, they couldn’t know you’d have the winning Keeper to play after the innocuous Goal), so playing slow is often to your advantage, as the player who’s about to win.

In fact, playing casually, even pretending you don’t know what you want to play next, can be a great move. Playing slowly enough to allow a possible Surprise doesn’t have to mean broadcasting your impending win. (For example, looking significantly around the table as if expecting a challenge). Of course, announcing your your play is in no way required, but could even be part of your nonchalant act, depending on how you do it. (“Hmm… Well, there’s this Small Moon… and… let’s see… That’s No Moon, for the win!”)

That said, one often doesn’t have the presence of mind to think about deliberately hesitating. In real life, you’re usually just taking your play, and winning, at regular game speed.

Here is where the question is really about what your opponent was thinking, and they have to be honest about it: did it only occur to them to play the Surprise after you’d played the winning Goal? If you’d just accidentally played the Goal first, and then the Keeper, their Keeper-canceling Surprise would have gone through and prevented your win. But just as they couldn’t know your next play would be the end of the game, you couldn’t know they had a Surprise. For all you knew, they had the Goal-stopping Surprise, and it’s just chance which order you chose to play those two cards in. It’s not as though you deliberately played in such a way as to deliberately thwart a Surprise on your first play.

The thing to point out here is that, had you stopped playing after the Keeper, would it even have occurred to them to use the Surprise? Probably not, if they’re being honest. It’s extremely rare that one’s opponent is prescient or observant enough to realize that this play might be your second-to-last. People rarely want to squander a Surprise on the off-chance that your next play will be the winning one*. In the kind of situation you describe, the Surprise-having player usually just shrugs, and says “Darn! I had [the Surprise that would have prevented your second-to-last play], and I could have stopped that play, but it’s too late now… Oh well. Let’s deal again…”

Because, in the end, if they didn’t get that Surprise in after the applicable card, that’s the way it goes, and that’s the official ruling if people get – ahem – unruly.

*I mean, imagine it. If they’d canceled your Keeper before you’d played the winning Goal, your best reaction is probably simply to shrug as if mildly confused by such a powerful play, apparently for nothing, and make them feel like they just wasted their Surprise on a random Keeper play… heh heh. You don’t have to let them know they totally blocked your win. Meanwhile… you don’t have to get upset about missing that chance… it’s just Fluxx, and victory is snatched away at all the time in the course of any given game – usually completely by accident. Or you can let them know their spidey-senses were working, or congratulate them on how observant they are. It’s up to you.

Now let’s return to that “shotgunning” player who’s deliberately playing quickly so that nobody can slip a Surprise in on that penultimate play… It is, as the fan above pointed out, not entirely fair, and, moreover, it invites the argument “But you didn’t leave me enough time to play my Surprise!” If, on the other hand they had played it slowly, as described above, their opponent has no excuse to challenge the win, on the claim that they “were going to play a Surprise.” The opponent had plenty of time, but in the vast majority of cases, they won’t play the Surprise, because they have no idea what’s coming next. That’s part of the beauty of Fluxx!

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A: Basically, yes. In cases where you’d discard that card from play in order to use its power, you could target that card with the Memo, causing it to be discarded without effect. That’s pretty straightforward. For example, in Chrono-Trek, the Artifacts which could be discarded from play to be used as an Inverter would simply be discarded without effect.

For Back To The Future (BttF) only, note that if a Time Car is being memo’d it’s that card which would go into the discard pile without effect, but any required fuel item would remain (Plutonium, Lightning Prediction, Overpowered Locomotive, or the card discarded to use v4 would go back into the players hand).

Most Artifacts in Chrononauts don’t have powers, but a few that do would be affected: promo card Carl Sagan’s Joint, for example. In this case you’d normally give away the Joint and gain an Artifact from another player. If that forced trade is memo’d, the Joint would go in the trash (you were going to lose it to the other player anyhow) and the other player’s Artifact would remain with them. (I guess there weren’t a few puffs left after all…)

More complicated are Items/Artifacts/Gadgets whose power is passive. These include the (BttF) Gray’s Sports Almanac, Mr. Fusion, The Jade Statue of Tirade, any and all Gadgets. In these cases, you cannot stop the usage of their powers. If their power allows or involves the play of another card, THAT card may be targeted for cancellation via memo, but those cards already in play are not themselves affected by memos.

For example, when attempting to “feed” Mr. Fusion a card from your the table to gain two cards in your hand, it’s that card which would be targeted by the memo, and discarded with no corresponding benefit, and Mr. Fusion would remain on the table.

When “using” the Jade Statue of Tirade to get the extra bonus for Sell and Artifact or Perform A “Miracle”, it’s those Action cards which would be targeted and discarded, and the Jade Statue would simply remain in play, unsold, or unused as a “Miracle”.

The only time these cards with passive powers could be targeted by a Memo is when they themselves are actually being played to the table, in which case, instead of going into play, they’d go into the discard pile.

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…If someone tried to steal my Fax with You’re So Gullible, and I counter it with You Steal My Stuff? and they counter with a Memo, can I counter THAT with the Fax, since it wasn’t the original card being used to steal it?

A: No, not if it was the Fax which was the original item being stolen. It cannot participate in any way to intervene in its own theft.

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A: If the card says you can only do something once on your turn, it doesn’t matter if the card goes away and comes back again. If you’ve already used it, you’ve already used it. We don’t consider this much of a “memory condition” since you should naturally be able to remember what you have or have not done on your turn, just as you’d remember how many cards you’ve played. If you’re having trouble with a complicated turn, hopefully the other players will help keep you on track as well.

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For example, in Star Fluxx, can you get the Captain and immediately use him to take the Scientist. Can you then immediately use the Scientist’s special power to steal, say, the Energy Crystals?

In the Back to the Future Card Game, can you play the Dust Jacket, and immediately use it to steal the Almanac?

A: Yes, you can chain Keeper/Item stealing-powers like this. It is a thing that can happen. While some feel this is overpowered, we don’t feel that it breaks the game, though. Not all of the cards are always out at the same time, and, of course, sometimes you might get screwed over mid-chain by the Surprise It’s A Trap (in Star Fluxx), or You Can’t Take This Guy From Me (in Firefly Fluxx). In the Back to the Future Card Game, of course, there’s only one Item that lets you steal another in this way.

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i.e. can you stop someone playing a “Memo to Your Future Self” by playing a Memo or using the Cake card’s Memo ability?

A: Yes, a Memo can indeed be used to stop another Memo. And it’s mighty satisfying when you do! This also applies to the similar cards found in the Back To The Future card game.

“Looks like I Got There First to your dinosaur trap, and captured that Stegosaurus you thought you had.”

“Oh no you didn’t, because I sent a Memo to myself, telling me that you’d get there before me, so I got there 15 minutes before you, so actually, I still have Steggy.”

“Oh yeah? Well I sent myself a Memo telling me that you were going to get there 15 minutes before I got there before you, so I got there 15 minutes before you got there 15 minutes before me getting there before you, so actually, the dino is mine…”

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(or not play, and draw instead, as allowed by the rules regarding playing?)

A: No. You just draw that extra card to your hand, and your turn is over. You only had one play for that turn, and you used it to play the Time Car.

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A: It is never mandatory to play a card. You may choose to draw instead and end your turn (but you must do one or the other). As the rules say “You can exercise this option at any time you are called upon to play a card, such as when you get an extra play because you used a really fancy time machine,” (like the Time Train).

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or do you have to go ahead with choosing and then playing the card you select?

A: This would ultimately be your call: how lenient do you want to be about letting people take back plays? You should form a house rule about this that everyone is clear on before they start.

But for perspective, this is how we usually rule it:

We have always played that, since anyone may look through the discard pile at any time (as it says on the Rewind card), one should check before playing a Rewind, and not play it if there isn’t something you want there. So we’ve always been lenient if someone played it, checked and realized there wasn’t what they needed, since it’s no skin off anyone’s back that they just looked through the pile after playing the card instead of before. They can retract their play, since looking through the pile is an action that made no difference to the game (except they revealed they have a Rewind, which is only bad for them – the cost of any play retraction “oopsie”).

Looking through the draw pile, however is hidden information, and we’ve always ruled that once you look through that, which you can ONLY do if you play a Quick Trip, then you DO have to choose _something_ and immediately play it. You can’t take back having seen what cards remain in the draw pile – so you can’t take back that play.

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or is the only option for a player who needs to change that linchpin to hope for an identity change to try and win?

A: Yes, it’s true that the B2 DoubleBack card is pretty much useless if someone else has the Almanac in play, but that doesn’t mean your only option is to try to change your identity. You could try to steal the Almanac with a Don’t Be So Gullible, or by getting the Dust Jacket, or you could try to trash it with Erased From Existence (or possibly You Are Fading Away if the Almanac is their only item in play). If nobody has the Almanac in play, anyone can change B2.

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Does it count as one of your plays for your turn to do this thing?

A: No. That’s the whole point of it being “free”. It does not use one of your plays. Depending on the game we’re talking about (there are cards like this in Chrononauts and Back To The Future, in addition to many in Fluxx editions), you might only be getting one play per turn, and whatever this thing does won’t use up your play for the turn.

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See this answer in a video!
Little Answers

A: All powers that can be used “once per turn” are only available to you when it’s your turn.

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