Failing Never Felt So Good: MOON COLONY BLOODBATH

These will be the best moon colonies ever, and nothing will go wrong. – Donald X. Vaccarino, noted lunar scientist and music archivist.

Every game of Moon Colony Bloodbath starts with the exact same mantra. This time, we will make it to the end. And every game ends with me clutching my head in my hands, staring at an empty tableau, wondering what went wrong this time.

I have heard the whispers on the ‘nets. The game is “stale” or like a “repeated bludgeoning to the neck”. (Can they be talking about the same game?) It’s “fiddly.” It might not have “depth.” It lives in a van down by the river.

I get it. I get all of that. So I’m going to start this review backwards, telling you all the reasons why you shouldn’t play this game. First, the art from Franz Vohwinkel is Atomicpunk and if you’re not into looking forward into the future through the windshield of a ’57 Chevy, then this art style is not for you. Second, players are exchanging resources every minute or so, and it’s easy to miss some of the trades and transfers. And finally, yes, Moon Colony Bloodbath is a frustrating experience when it relentlessly beats you up.

And yet.

And yet, we recognized all of those hiccups on our very first play — and then immediately clamored for Carlos to re-rack it for another play. And then played it again weekly for the next month. Why? Because, Moon Colony Bloodbath knows what it is, doesn’t try to hide its nature, and revels in daringness. It’s like watching a movie featuring a five foot something guy with a great haircut and distinctive running style stroll into gym class and push the bullies around. There’s just something satisfying about laughing along as your colony disintegrates.

So what is Moon Colony Bloodbath? This is a brand new card based tableau-builder-and-destroyer from Dominion designer, Donald X. Vaccarino, published by Rio Grande Games. The Moon is ready for colonization, and each of us players are corporations ready to leave our mark.

The game has no individual player turns, per se. Instead, players play out of a central deck that they build — call it a ‘shared deck-builder’ if you will. Each ‘turn’, the next card in the deck is revealed, and then players either meet the objective it requires, or take the penalty it metes out, or even get a solitary benefit if the card that comes up is one of the player’s own additions. The penalties are the ones that induce the most groans, especially the Robots that are added every so often. These Robots have forgotten Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, and instead seem bent on ruining your chance to create an idyllic moon base. Darn robots.

And then, four times per run through of the deck, the Work cards come out. Suddenly, players spring into action, choosing one of five actions to run. The actions are pretty simple and expected: Build – to play cards out of your hand into your tableau (which also increases your human population); Mine – to get money (needed to build those buildings); Farm – to get food (needed to feed the people in the buildings); Research – to draw more random cards into your hand (very important!); and Restock – to add boxes to your cards, which are spent for actions by some of the cards that are played.

Five easy actions, but you only get to do four of them each run-through. That’s why the tableau builder is so important. Adding buildings that make each of those actions super powerful, or even chain together different actions is not only critical to winning, but also just plain fun.

But the real goal of the game is to get as many humans into our colony. Because as we go through the event deck, which is triggered any time a Trouble card appears out of the shared deck, we get closer and closer to a surviving, thriving colony and the end of the game. We have yet to get there, in a half-dozen plays. Instead, someone usually has to discard humans to satisfy some out of control robot’s disjointed programming but not have enough to complete the request. That’s the way the game usually ends.

Count up the humans remaining, and the winner is the one with the most surviving. That’s Moon Colony Bloodbath in a nut shell.

But what is it really? It’s a tableau builder where we are sticking our fingers into the cracks of a beautiful Moon colony, until we run out of fingers to plug the holes. Moon Colony Bloodbath celebrates a world where machines supposedly make our abode better, full of wondrous gadgets, shiny and brand new, clinking and buzzing and whirring as they help us greet each morning sun and carry on through the day and then softly tuck us into our quiet little beds at night.

But underneath the shiny chrome and turquoise shells, the machines are sputtering and wheezing and clicking, until they finally just stop. Every game of Moon Colony Bloodbath ends the same way.

I fail. And I love it.

Failing never felt so good.

Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!

— BJ from Board Game Gumbo