(Credit to Ravensburger Games)
Since man has existed, he has looked up at the stars and our moon, We now have the ability to build a life-sustaining colony there, but we need your help to make it happen. There are many challenges ahead, but together we can make it happen!
Lunar Oupost is a 2-4 player resource gathering, tile-laying game from Ravensburger and designed by Mike Mulvihill. In Lunar Colony, players work together to construct a colony on the moon before time runs out. Players gather resources needed to build the modules they will attach to the colony while facing challenges such as system failures and module shutdowns.
To start, each player picks an astronaut and places a green life support cube on their astronaut card, Next choose a center ring and take all of the inner, middle, and outer ring tiles. into three piles. Take all of the resources (except the rare earth) and place them in the resource bag. Shuffle the event cards and randomly select 12, returning the rest to the box. Shuffle the crew cards into a face down pile. Give the 6-sided die to the first player and set the shutdown tokens on the side and you are ready to start.
The first player will turn over the top event card and roll the die and follow the instructions on the card. Next, the first player will draw 10 resources from the bag and set them into a draw pile called the mining area. Finally, they deal one crew card to each player. Players can have a maximum hand of 3 crew cards, so those already with 3, will not draw another. Finally, all players will place their life support cube on the lunar dome.
In turn order, starting with the first player, each player will perform one action on their turn. To take an action, a player will take one life support cube and choose from any of the following actions: mine resources, play a crew card, build a module, or take a module action.
To mine resources, the player will take any two resources from the mining area and place them on any tiles that require the resource. Once a tile has all of the required resources, a player can take the build a module action and place the module onto the colony. Note that all sections of a ring must be completed before a module can be placed on an outer ring.
A player who chose to play a crew card, will play the card and take the described action on the card. The last action a player can choose is to take the action indicated on a completed and active module.
There are special actions for more advanced games when a module is broken and all other modules attached to the broken one on the outer rings are inactive and unable to use. Players then can place the needed resources onto the module to repair it and then reactivate all of the inactive ones.
Play continues until there are no remaining life support cubes on the center dome. Once no cubes remain the round ends and players return one cube to the Lunar dome and place any extras back in the supply. In addition, all unused resources are returned to the bag from the mining area, and the bag, die and first player token are passed to the next player. The game ends and the players win if they build two rings of the colony before the event deck runs out. If there are not two rings after the 12th round, the players lose.
First off, I am a huge fan of science-based games, Terraforming Mars comes to mind. Lunar Outpost takes the premise that we can build a colony on the Moon and brings the science of it into a fun enjoyable resource management game. I liked the timed element with a random event every turn that can have serious effects on the game. I barely won my first game if I did not have a crew card that allowed mining to get the resources needed to finish up the final ring. I love games that are challenging yet easy to teach to new players. I am sure this game is going to appeal to fellow lovers of astronomy and science like myself.
Written by Ed Carter
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