Moytura Board Game Review

Moytura

WBG Score: 8

Player Count: 1-2

You’ll like this if you like: A War of Whispers

Published by: Bitewing Games

Designed by: Trevor Benjamin, David Thompson (I)

This is a review copy. See our review policy here

By Steve Godfrey

Moytura is a semi cooperative game in which you and your opponent are trying to keep the Fomarians from trying to take over your land whilst simultaneously trying to take over the land for yourself. It’s like if someone takes over the desk between you and your office rival and you both agree to force them out by slowly taking over their desk space until they give up and move out but the fight for who gets the most space on the empty desk is still on.

How to work together, while also stabbing each other in the back.

First choose which enemies you’ll be playing with. You have the basic ones that all expand the same way or the asymmetric ones. You can use all of one type or you can mix and match but for your first game it’s recommended to use the basic ones. Set up by seeding the map with the chosen enemies and worship tokens as per the setup card you’re using. Take the deity tiles, shuffle them and place them randomly onto the slots on the board. Except Tuatha De Danann this will always go at the bottom. Each player then takes their player pieces and two worship tokens. Shuffle the enemy cards and deal five for the first scoring round and five for the second. The last two will go back to the box unseen. 

On a player's turn they’ll take an action using the following steps. First activate a deity. The bottom two are always free and the top three will cost you either one, two or three worship tokens. If you activate one in one of the top two positions you can upgrade them by putting one of your tokens on their tile in the indicated spot. These upgrades will give you extra followers to put out every time you activate them from then on. You then take the number of followers printed next to the deity you're using, plus any you get from upgrades. You’ll always choose a space with your followers to expand out from and then follow that deity's rules for placing your new followers on the board. You can’t put your followers in spaces with the other players' followers. You can however place them in spaces with the enemies. When you do, a conflict occurs. These are nice and simple. Remove the players followers and the enemies tokens on a one for on basis until one or no faction has tokens left on that space. Any tokens you beat on your turn will go into your supply and when you have three you can trade them in for a worship token. 

Once both players have taken a turn, it’s the enemies turn. Flip over the top card of their deck and follow their rules for placement. Find the largest connected group of that colour and then place as many of the enemy followers as indicated on the card into spaces adjacent to that group then resolve any conflicts. 

After five rounds there’s a scoring phase. Go through each area and the factions with the most and second most tokens in that area will score points. Even though there are three different coloured enemy factions they score as one faction. Play another five rounds and then another scoring round. Whoever had the most points wins and that includes the enemy faction.

Not touching, can’t get mad.

I’m sure I’ve said this before but one of the things l love about these two designers is their ability to take a game mechanism and do something different with it. If these guys were around when the olympics were first conceived they'd have been the ones that looked at the 200 metres and went “nah, too easy, lets stick some hurdles in it” With Moytura they've decided to try jump those hurdles themselves by making a semi co-op game! From my experience this is a difficult thing to do well and do you know what? They’ve only gone and pulled it off! Now aside from the mechanisms label on BGG and mention of it in other reviews, this isn't overtly advertised as a semi co-op and maybe that's because of the less than stellar history of those style of games?

At first the idea of not being able to directly interact and attack your opponent felt like it was going to be a massive detriment of the game, however, you’re often so focused on dealing with the enemy and trying to plan your own takeover of an area that you don't notice it. In fact I’d argue that if you were able to attack the enemy it’d overwhelm a relatively simple game and you'd find your spread too thin. It stands to reason then that all of your aggressive energy will focus on the enemy. Which is handy because much like a gang war between old school new reporters, they can escalate quickly. Every flip of an enemy card brings that sense of dread for where they're going to expand next. Questions over if you’ve got enough troops to be able to fight off the enemy or if your long fought take over of an area is going to be suddenly scuppered start flying round your head. Being a random card draw this is either going to work in favour of your game or the same colour is going to expand twice in a row and give you that same panic when you spill a drink and see that puddle slowly encompass the table as you frantically scramble around for a towel. Much like that situation, you need to keep the enemy under control and that's where most of your focus will be.

I’m not fighting them, you go and fight them.

The co-op element is, from my games anyway, a relatively silent affair. We both know that the enemy needs dealing with but there’s not so much of a discussion between players of how and who is going to do what but you just know something needs to be done and you just kinda get on with it. That doesn’t mean that you can take your eye off your opponent though since they’ll be dealing with the enemy, but in a way that benefits them. Well you would, wouldn’t you. As much as you don't want to lose to the other player, neither do you want to lose to the enemy. It creates this beautiful balancing act in which you're trying to be seen to play your part in defeating the enemy whilst surreptitiously gaining a majority in an area whilst doing it. It’s not always the majority you're trying to get though. I’ve had games where I've chosen not to take out enemy tokens and instead moved into a space just to tie with my opponent and stop them from scoring full points. It can be sneaky and manipulative and I love it. The game reminds me of A War of Whispers. In both games you have the potential to just sit back and let your opponents do the dirty work for you and all you do is walk in after the chaotic dust has settled. 

Of course all this backstabbing is made all the more interesting by the deities. Each one has their own ways of spreading your followers around the map. What's brilliant is that you can’t just spam the same one each turn. The expanding cost as they move to the top of the list means that you’ll need to manage your worship tokens to have more options on your turn. There are generally no bad options when it comes to the deity’s. Sure sometimes you won't be able to afford the one you ideally want, but all of them will give you good options. Then there's upgrading. You want to try and upgrade something as soon as you can because each follower you get is equally as important for defending as well as attacking. I love that the choice of deity and that worship token economy goes hand in hand. It gives just enough stickiness to your choices. For example, the worship tokens dotted around the board can be just enough of a distraction to pull you in one direction over another. The prospect of getting them by collecting enemy tokens could even be the thing that actively draws you into a fight. 

There’s a decent amount of replayability in the game. There’s a changing board set up and the addition of different Formarians with asymmetric abilities and you can mix and match these as you want. I would have loved a couple more deities though. I know you can get them in an expansion but even a couple more in the base box to be able to mix things up would have been nice. Personally I’d try to add in at least one of the asymmetric Formarians as soon as you're up for it. They add a lot more unpredictability to the enemy movement and make for a much more dynamic game. Plus I've had games with the base enemy where we’ve rendered at least two of them a non threat and while it then becomes a land grab between the two of us it does take out a big part of what makes this game what it is. 

Moytura is another great two player game from David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin and another that comes in a fairly small box. I seriously think they’re trying to corner the market in the perfect couples getaways games and I’m absolutely here for it. 

Right I need to go, I’ve gotta get into work early. I’ve been slowly shifting my stuff onto the other desk an inch a day, it will be mine!!