The Past Is A Weapon
In the 22nd Century, warring political factions hire freelance time travelers to go back in time and revise historical events in order to reshape the future. These freelance time travelers are known as TIMELANCERS.
Timelancers is a time travel themed set collection board game that utilizes worker movement, resource management, tableau building, contracts, and a modular game board. Players gather resources and travel back through time collecting real historical events to earn victory points.
Funded on Kickstarter on day 1!
2023 Cardboard Edison Award Finalist
Recognizing Great Unpublished Board Games
Late Pledge Manager now open!
Back now for $10 discount!
GAME OVERVIEW
Each player is a Timelancer and their goal is to gain the most merits to move up the ranks of the Timelancer hierarchy. Timelancers gain merits by capturing events and adding them to their time machines, completing faction goals, completing side jobs, adding time locks to events, upgrading their time machines, and by collecting money and resources.
The game is played over a series of rounds, with each player taking one turn each round. A player’s turn consists of making up to three moves – either in the city of Janusburg, their time machine, or a combination of both.
While in the city of Janusburg, players will move from city tile to city tile collecting resources needed to capture historical events.
When a player has enough time gems and resources, they will go to their time machine and revise or repeat events in order to capture them and add them to their time machine.
There are 4 types of historical events – Cultural, Military, Science, and Social. Each event will give the player money and also give the player special abilities that will make capturing future events easier.
For a traditional game, as soon as any player completes their faction’s 4 end goals OR captures 9 events, the end game begins. Each player that has not taken a turn during the round will take their turn. As soon as play gets back to the first player, the game immediately ends and players add up their merits. The player with the most merits wins.
Timelancers Rulebooks:
ENGLISH
GERMAN
FRENCH
SPANISH
The Enforcer Expansion adds a new game mode and the ability to add a 5th player.
One player will play as the Enforcer against all of the other players playing as Timelancers. The Enforcer’s goal is to capture 12 event cards on their player board and end the game with more points than the Timelancers. The Timelancers will work together to each earn more points than the Enforcer. Timelancers earn merits (points) the same as in the base game. The Enforcer earns 1 point per $1 they have at the end of the game.
Enforcer Expansion Rules
What people are saying
“This game does time travel in a real and meaningful way that is thematically strong and a lot of fun to boot.” – Rahdo
“Love the time travel theme, and trying to puzzle out the timeline orders to your benefit. Had fun playing!” – Meeple University
“We freaking love that game!” – Jamie
“I’m a big history guy, so it’s really cool to see those events come out and they’re like actual events that happened. Thematically I very much enjoyed Timelancers.” – Jeff
“I love how the time travel theme fits with the mechanisms in the game. A ripple in time has repercussions.” – Grant Lyon
“It’s easy to learn. And once you get going there’s a lot of different strategies with simple rules and I like that.” – Mark
“This game is superrrr coooll! I was excited to see they were actual events like: the invention of the wheel, the completion of the Taj Mahal, gulf war and the JFK assassination. Revising the events causing an actual ripple effect changing the events of other timelancers and locations in the map. Overall this game will definitely fulfilled your time travel fantasy with its creative and clever mechanics. Highly recommend it!” – V
“Timelancers is a brilliant game of strategy which embodies its underlying theme of time travel like no other game we have seen before.” – Meeples Abroad
“The most clever part of it for me is the combination of adjusting the state of the board and adjusting other players time machines when you revise events.” – Devon BoardGameCo
“I love the game. I really felt it flowed really well. I love those different events. I love the different discounts. I love chaining them on there because it’s really cool chaining those up to get your discounts to make things cheaper, better, or easier to get and it makes the game go faster and faster as time goes by which I really, really appreciate.” – James
“The steampunk setting paired with strategic time travel is a huge win!” – @board.game.dad
“The game has some really great design behind it with time being a resource as my favorite!” – Justin @tabletopjables
“This is a really fun game. It’s super. It kind of like mind blows you.” – TableTop Vibes
“It’s a nice strategy game which is fairly easy to learn, but I feel like it’s very nuanced as well so there’s a lot of strategy involved in this, a lot of depth.” – Adam
Play on Tabletop Simulator
Play the current prototype version of Timelancers on Tabletop Simulator. It includes all of the components from the game needed to play a 1-4 player game. We will continue developing the game until we confirm the production process with the manufacturer, so please let us know your thoughts after you’ve had a chance to play!
Thank you First Day All-In Backers!
Illisia Adams, AddisonF, Aeranval, Ahmad Alamoush, Anonymous, Robert Arber, Archgoose, Darren Austin, Damien LM Barber, Sylvain “Slybe” Beaulieu, Sean “Puzzlemaster” Behymer, Rob Belau, Alexander Benedix, Bruce Bernard, Dennis “DasDeX” Beyer, bmk, Gerald Bohmer, Peter Bos, Amy Bowersox, Jarod Bridges, Dino Buffetta Jr., Leo Bullimore, Liam Christopher Cairney, Tony Carson, MARTIN Cedric, Chad Challman, Austin Chang, Chris Couch Games, Dan Cooper, Korey Copeland, Luke “Wookie” Cousin, Ruth Currey, Christy D. and Donny S., David Deany00 Dean, DeKoo, Gilles Duval, dwJoker, Allen Eckhouse, Patrick Einheber, Max Fancourt, Andrew Finnan, Laura Floyd, Mark Fogle, Briar Foster, Jon Fox, Markus ‘Tarai’ Fries, Fruscione Family, Spencer Funari, Benjamin Gademann, Bernard « BurnZ » Gauthier, Christopher Gillespie, Casey and Chayne Goines, Douglas Gooding, Gwen and Stephanie Greeley, Mark Greenstone, Karen H, halufuki, Conrad Hamel, Joerg Hammer, J Ray Hartley, Mark Heidt, Sandra Heidt, Gary Hellen, Charles Hill, Hobbit, Ed Holzman, Cheryl Howard, Sam Howe, Peter Hunt, Hunter, Zahid Hussain, Mathieu Jacob, Chris Jakubowski, Jamoncitos, Ryan Jarvis, Peter Johns, Brad Johnson, (Jonny, Holly, Evie & Oliver), Azhar Khan, Andy Kim, Stella & Parker Klott, Robb Kouba, Ian Krabacher, Elliot Kravitz, Allie Kubis, Clement Kuo, Kyhas, Louis Laforest, Troy Langdon, Trey Lansford, Jonathan Lea, Sophie Legare, Mathieu Lemieux, J. Lieberman, D. P. Lopez, Jim McIntosh, Melody McNaughton, Scott Meister, Carlos Mojica, John Morris, Robin Neely, Zack T. Nelson, Bob Netherton, Matthew “Fig” Newton, Aaron Noonan, Mike Nudd, Gary Page, Francois Pepin, Lance Perro, Pip & Bubbs, Auree Postell, Aldwin Prudente, Robert Quinn, Quirken, Rendu, Craig Richardson, Charles Riffenburg | Grab Bag Media, Phil Rimmer, David Rooney, Raimund Ruppel, Kristof S., Sadcrag, Javier Sandoval, Schmedley, Uri Shomroni, Jesse Simonsson, Erik Sincoff, James Smith, Nico Stabile, Ayse Star, Purple Stuart, T n G, T Ray, David Ameer Tavakoli, Thupamart, Daniel Tiecher, Coatl Tim, Daniel Tivadar, Tom-E-Lee, Martijn Vaassen, David W, Selwyn Ward, R. C. Wauls, JC Weitermann, Philip Wennerberg, Brian Wharry, Greg White, Player Who, Martin Winter, Wise Wizard Games, Thomas Hornung, Würzburg, XenosMax