Cosmic Wonder
MOON
Designer: Haakon Hoel Gaarder | Publisher: Sinister Fish Games
This game feels like it was designed to ensnare me. On my very first day in the office at TTG HQ, I sat down at my work station to this my predecessor’s last unopened present from a publisher.
Inside was Moon, a sci-fi drafting and card tableau game for 1-5 players (yes, a solo mode for a drafting game that’s also fun!) where across three eras of play they will build their lunar settlement, adding production sites which fuel future purchases and structure cards which earn points.
Points can be earned by building structures worth a fixed number of hearts, gathering or investing specific resources to feed into special structures or by obtaining flag rewards. Structures can have flags from five different categories (said flags are also used as a minimum requirement to build certain cards) and at the end of an era, whoever has the most in each category wins another smattering of points.
Each era players will start with a hand of structure cards with one expedition card. This expedition card will offer a special action or ability that can be used in their turn. Unlike most drafting games, each player takes turns to selecting their card, with the option to activate pink structure cards they own before or after they play.
The new card can either be assimilated, discarding the card to gain resources printed on the car, or built by meeting any flag requirements or resource costs. If you don’t quite meet a card’s criteria, you can send a dinky rover out to an opponent’s settlement, parking it on there to gain its resource or temporarily use its flag. Every rover parked on your cards becomes yours at the end of the era, giving you the edge next round and also breaking flag reward ties.
You’re probably reading this and finding many familiar aspects to other games you love, which is something Moon cannot escape even with its reduced gravity. There is plenty of tactical play with sequencing, knowing when to send out rovers to deny others vital resources (or ensuring they have to send their rovers your way), but a lot of what makes this game great to play is taken unabashedly from other titles. The biggest change from convention is the need to make each drafting choice in turn, which is necessary given the core mechanics of expeditions changing play and rovers hoovering up resources, but cannot help but noticeably slow the pace of the game. This isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, but my playtests always felt a bit longer in the middle than I would have expected.
There’s a lot to be said for the game’s lovely art design too. The game has a poppy, humorous design full of vibrant colours against the featureless moon and void of space. Looking at three astronauts queueing outside a space taco truck is the sort of imagery that just makes you smile. The sense of expansion is carried by the visuals, as your settlement goes from small single businesses to massive metropolitan developments, giving weight to each card that makes each construction significant.
Moon is still a great game, despite my personal misgivings over the pace. It offers plenty of twists on convention to keep gameplay compelling and is backed by wonderful production values that put it above and beyond so many other titles on the market. While for me the organic growth of designer Haakon Gaarder’s Villagers is slightly ahead in terms of personal preference, I cannot deny that Moon is well worth your time if collecting a cosmonautic card-based community sounds like your cup of tea.
MATTHEW VERNALL
WE SAY
A wonderful card tableau game that doesn’t quite outshine its predecessors, but still delivers an interstellar drafting delight.
WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
◗ Rulebook
◗191 game cards
◗ Game board
◗150 cardboard tokens
◗60 wooden rover tokens
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED 7 WONDERS...
The
drafting titan introduced many to the mechanic, Moon shows an evolution in design that takes all the best part of building a community whilst constantly keeping an eye on your opponent’s plans.