Crescent Moon

Product Information

You get the sense that this is a game designed for exactly five players, awkwardly stretched to four to give its gorgeous box a little more shelf appeal. I played the standard 3-year game for all of my games, and they all ran just about 3 hours which felt fine, but I do want to try the longer game at some point as well. With only twelve actions you really have to carefully plan your moves and it creates an interesting decision space as you figure out what you want to do with each of your actions -- I really need to get cards, but should I wait so I have more money so I can buy more cards to be efficient?, or I really need to build in that space before someone takes it over, but if I don't take an influence action now while that other space is empty, I might have to fight someone for it later. Decisions, decisions. I got 3 plays completed within about two weeks; each play was with 4 players. Each time I set up a night to get it to the table, our 5th player had to bail, got COVID, life happened, etc. I can't remember the exact moment, but I think in season 2 he just really lets his anger get the best of him, beating people up on the sidewalk for the most trivial stuff. Just his explosive temper,...

The only real niggle that I have with the components are the player leaflets. They’re quite large and will also need space somewhere. They’re also made of relatively thin paper and as you will find out later in this review, you will be using them a lot. So it won’t take long for them to start to become rather worn. It would have been good to make these smaller and stronger. Gameplay So, I still had the chance to play Crescent Moon at 4 players, but to finish out this review I knew I needed to get at least one play in at exactly 5 players. As the sun rises over the deserts, rivers, and oases of the Caliphate, a delicate balance has been upset. As one of many rival powers in the region, you now have the opportunity to alter the course of history and seize power for yourself. The ambitious Sultan sits in a golden palace, presiding over great works of architecture. The secretive Murshid works to covertly undermine the central authorities through an expansive network of agents. The Sultan has no dedicated cards, but they do control their own private market. They decide the exact price for cards here. They themselves can buy those cards for free, and they can price certain players out of that market. The Sultan earns a lot more money during the Income phase of each year. They alone can construct towns and cities, which earns them coins – other players can’t.I also have to commend the art. The game looks stunning. Navid Rahman’s box art aches with beauty – it wouldn’t look out of place in a gallery. The hexes themselves aren’t too busy – and rightly so; they don’t need to be. The wooden buildings are superb.

The Nomad? I didn’t even win when I played as the Nomad, but this was easily the most fun I had playing Crescent Moon. Crescent Moon then – a really clever, really good wargame-lite, with an unfortunate dependency on player count. If you’ve got a regular group of four or five, it’s a great choice. If not, just weigh up how often you’ll play against the cost of buying. When a battle is started, all involved parties secretly select cards from their hand to play, and then simultaneously reveal them. Many cards are reusable once per round, so there is a resource management aspect to these decisions. If combat occurs early in a round, do I play all my cards now, or risk saving some for potential later battles? Of the units cards, there are some that have an OK effect and are useful in most battles and some that have a great effect but are more situational - for example ‘camelry’ is a unit card that performs excellently in desert areas – so again you have to consider carefully when to use them. There are also some unit cards that allow the faction to escape casualties, allowing bluffing about whether a faction is truly committing to win a battle, or perhaps just feinting to cause an opponent to waste resources. There are also a huge number of actions. Many of them give you different options, while others just seem like a flowchart of conditions that you need to try and memorize. There is also important information in the rulebook, which would probably have benefitted from being on the player leaflets.

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I mean it. Even at the start of games, you are going to start working the floor. Buy a card from the Sultan early on. Find a way to massage your relationship with the Murshid, before you really need that faction’s help to win ties. And for the Nomad, it is never too early to start bribing mercenaries if you don’t have your own armies. As great as the Power Cards are, you are going to need to read them to determine if you want them. Great eyesight is key here, so with my old eyeballs, I spent lots of time standing up to better see each card. “Hmm…lots of small text here,” commented one player. He was right; it is a bit of a pain. Like other semi-closed economy games driven by a card market such as Pax Pamir 2E, Crescent Moon does something nifty with money. The cards are really important and grant factions single-use and/or ongoing powers once acquired. To acquire those cards, you’ll have to pay the faction listed in the upper-left-hand corner of each card. Often, you’ll think twice about buying a card when it means paying your neighbor for something they might use against you later, or vice versa!