Moon Colony Bloodbath Board Game Review

Steve Godfrey
9 hours ago
7 min read

Moon Colony Bloodbath

WBG Score: 7

Player Count: 1-5

You’ll like this if you like: Galaxy Trucker

This is a review copy. See our review policy here

This is a game where humans are colonizing the moon when all of a sudden things start going wrong; robots are fighting back, and people are dying! I mean, if that doesn't sound like the cold open of a Doctor Who episode, I don't know what does!

How to colonise the moon (don't worry it’ll be fine)

Give each player their board, deck of perk cards, 4 building cards, and starting resources, including 30 colonists. (Don't get too attached to them.) Now build the starting deck by shuffling the four Work cards and the two Trouble cards together along with two random twist cards. The game is run using this shared deck, which will have cards added to it throughout the game. One player simply flips over the top card, and players will simultaneously play it out, after which the next card is flipped, and it happens again. When the deck runs out, it's reshuffled, and you go again. This will keep happening until one player has lost all of their colonists, at which point the player with the most colonists left wins.

When a Work card is flipped, players can take one of the actions on their player board. Mine will get you 4 money, Farm gets 4 food, and Research gets you 2 building cards. Restock will let you put a crate on cards you’ve played into your colony. Build will let you play a building card. Pay the cost in the top left corner and play it in front of you. The number on the top right is how many colonists inhabit that building. (Seriously, don't even think about naming any of them.) Some cards are color-coded and will add to your actions when you take them. Some will also give you ongoing abilities. Some will also have a "when played" ability. Some of these buildings will let you add development cards or perk cards into the shared deck. There are cards that are generally helpful in some way. Perk cards are character-specific, while development cards can be used by all players.

When a Trouble card is flipped, you put the next event card into the deck. There is a deck of 13 event cards in number order. Whenever you are instructed to add any card to the deck, it goes immediately on the top of the deck so it's drawn next. Since this is simultaneous play, if many cards get added in the same turn, they are shuffled together and added to the top of the deck. Event cards are bad, and you’re going to have two added to the deck each round. You can always see what the next event is before it gets added to the deck, so you can have some time to prepare… maybe. Events will generally have you discarding cards, losing colonists, and adding robots to the deck. Robots who have broken their programming and not in a Kryten from Red Dwarf kind of way. I mean in the screaming and death kind of way.

Like I said, eventually you’ll start to lose colonists (see, I told you not to name them), and when you do, you’ll take them first from your supply on your board. When you’ve run out of those, you need to start destroying your buildings to pay the cost. Don't worry, though, some may make it out alive… but don't expect them to last that much longer. Once one player has no more colonists and buildings left, the game is over. The player with the most colonists left wins.

This is all going to be fine.

If there was ever a game that is the definition of the phrase “well, that escalated quickly,” then Moon Colony Bloodbath may be it. As much as you can prepare people for the absolute chaos that is going to ensue, you can never really prepare them for just how quickly things will escalate. In fact, it’ll be about round two when the first delightful robot will be added to the deck, but it'll be about round three that the true panic will start to set in and people really start to see the bloodbath and the running and the screaming… It's such a delightful theme.

The game is essentially an engine builder, and for a little bit, you may be fooled into thinking that this engine-building lark is pretty simple. You build your buildings, you get your perks (sometimes literally), and you carry on, and at first, it’s alright. You've got four work cards coming out and actions aplenty, and if you can manage to get a couple of cards built that combo off each other, it turns out to be a really delightful time on the moon. Until it isn’t. Now, I’m not one to start getting into odds (mainly because I’m terrible at math), but at the start of the game, you’ll have a 50/50 chance of getting a work card and taking an action, and at that point, the game just runs like a standard game. As the game goes on, however, and more cards are added to the deck, those odds get smaller and smaller. As they get smaller, the tension and the panic start to rise. Sooner or later, you’ll start getting desperate for those work actions. Colonists start to get lost, so you need to play a building, and good news! You have one you can play, but you just need that work action to come out before anything happens that makes you discard a card. Now every card flip is preceded by each player praying desperately that the next card is something that will help them pull themselves back from the brink of total loss.

If there's one piece of advice I can give you for this game, then it's this: manage people's expectations before the game. This is one of those games that I can easily see rubbing some people up the wrong way, doubly so if they don’t know what they're in for. If you tell them, “Oh, it's just a quick, kinda light engine builder,” and they get excited by that, then you can't blame them if they get annoyed by what this game actually turns out to be. Let people know that it can get chaotic and silly and that you’re essentially just lining up dominos only for them to immediately be knocked down again. The game is like a depressing version of the Chumbawamba song. They get knocked down, but they probably ain't getting back up again. If you explain the game to people properly, they can choose to embrace the silliness, and they’ll most certainly have a much better time with it.

In respect to the engine-building aspect of the game, it works pretty well. Yes, it’s pretty much luck-driven on the cards you draw, but if you can get a good combo of cards that play off of each other, it can feel really satisfying.

As you can tell, anyone who may have a problem with the rampant destruction aspect of this isn't going to be a fan of this one, and that's fine. This sits in a weird niche with the likes of Galaxy Trucker and is certainly one of those Marmite-style games. Although I’d say that this will probably appeal more than Galaxy Trucker due to it being far less chaotic and actually quite measured by comparison.

On the subject of silliness, the theme, the art, and, well, let’s face it, the title goes a long way to embrace that and not lull you into a false sense of security. Unlike the lapsed security on your moon base, of course.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that Dave”

I enjoyed my first few plays of this. As I’ve played it more and more, though, I’ve found the highs of those first few games dropping off. Not a massive amount. I still enjoy the game, but it’s just not captured me as much as those early plays. After a while, the game starts to feel a bit procedural. Because the makeup of the event deck doesn’t change from game to game, it gives it a predictability. Now, for some people, this’ll be perfect since they can challenge themselves to beat the event deck while having some foreknowledge. Personally, I found it toned down the randomness and the potential chaos that makes the game what it is. I get that it’s done that way for balance, and don’t get me wrong, there is still some randomness in regards to the twists, development cards, and robots, but how many of these appear in a given game can vary wildly.

So for me, the thing that makes this game is the people I’m playing with. It needs the right group to really play into the silliness and really interact with the theme, which then heightens the fun factor for me and brings the game to life. It’s not essential to play the game, of course, but it really upped the enjoyment for me.

As I said earlier, the engine building can work really well, but again, luck can play a crucial factor, and those who manage to get a decent set of cards that combo well are certainly going to fare better than those who don’t. I know this isn’t a game I’m overly fussed about winning, but I do like to at least try, and not having that chance because of a bad card draw doesn’t feel great.

Moon Colony Bloodbath is what happens when an efficiency puzzle and a party game have a baby, and it turns out it births a fully fledged teenager of a board game. Thoughtful and brilliant one minute, and chaotic and devastating the next. Most of all, this is bound to bring a smile to the face of those who take it in the spirit that it's presented, and look, if the title of the game doesn't clue you into what’s in store when you open this box, then I don't know what will.

Right, I’m off to check on the robots on that new moon colony. I just found a part from their processing units that I missed putting in. It’s just one little thing, though, what could possibly go wrong? I’m sure it's all absolutely fine.