Moonstone First Impressions
The folks over at Goblin King Games, the makers of Moonstone the Game, sent Adam and I a review copy of their 2-player starter pack. They’re easy to find as well, over at moonstonethegame.com!
Here’s the Late Night Wargames intro episode to Moonstone:
If you’d like to see us unbox it, have a look here:
We even got a game in! It’s so easy to pick up as a game. Here, I’ll explain the rules right now.
Moonstone Rules
Objective
The objective of the game is to collect Moonstones, which are represented by 1d4’s which you simply hold over the play area and drop. Wherever they land is where they stay. The number they roll represents how many “energy” or actions you need to spend to collect one, i.e. if you have 1d4 that “rolled” a 4, it takes four actions to pick it up. A 1 only takes one. Whoever has more moonstones when the game is over is the winner.
Okay, now we know how to win the game. How do you play?
Game Mechanics
Moonstone has something on the order of 4-6 models per player, with potentially less if you’re going for a 3+ player game. It’s an i-go-you-go system, where you alternate activating models. Models have differing amounts of energy, denoted on their card. Once you’re out of energy and movement, your model’s activation is over!
Well that seems straightforward. How do I do things? What does energy get me? Let’s have a look at the card:
Card Anatomy
I’ll go from top to bottom.
Name: This fellow is Baron von Fancyhat. He’s got a fancy hat!
Traits: Baron von Fancyhat is a Human and a Noble. Other abilities reference these traits.
Stats:
Melee: The number of cards you draw when you are in melee.
Range: The range of Baron von Fancyhat’s presumably von Fancysword.
Arcane: The number of cards you draw when performing an arcane action
Evade: The number of cards you add/subtract from the active model’s arcane action when you are the target.
Passive Abilities: Longsword and Plate Armor are what Baron von Fancyhat has, and you can just read what they say to see what they do!
Active Abilities: Rallying Cry and Reload have their “energy cost” in parentheses. Spend the energy, do the thing!
Arcane Abilities: Shoot Pistol is an arcane ability. You can tell because it has a colored “X” next to it, and it’s at the bottom of the card.
Signature Move: This is relevant to melee combat. If you play the named card, “Falling Swing” in this case, you can do a cooler thing, which will be on the back of the Baron’s card.
HP/Energy Track: Those little bubbles at the bottom are the Baron’s hit points. The blue ones show how much energy the Baron gets at the start of a game round. As you take damage, you cover up the bubbles until he’s out, then he’s SLAIN. If you cover up a blue bubble, he gets less energy at the start of a round!
Base: The Baron’s miniature should be on a 30mm base.
All units have a few abilities in common and here are the important ones:
Jog: Move 4” for 0 energy, once an activation. Move 2” if you’re carrying a moonstone.
Harvest: Pick up a moonstone for 1 energy, or reduce the number on the d4 by one if it’s greater than one.
Step: Move 1” for 1 energy. You may do this in response to an enemy model doing something!
Play happens on a 3’ x 3’ table, and looking at this, you can see that most models will move 4”-6” a turn if they’re jogging and then spending an energy to scoot 1-2 inches after that. The game is ALL about careful shepherding of your movement resources, especially in light of being able to step while your opponent is doing stuff!
Arcane Abilities
Okay. Let’s talk about combat. Arcane is easier to talk about, so we’ll do that first. Moonstone operates off of a 21 card deck. There are 3 suits (red, green, blue) with 6 cards per suit: three 1’s, two 2’s, and one 3. There are also three “jokers” called “Catastrophe” cards, which generally do bad things.
Arcane goes like this:
Declare an arcane ability, spending the energy.
You draw your arcane minus your opponent’s evade, your opponent draws 6 cards.
You then play a card, face down, and tell your opponent what it is (you may lie).
Your opponent either chooses to accept your statement, and the attack is resolved…. or…
They call your bluff, discover you’re lying, and may resolve the attack with a new card from their hand (this is where catastrophes are super bad)… or you were telling the truth and you get to play another card face down, potentially doing more bad things to them.
It’s a fun little bluffing mechanic. The only reason your opponent is drawing 6 cards is to get some knowledge about what’s not in your hand (because it’s in theirs).
Melee Attacks
Melee is a bit more complicated. There are 18 cards in this deck made of three copies of each of the following cards:
High Guard
Low Guard
Thrust
Rising Attack
Falling Swing
Sweeping Cut
They all have their little idiosyncrasies, but basically it’s a more complicated game of Rock-Paper-Scissors, or if you’re familiar with the card game Yomi, it’s basically that.
Combat is resolved by each player drawing the participating models’ melee stat worth of cards from the deck, with the player who initiated the attack getting a bonus 2 cards. Each player then plays a card face down.
You then reveal simultaneously and resolve the attacks. So if I reveal a Falling Swing and you reveal a High Guard, that’s the rock to my scissors, and you negate my attack and might even be able to do some damage to me! Revealing a Thrust versus a Sweeping Cut or similar might result in both of us taking damage.
If you reveal a card that matches your character’s signature move trigger, you resolve the special melee attack card on the back of their stat card, which often does something extra like grant movement, healing, etc. All the details are on the cards themselves, so you don’t really even need to reference the rulebook.
And that’s it! You know how to play Moonstone now!
First Game
Our first game was me playing the Humans versus Adam’s Goblins. All these simple mechanics added up to a devilishly complex little head scratcher of a game!
We added some terrain in the forums of fences, a forest, and a small pond. The fences turned out to be back-breaking, as it costs a whopping two energy to hop over them! Coupled with the need to pick up Moonstones and the halving of your jog movement after doing so, it ended up being a pretty cagey positioning game.
I suspect the next time we play we’ll leave the moonstones for later… you could always try to reduce that 4 to a 2 to make it easier to dig out later, but then you’ve made it easier for your opponent…
Melee seems to be the way to go if you want assured damage. Baron von Fancyhat obliterated one of Adam’s Goblins in Melee. My sniper fellow did a bit of damage here and there, but it was pretty inconsistent, likely due to the fact that cover and evade can reduce the Arcane hand size by quite a lot.I wasn’t able to bluff effectively because I only had one card!
The game ended with Adam having one more Moonstone than me, but it did have to go to the Sudden Death tiebreaker mode. I’m not entirely certain the starter pack is balanced, but it is fun. I gotta say, for a game whose theme did not capture me, I’m really sold on the mechanics.
To be clear, the theme is fantastic and it is extremely well executed! The models are beautiful, high quality, and extremely characterful. I’m just not a this specific type of fantasy nerd. However, if you are anywhere near this type of fantasy nerd, there is absolutely no reason this game should not find its way into your home.
Getting Started
If this sounds fun to you, you can check out their current kickstarter and join the Discord server!
There’s also no reason to not play this game on Tabletop Simulator either! I had a great time playing with Paul Branigade over on the Discord server. They play every Wednesday, so drop by and hang out!
