The Idea of Moonstone
Ok, in the Netherlands, where I come from, we have a theme park called De Efteling. This is a park based on the work of Anton Pieck, born in 1895, which started in 1950. Next to the work of Pieck, it has taken a lot of work from the Brothers Grimm, as the park is based on fairytales. As strange as this all may sound as an introduction to a wargame, it’s the best one we can think of.
If a customer asks about the game, we tell them the following. A couple of characters have escaped the works of Pieck and Grimm and started a small town. At night crystals come out of the ground. Since that is the main treasure of their community, it has to be fought over. Because the different races and factions want domination of the crystals (titular Moonstones) and start to fight over them in the nights/ mornings.
The characters each have their specific health, abilities and specials displayed on their cards. This also helps keeping track of the status of said model. More on that later.
The Titular Moonstones
Also, where to start here. There is so much original stuff built in this game that it’s hard to pinpoint just a couple of them, but a few things do stand out from the rest.
Dice is one of them. This game uses a max of 7 dice. D4’s to be specific. None of them are supposed to be rolled again. They are the titular stones you need to pull from the ground and keep till the end of the game. At the beginning of the game, one rolls for deployment of Moonstones.
The winner of the roll takes the 7 stones in his hand and drops them from the middle of the play area onto the area. The rolled number is how deep the stones are in the ground. If you rolled a 4, the Moonstone is 4 deep in the ground. Getting them out of the ground seems easy. Doing so in a magical firefight is hard.
From there, you can do a couple of things with the stones. Walking off of the play area is one way to get victory points, but you also lose the model that walked out of the game. The best thing you can do to keep the model in the game, is keep walking around with the Moonstone in hand. Thing is, they are heavy, so you halve your walking speed. See where this is going?
The Combat of Moonstone
Another thing is the combat, be it magical or hand to hand. As said before, this is resolved by cards. If you want to play a magical spell on one of the models cards, there is a color and number 1–3 on it. Players then draw an amount of cards indicated under the magic section and don’t show these cards to the opponent, who always draws 6 cards of the same deck.
The casting player can do 2 things while putting a color and number card face down on the table. Tell the truth or lie like hell and make it convincing. If the opponent believes it as the truth, the card counts as the card the caster says and he or she never has to show the card. If the defender calls the bluff and wins it, he can play a Catastrophe card, that replaces the intent with the catastrophe on the character card.
Close combat is resolved in mostly the same way, but with cards that show specific high, middle or low hits. If both hits touch each other (high hits vs. high hits), the attack is blocked. Any other hit is considered damage for both sides. If you have multiple cards of the same type, you can string these together for massive damage. This could result in the attacker getting more damage than the defender and brings insane randomness in the game.
The Freedom of creativity
Building a team to get your stones is easy and there are no points to distribute. You can start of with a troupe box you can buy and has a certain theme. You can choose out of 3 factions, Commonwealth, Dominion and Leshavult. There is a new faction coming soon, that has had its KS already, called Shades of Moonreach.
You can choose models from one or two (with certain restrictions) factions to make your Moonstone team, with a max of 6 models for a 1v1 game. There are normal characters and bigger ones and nothing is going to stop you from using only giants. Problem here is, the bigger they get, the dumber they are. A giant is a tough opponent, but as stupid as they come.
The intelligence of a model is indicated with the amount of actions one can do in an activation. Where a small and agile goblin has a total of 4 actions but also just 4 hitpoints, a giant can have the same amount of actions while having 14 hitpoints. They hit hard and tank a lot of wounds, but that’s it. A good mix of utility and brute force is a pro.
Random skirmish action.
The fun of this game, is having the option to roughly think how the game is going to be. The controlled randomness throws the rest in the container. When you think you will take a lot of damage, make sure you have a healer. When you dish out a lot of damage, focus not on the Moonstones, but on the players. If you have a quick and agile team, focus on Moonstones and so on. Whatever happens in the game, the magic and combat lets the game never go as planned.
Multiplayer Moonstone fun
One thing the game does perfect, is the choice to play with a max of 4 people, making it even more hectic. No matter how many players 1-4 play, there is a max of 12 models on the field, divided by the players partaking in the battle. 2 players have 6 models each, 3 players have 4 and 4 players have 3. You all share the same deck of cards used in the action, so it just gets more hectic and random. This of course increases the amount of amazingly fun moments in game.
Where can you get this game?
There are several directions to take when wanting to start or expand your teams of Moonstone. One of the easiest is to choose the link in the header of this site, directing you to our shop. The other one is directly from the producer Goblin King Games. Whatever it will be, you will have a blast playing this game, as it’s insanely easy to learn, but hard to play.
So what are you waiting for? Check out the game for yourself or make sure to get your hands on some of the insanely cool models this game offers. Be it for playing or collecting unique models to paint to the best of your skills, Moonstone is a game to watch out for!
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