Base Instinct

by Iain McAllister · Published 14 Nov 2024 · Updated 3 Nov 2024

Our nearest planetary neighbour has held a fascination for us since the dawn of humankind. We’ve enshrined it in art, written stories about what might lie on the surface or under its pock marked surface. We speculate about living there in the future and using it as a launch base for interstellar exploration. Moon imagines what those bases might look like. Yes bases. Plural. It’s time to build the best space resort.

Moon is designed by Haakon Gaarder who also provided the art for the game. It is published by Sinister Fish Games.

You start with a simple base at the start of the first Era. The blue side of the base produces resources that you use to build cards. The yellow side gives you flags that act like zoning permissions for your buildings. You need certain combinations to build each card.

A base early on in the game, in Era 2. Blue cards extend from the left, yellow from the right. In the centre of the table the edges of the reputation card area can be spied. Two blue cards have been played both called Rover Bay. 5 flag cards have been played called Road, Workshop, Lab, Hotel and Factory. To the right of these cards is a pink card that has been activated called Antenna and a grey card called Hacker Space. — *A very flag heavy base*

The core of a Moon is a drafting mechanism. Each Era you are dealt a hand of cards and every turn in that era you will build a card or discard it for resources (assimilate). You’ll then pass your hand around clockwise and do that again until you run out of cards. Over 3 Eras you’ll build your base up to be the best, accumulating hearts (victory points) until your base is the most loved.

Building cards comes with a drain on your resources and a set of flag requirements. When you build a blue card, you’ll get what it produces there and then. It also produces at the start of each subsequent Era. Of course you might not have all the parts you need. When you need something you don’t have, you can send some of your folk off in a Rover.

These adorable pieces go and park on another player’s cards, giving you the resources it produces or flags it provides. Rovers are limited, but you will find ways to make more. Any that turn up at your base, you get to keep at the end of the era. In this way you can encourage rovers to your base, by cornering the market on certain resources that others may need.

A pile of rovers. They look like little RVs with blue windows ar the front and details on the side. The body is mostly white. — *A whole pile of Rovers*

Now this doesn’t sound terribly exciting so far. We’ve bumbled around in Era 1, built a toilet and maybe a charging station for our Rovers. What other wonders await us?

Alongside the staples that let you build cards you have some other options. Grey cards provide hearts at the end of the game or as an ongoing bonus for following a certain path.

Pink cards are where the game gets combotastic. After they are built you can flip, we turned them on their side, a pink card to activate its ability once per Era. These let you do all sorts of things from simply giving points for accumulating resources, to letting you dig into the deck for cards to build or assimilate, and use other people’s cards for your own benefit.

In a game where you just draw and play, these combos might be easier to wrangle. In Moon the draft takes away the certainty of being able to assemble an engine but doesn’t eliminate it completely. At 3 players I found that combos were easier to come by and became quite degenerate. Possibly more experience will prevent that. When you have to hate draft to prevent over building your own engine that has a bad feel to it. I think the game is best suited for 4 to 5 players. There is a solo mode included in the box I haven’t tried.

The presence of Rovers can mitigate the dangers of hate drafting in part. The ability to build up a resource pool from other people’s plays means you can concentrate on what you want to do while letting them harvest the resources you will later need. As bases expand, and blue cards produce more resources, rover parking becomes more generous, allowing you to break through any scarcity issues you might be having.

The draft doesn’t only involve the cards you’ll play into your base, but also an ability card that gets passed around with your hand. These are all different, with a specific one for the first player that lets you track who is going first each turn. Each of these can give you a nudge in a certain direction if you aren’t sure which path to take.

A base in the third era of the game. Blue and yellow cards are piled up on the main base with a series of grey cards to the right. A couple of these are from the Valkyrie expansion. 3 Reputation cards are above the base with a collection of counters to the right. — *How the game is meant to look in play*

One of the aspects I really enjoy in engine/tableau building games like Moon is the emergent narrative you get. You can imagine the place you are creating, the people that live and work there, the imagined absurdity of the world of this engine you are assembling. Played as written the Moon designer wants you to stack the blue and yellow cards on top of each other, showing only the resources, flags, and rover parking spaces they have. This feels odd to me, and we played such that we spread the cards sideways so we could see the ‘story’ of our base at a glance. This does take up more space, and I feel some better graphic design could have made a compromise between saving space and letting you see the base.

All this is in the service of points. The flags that you accumulate over the course of the game are not only for building but a majority control race. With 5 categories to fight over there are a bunch of points to gain in the early eras. As time marches on, some players will romp ahead on certain flags, but there is always the option to reign them in if you make that choice.

Alongside accumulating points through flags, card play, and combos the other major source of points are reputation cards. Rated Bronze, Silver, and Gold, each can be acquired once a criteria is met. These bands are roughly equivalent with Eras 1, 2, and 3, and can be obtained at any time. These give points at the end of the game and an ability that fires when obtained or acts as an ongoing bonus.

A 3 by 5 grid of the reputation cards at the start of a game of Moon. — *That’s a lot to take in, right?*

I think you’ll find these overwhelming at first. You get 1 per player in each colour so at 5 players you have 15 separate cards. While the points value and requirements to obtain these cards are big and bold on the cards, the various abilities that can be incredibly important are quite small. You will have to study these cards pretty carefully to fully understand what you need, and what others might get. It’s a production stumble, and not the only one.

Sinister Fish sent me the deluxe edition of Moon. This has wooden counters instead of cardboard, which feel great and nicely made. However the victory point tokens are really tight in their distribution. At 4 and 5 players we found ourselves constantly swapping tokens in and out of the bank in order to have enough to show everyone’s point totals. It was fiddly and annoying. On the flip side there are way too many resources tokens. It feels like there could be a better component balance, but maybe there is in the base game with its cardboard tokens.

The cards are good quality but larger than standard US card. Dividers in the box are great, but there names are hidden by the height of the cards. It is just weird. It is like someone ordered the wrong sized dividers or incorrect card dimensions.

These production niggles aside, I’ve really enjoyed Moon. It is making the transition from being a review copy to a game that I am adding to my collection which regular readers will know is a rare thing. My group and I have really enjoyed the mix of base building, drafting, and engine building the game revolves around. The emergent narrative of the bases is entertaining and charming, and the game is easy to teach and play. It’s not mind blowing, but just a very solidly good implementation of a bunch of different ideas. I can see us visiting the lunar surface more in the not too distant future.

The valkyrie board with a bunch of cards above it and one valkyrie already launched — *Valkryie*

Ride of the Valkyrie

In addition to Moon, Sinister Fish sent me the expansion that funded with the Kickstarter called Valkyrie. Valkyrie gives you an additional vehicle type to launch once per era that looks like a badminton shuttlecock. You only have one location to send them, good old Earth.

Back on Earth folk have been developing a bunch of new tech to include on your base. From portals back to earth to Fossilators you have new options to build in each Era. They are harder to get, taking more flags and resources to construct compared to other cards of that Era. In addition you can only send a Rover or a Valkyrie out on a turn, so you can’t benefit from the extra flags a Rover could normally provide you. In compensation you get to see what you could build ahead of time, and maybe a bonus depending on how late you launch your Valkyrie.

It’s fine. The new cards are interesting and you get some extra reputation cards alongside them which can be used with, or without, the Valkyrie itself. I felt it just added a bit of friction to the teaching and play of the game without giving enough benefit. The extra cards could have just been tweaked in terms of cost and added to the core decks. It doesn’t add anything that elevates the base game. If you want a little variety, get it, but honestly I don’t think you are missing out on much.

Sinister Fish sent me the deluxe version of Moon and the Valkyrie expansion. My opinions are my own.

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