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! Using one of the set-up options listed in the rules, Crescent Moon lays out its intentions simply: play 3 or 4 rounds, take 4 actions per round, and find a way to end up with the most points while manipulating influence and military might on a tiny map. A key part of taking actions is tied to the market of Power Cards available in the game. All characters except the Warlord have a build action available where you can build up to two buildings (or three if you’re the Sultan) on the map following location placement restrictions and paying the applicable cost. For example, you can only build forts in hexes where you have presence, no other player has control, and that do not contain a fort or castle. Whereas if you’re building a castle, you’re actually replacing one of your existing forts on the board and essentially upgrading it to a castle. The Sultan not only has the ability to build three buildings at once, but they also are the only player that can build settlements (towns and cities). Each building has a cost for the different characters, and an additional cost for certain terrain types.

Components:59 Custom Wooden Pieces, 5 Player Booklets, 82 Cards, 62 Wooden Discs, 16 Hexes, 5 Cloth Bags, 196 Tokens In my post-game discussions, there were also some comparisons to Pax Pamir and Dune, which makes total sense. I get Pax Pamir vibes from the way you're working with other players to manipulate the state of the board, while trying to be clever and sneaky as you focus on your own motivations. Sadly, I have yet to play Dune, but I am familiar with how it plays, and I think that might be the closest comparison. It’s clear that you’re supposed to play the factions in a certain manner. They need to work together with one another (when the time is right). This is all well and good, but it sometimes feels like the game is too driven in this respect. Scripted, even. In other asymmetrical games, even though my faction had a direction, I still had freedom to play with variation. Crescent Moon, an upcoming 2022 release from designer Steven Mathers and Osprey Games, had me at “an ambitious asymmetric area control game of tense negotiations.” Based on that description, how could this game not be my jam?! I am surprised how often relationships turned on a dime in the same round, or even the same action.Crescent Moon has some of that, thanks to a mix of how points can be scored. Each faction works a little differently, and over the course of just 3 rounds and 12 total actions (4 rounds in the longer version of the game), players represent entities from the Middle East in the 10th century. Every player is working to slowly build up relationships only to tear them down, sometimes in the same round. So I found myself referring to my player leaflet a lot. I also had to refer to the rulebook almost every time we had to resolve combat or an influence contest. I feel Crescent Moon is the sort of game that you have to play regularly, at least once a week, and then it probably will start to flow after 3 or 4 games. Maybe that’s just me and others are able to absorb the information more easily. The Verdict This game is a fantastic time if you have a solid group ready to play 5-7 times to get the most out of it. The factions are varied enough to be interesting over multiple plays. You can do a 5-player game of Crescent Moon in 2 hours and have plenty of great moments to relish later. Each of my games played out differently; some very cautious, some all-out war, one where everyone had to work through the Murshid because she had total influence control of the key spots on the board. 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.

The Sultan is the local ruler who has grown powerful and rich from building cities. As I mentioned before, the Sultan has their own card market, is the only player that can build settlements (towns and cities), makes extra income, and can build three times in a single action where others can only build twice. The Sultan scores majority of their points from having cities on the board, preferably under Sultan influence and control. I’m not a fan of this method of secret scoring, not in a wargame setting at least. What makes games like this so interesting are the interactions between the players. Despite everyone having their own aims and scoring methods, there’s usually a bit of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. Some actions are mutually beneficial for different factions, and you get situations where players form temporary alliances to reel in a leader. You can’t do that in a game where you don’t know who’s winning for definite, and it makes alliances hit and miss at times. Components: 59 Custom Wooden Pieces, 5 Player Booklets, 82 Cards, 62 Wooden Discs, 16 Hexes, 5 Cloth Bags, 196 Tokens In the player booklets, each character has primary and secondary objectives which score every year. Additionally, there's a year-one objective everyone has which is not only achievable, but it gives players something to aim for as they are learning the game. I found it to be super helpful for learning and teaching the game.The game’s player count of four or five is demanding, but honest; in play, you get the sense that this is a game designed for exactly five players, awkwardly stretched to four to try and give its gorgeous box a little more shelf appeal. (On the other hand, the estimated three-hour play time feels slightly inflated for a standard game - it moves at a good clip.) Losing the Nomad in a four-player game - players instead pay the central bank a fixed rate for mercenaries, and don’t risk them deserting - sacrifices one of Crescent Moon’s most intriguing parts, leaving its carefully balanced construction feeling slightly wobbly. It took almost two more months for me to have a game night where I could grab exactly 5 players, and it came in an odd way: a recent night had a whopping 9 people show up, so we split into groups of 5 and 4 so that I could play Crescent Moon at its full player count. Crescent Moon is an asymmetric area control game for 4-5 players where players perform actions, often negotiating with one another, to affect a shared map striving to achieve their unique victory objectives. Some players aim to gain military control of certain hexes on the map, while others might be more focused on gaining political control of hexes. Suffice to say, each player has their own motivations, and there's lot of action and intrigue that unfolds on a relatively small map. In my few games of Crescent Moon, the hidden victory points kept the gameplay very interesting. You usually had a good idea for the players that were in the lead, but you can't really recall everyone's exact total. This led to mind games, and players pointing fingers at each other claiming so-and-so has the most points, don't help them, or I definitely don't have more points than them, so please help me.

But if you can split the difference and ensure you have exactly 5 players, Crescent Moon is a must buy. There’s a saying from the tabletop RPG scene, that if you DM a game, you shouldn’t railroad the players. This means you should let the players have control over their destiny. You shouldn’t force them down certain paths because you, selfishly, want the plot to go that direction. Otherwise, they’re not actually playing a game at all. In Crescent Moon, the influence and assault actions are how you gain influence or control of a hex (respectively). Move any number of your units to an adjacent hex that is controlled by another player to perform an assault action, then resolve combat. For the influence action, you can freely place one of your influence tokens in a hex adjacent to where you have presence if no other player has presence and there is no Murshid influence adjacent to the target hex. Otherwise, you place the challenge token and resolve an influence contest, which has some similarities to combat that occurs from the assault action. 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. Crescent Moon is in some ways a demanding game of its players. Negotiation is critical to success and the overall experience. But you can’t really make a rule that says a player MUST negotiate. Well, you can, but that is taking things to the extreme.The Caliph's goal is to gain control of as many hexes as possible and assert military dominance. They start the game with a palace on the board which can be moved around with a special move palace action. In addition, building forts and castles is cheaper for the Caliph than the other characters.

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 Even when you get 5 warm bodies to play Crescent Moon, you also want to make sure you get people willing to do a LOT of table talk. Crescent Moon is played over three years (rounds) for the standard game, or four years if you prefer to play a longer game. Each year is divided into three phases: There are a few natural alliances in the game - up to a point. The obvious one is the Sultan and the Caliph who are the two factions most heavily invested in maintaining infrastructure. The other natural alliance is not so obvious, but it is the Warlord and Murshid, as they both have a hard time hurting each other anyway, and the Murshid is the one faction that can benefit from the destruction the Warlord wreaks. The Nomad, as befitting their independent status, don’t really favour any of their opponents, and maintaining the status quo is probably their best bet, as it maximises the value of their own bargaining chip - their mercenaries. It is also dazzlingly beautiful. From the gold etched box that screams luxury to the stamped wooden tokens that are immediately distinctive against the beautifully illustrated terrain hexes, this is a game that needed to be eye catching yet easy to read and delivers on that requirement ten times over.Unfortunately, it’s not all good news for the game though. I felt there was a huge barrier before you actually got to the game. The rulebook pretty much immediately introduces 6 very important terms. Until you understand the difference between tokens with military strength, civilian strength and influence, they are hard to properly understand. I’m glad to see that there are modular set-ups. Instead of suggested printed layouts, you can vary the layout of tiles in a communal fashion. The river crossing tile sits in the middle, and then every player gets dealt three tiles. Players take it in turns to add a hex into the layout. When I read the rules for Crescent Moon, many of the elements from Sidereal Confluence came to mind, which is my all-time favorite negotiation game. My #1 gaming experience last year was the 9-player game of Sidereal Confluence I organized with friends. Truly, an amazing experience.