1-5 Players
Designer: Haakon Hoel Gaarder
Artist: Haakon Hoel Gaarder
Publisher: Sinister Fish Games
About The Game
Third in a series of games designed and illustrated by Haakon Hoel Gaarder, Moon is maybe the simplest of all three, with very simple drafting and card play. But simple does not mean easy, as it’s a tight race game.
Gameplay
Each turn, you will draft and either build a card or discard it for resources, and also possibly use your lunar modules to access other people’s resources, or claim awards. Cards come in 4 types : resources production, flags, once per era abilities and end of game scoring. At the end of each era, each flag is scored for majority, as well as ongoing point earning opportunities.
One thing that I felt it differ from other drafting games is that the costs do not scale too much. So the crux of game is not if you will be able to score, but it’s how tight you can win so you can branch out and win on other areas as well.
Solo Gameplay
Instead of having a way for the AI to draft, it simply plays a card from the top, do some action, and score some points. Meanwhile, you draft once from each of 4 hands. Then the AI takes one away, and you draft a second time from the remaining 3. It’s simple, elegant, and feels like a natural player. On my first games, the scores were usually 10-15 points apart, in a game that scores 100+.
Conclusion
I was surprised on how elegant this how package is. The components, as usual, are top notch. Great art, great tokens, good storage. But Moon takes elements from Villagers with the drafting, and Streets with the color dispute, and ties it into a game that is easy to learn hard to master. Moon presents you with lots of options, and it’s very rare to be stuck. But the almost Feldian way that everything can contribute to scores means that you have to juggle a lot. Also, I really enjoy the tight dispute that forces you to predict your opponents moves so you are not too far ahead, just a bit. Because, here, winning by a little in 2 areas is worth way more than winning by a lot in one.
Score: 9/10
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