I recently purchased Back To The Future: the card game, and I have played it a few times. I have also recently gotten back into playing Risk, specifically one game of Risk 2210 and a few games on ConquerClub.com. They both have a strong element of randomness (Risk simply with the reliance on dice rolls to resolve combat.) It really gets one thinking about randomness in games because it can be fun, infuriating, or both. Back to the Future: the card game is a perfect example of both. The game is designed well enough to where the randomness in it can lend to some light-hearted fun, but the random elements can ruin some sessions of the game as well.
To give a little background first: The main goal in the game is to flip the timeline cards to have the events that fit those on your role card. Once a player has all his/her events set, he/she flips a certain card (B1 in the timeline) to see if they won.
The method in which the timeline is implemented is brilliant. The players line out cards, which represent a timeline. Using the cards in one's hand (as a player of course) one can flip some of those cards. On the other side of the card is a different version of the event. For example, Lorraine marries Biff instead of marrying McFly. This of course affects the timeline and changes other events. So, if one card is flipped, then at least one more card will have to be flipped and multiple other timeline cards could be flipped. This really gives a great feel of really playing with time, and I think that feeling would be very hard to achieve any other way. I must interject with a negative point, however. The timeline and how/when to turn what cards is confusing. When I first played this with my lunch group, we played the game wrong 3 times before we completely played it correctly. So, while I think the timeline is the best part of the game, I really feel it needs some polish. It needs to be simplified somehow without losing the fun of watching more than one card flip when some other cards (called linchpins) are flipped.
The second good point is that the game says it is for 2-6, and it really is good with any # of those players. As you can find by reading my post on Space Hulk: Death Angel, not all games are actually fun with any # of players the game says it can handle. However, this requires a bit of a negative or qualifier point as well. The more players you have, the more likely you are to be fighting over linchpins, which flip other cards. This means the game is likely to go longer. Now, B1 is the card one flips to see if he/she wins. There are 6 of those cards and only one says "you win." If you don't flip that card, you discard the B1 card you flipped; then you need to play another card (usually in your next turn) to flip B1 again and see if you win. If you flip the winning B1 card pretty early on (like by the 3rd one down at most), then it doesn't matter; the game usually ends fast enough. However, if the winning B1 card is stuck 5th or 6th from the top, the game can drag on too long; people start to get bored, and the game becomes a chore to finish instead of fun. So, my point here in a nutshell is this:
1) The game CAN play well with 2-6 players
2) This is a game that really needs to be no more than 30-35 minutes to set up and play.
3) The more players you have the more likely you are to go over that 35 minute mark.
Nevertheless, I would still say the game is not best with 2 players. I would say it is best with 3-4.
Now, I haven't played Back To The Future: the card game very much, but it doesn't take long to notice that it is dominated by randomness. There are cards that allow you to cancel another player's turn. There are cards that force you to give your entire hand (not including your role card) to another player. There are even cards that make you switch your role, changing the events you need to set on the board in order to flip B1 and win. This randomness can be fun. Certainly, the game is supposed to have some goofiness to it, and the designer clearly wants it to be light fun accessible to almost any age. The random elements in the game achieve that. However, they also are the reason why it is not fun if it takes over 35 minutes to play. When no one can properly build and maintain a strategy to win the game, the game becomes frustrating. If it goes fast, it was fine. One plays a quick game, sets it aside, and moves on to another game (or maybe they go read a book or something). However, it is not one in which you want to find the best way to make your cards work for you or one in which you really want to do much of any strategy. That is why it must be a short game time, and that is also why one won't play it multiple times in a row. It is more like what is called a "filler game" that one plays to fill a short time or one that people might play for something quick before a "meatier" game like Carcassonne or Dominion is played.
Speaking of Dominion, that is a game where one can really build a strategy and see it come to fruition. However, even it has some randomness in the shuffling of some cards. Every game must have randomness, but there are degrees, and Back To The Future has a little too much. It is still fun, but I would love to get a version of that game that wasn't so random and, thus, had a larger strategy element.
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