Moonrollers
Designed by: Robert Hovakimyan
In Moonrollers, we are space captains intent on hiring the best crew via the medium of dice-rolling. While that theme quietly slips away upon playing, the game is a canny luck-pushing thing that gives you increasing options as it goes on.
Each player starts with a bunch of cubes and one crew member (-a card), both in their own colour. The goal is to gather either three crew members of the same colour, or at least one crew member of all five colours. On your turn you roll five dice, and choose a crew member from a tableau of unclaimed cards to assign at least one die to. To represent your dice, you place a cube on the card. As long as you’ve completed at least one of the crew card’s four criteria, you may now stop. Or, you can push your luck and keep rolling.
If you keep rolling and roll more dice that match the criteria of the same crew card, you can assign more cubes. However, if you roll a fistful of non-assignable dice, you bust and remove all cubes placed this turn. Whenever a card is completed, everyone who contributed to cubes to it gains points – but the player who placed the fourth and final cube gets the card. And as each crew card gives a special ability, snagging them as early as possible gives you more tactical flexibility on subsequent turns.
Additionally, as well as the four basic dice sides there’s also one ‘wild’ side and one ‘extra die’ side: the former can be assigned anywhere and if you rolled any of the latter, each subsequent roll has additional dice from the pool (players always start their turn with five, however, unless a special ability tells them otherwise).
Finally, some cube spaces on the crew cards reward you with hazard tokens: you look at two and choose one to keep, returning the other face-down back to the supply. These have points values of 1, 2, and 5, but they also have an escalating hazard value: at the end of the game the player or players with the most hazards do not get to score their tokens! This seeds in both ongoing risk and the potential for surprises in the finale, which can arrive after anything between 5 and 20 minutes.
Sam says
It’s a lovingly produced game and what Moonrollers does well is balance that luck-pushing dynamic with a tangible sense of growing power and control as your claimed crew cards furnish you with special abilities – especially when they combine well enough to feel super powerful. I like the fact that the player who ends the game isn’t necessarily the winner. What I do miss is that sense of agonised despair/raucous laughter that manifests in luck-pushing games like Can’t Stop or Las Vegas. Moonrollers is comparatively thinky, and whilst I’ve enjoyed each play they haven’t quite reached the more dramatic or comic moments they provide, and the time it sometimes takes – with 4 or 5 players particularly – can feel a little too long.
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Take That!
Whilst everyone is basically fighting for the same cards, there’s no snatching of them off each other and if someone else takes a card you were hoping for, you’ll still score the points for any cubes you invested in it.
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Fidget Factor!
Whilst there can be moments of staring at your unwanted dice rolls and wondering whether to play safe or risk rolling the lot of them again, on many turns either the fates of the dice or player determination will keep things brisk.
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Brain Burn!
Nothing life-threatening. There are two ways to score points: cubes on cards, and the risk-laden hazard tokens. But do you want to rush the end of the game while you think you’re ahead? Claim cards as quick as possible, or concentrate on the big points hauls?
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Again Again!
Each card has a unique power, and the dice-rolling keeps things ticking over.
