OUR REVIEW
Attack on Earth
MOONGHA INVADERS
mad scientists and atomic monsters
This time Pietro Cremona presents us with his thoughts on an interesting project:
Moongha Invaders is a SF game created by Martin Wallace and produced by the Italian Club “Tre Emme” of Modena, organizer of the international gaming convention “PLAY”. This was a sort of “no-profit” adventure for the members of my Club and it was started just to realize if an association could be able to produce games, following all the steps for components manufacture, assembly and distribution. The result was positive, even if something could have been even better if the club had some extra time available: unfortunately the game had to be available for PLAY and thus “speed” was the password of this adventure.
The box is well filled: you will find a mounted map (that shows the Earth and its bigger cities, a turn track, the action boxes and the monster boxes), four sets of playing pieces (wooden cubes, monsters and one big PASS disc; one set per player), two sets of tiles (towns, heroes, military helps, etc.), 12 dice, 3 sets of colored discs (white, orange and purple), two black pawns, etc.: all in all the usual wooden plethora that you may find in a Wallace’s game.
Each player randomly picks up 3 city tiles (4 in a three players game) and a set of playing pieces: everybody has the same number and type of monsters and their characteristics are printed on each side of the board, in front of each player, for easy reference. Monsters need a certain number of ORANGE discs (from “1” to “4”) to be created; they have a movement capacity ranging from “1” (Bloob) to “4” (Kiddoo); may support a certain number of damages ranging from “1” (Kiddoo and Drakor) to “6” (Mechoor); and have an attack capacity (number of dice used for the attack) varying from “1” (near all the monsters) to “2” for Moogre and to “3” for Mechoor.
On the board are printed 6 boxes, one for each of the possible ACTIONS and each one is associated to a die result:
- Box 1 is for ORANGE discs (Create a monster) and usually get 10 pieces each turn (with 4 players or only 7 with 3 players). On the first turn these numbers are doubled.
- Box 2 is for WHITE discs (Attack) and the number of discs is determined by the turn track (two discs on turn 1, four in turn 2, etc.)
- Box 3 is for PURPLE discs (Move or Hide a monster) and gets 2 disc each turn (only 1 with three players)
- Box 4 is for the HERO tiles, one per turn
- Box 5 is for MILITARY “-1 tiles” and receive an Infantry tile at the beginning of each turn.
- Box 5 is again for MILITARY “-2 tiles”, but will not hold any tile in this phase.
The first player now roll a certain number of dice (as indicated on the Turn track: three on turn 1 and 2, four in turn 3 and 4 up to 12 on turn 8 or 9) placing them in the ACTION BOXES that match their numbers. With each “1” a new orange disc goes to the “Create Monster” box, each “4” means a new Hero, etc. If you get more than one die in the Military boxes you must add extra tiles, one per type, as printed on the box itself: if, for example, you got “4 dice” in MILITARY-1 box you will get an extra Infantry, a Tank, an Airplane and a Bomb.
Now players, in turn, start to select their actions in rounds, one action at a time in each round, until all pass (usually because there are no more discs or tiles on the action boxes). These actions are:
- Create a monster: you take an orange disc from Box 1 and put it on one of your monster boxes on the board. Each monster need a certain number of orange discs to be created (from “1” of Kiddoo to “4” of Mechoor) so it will take a certain number of rounds to accumulate enough orange discs for the most powerful monsters. Very often you will need at least a couple of turns, as everybody will try to get as much orange discs as possible. Once created the monsters are placed (hidden side) on any city on the board.
- Attack with a monster: you take a white disc from Box 2 and place it on one of your monsters box. You may store more than one white disc on each monster box, if you wish, but you cannot pass them to other monsters. If you decide to attack you will get the number of dice printed on the box multiplied by the number of white discs that you will use: each result of “4-5-6” is considered a HIT. You may attack other monsters (if revealed: i.e. when they are on their FRONT side) or a City. If you attack the monsters each HIT is represented by a black cube on the monster: once you reach his damage capacity the monster is eliminated. If you attack a city you have to destroy first all the defenders (heroes or military) and this may be a very … bloody affair. In effect the armored defenders first fire at your monster with 4 dice. Then you may attack the defenders (each hit eliminate one tile) and if you wipe out all of them you may finally assault the city (each HIT is represented by a cube of your color: each city may host a maximum of 8 colored cubes)
- Move or Hide a monster: you may take a purple cube using it immediately to move a monster (up to his movement capacity) from a city to another connected city. Or, if you prefer, you may hide one of your monsters (flipping the corresponding disc) instead of moving it.
- Place a Hero: you take one of the available heroes from box 4 and place it in one city of your choice. If there are hidden monsters in this city you roll a die for each of them and reveal all those that get a “4” or plus. If there are military units in that city they may now fire at the revealed monster.
- Place Military: you take one military tile from box 5 or box 6 and place it in a city: if there are revealed monsters all the military units of this city must attack them, as usual.
- Pass: this means that you will not perform any action on the present round, but you may still play again on the following one. Place your PASS disc on an action box of your choice. When the round will be back to you take the Pass token back to your hands and perform the selected action.
When all players passes the turn ends: remove all the tokens from the action boxes and start a new turn. When you finish turn 8 (turn 9 with three players) the game is over and you may calculate your Victory Points
Players reveal their City Tiles (the ones randomly selected at the beginning of the game) and check how badly they were damaged during the fight: with “0” or “1” damage cube each City worth 5 VP; with “2” to “7” cubes only 3 VP; with 8 cubes 0 VP.
Players also score for the damages that they inflicted to cities: 4 VP are assigned to the player that has the most cubes in each City (2 VP in case of ties) and 1 VP is assigned to the second highest total.
Each DRAKOOR monster still on the board also assign 3 VP to his owner, while extra VP are assigned for each monster killed by our own MOOGRE (VP equals the damage capacity of the killed monster)
MOONGHA INVADERS is a “fast and furious” game: players need to protect their cities with monsters, military units and humans, but doing that too openly will show to all the opponents which are “their towns” and thus you are attacked immediately in order to keep your defenses very low. At the same time monsters move along the Earth and attach each other all the time. Alliances are decided and immediately after are crashed, if necessary. This seems very chaotic, but YOU NEED a low profile strategy in order to strength your armies and cities without … disturbing the opponents. And when you are ready you must attach “Cry Havoc”. Usually the game becomes really hot in the final 2-3 turns, when everybody has reinforced his cities and search now for the battle.
Players: 3-4
Age: 10+
Time: 100+
Designer: Martin Wallace
Artist: Luca Zamoc
Price: -
Publisher: PLAY
Web: www.treemme.org
Genre: SciFi, development, resources
Users: With friends
Special: 1 player
Special: 2 players
Special: Many players
Version: multi
Rules: en it
In-game text: no
Comments:
Mechanisms and play rather abstract
Very good design of the board
New Treefrog edition via Kickstarter
Compares to:
Other editions:
2013, Treefrog Games
My rating: 4
Pietro Cremona:
A “different” game from Martin Wallace, with fast and furious combats coupled with the usual strategy system
Chance (pink): 1
Tactic (turquoise): 3
Strategy (blue): 2
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 3
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0