Excerpt from the address of Katalin Nelson Blue, the first president of the Human Alliance.
(from the game manual)
Just based on the above excerpt, the games provides a vibe of old pre-CGI science fiction movies and/or space themed comic books. Being a fan of the previous Welcome to games my wife and I were excited to jump right into playing this one, and well, we did. We even got to play it with my sister and my wife’s sister-in-law. The result? Well, keep reading and you will find out.
BGG Description
You've built housing for humanity in neighborhoods and New Las Vegas. Now you need to save humanity through space colonization...
Welcome to the Moon uses the same flip-and-write game mechanisms as the earlier title Welcome To..., but now you can play in a campaign across eight adventure sheets. On a turn, you flip cards from three stacks to create three different combinations of a starship number and a corresponding action, then all players choose one of these three combinations. You use the number to fill a space in a zone on your adventure sheet in numerical order, and everyone is racing to be the first to complete common missions.
The eight adventure sheets feature very different mechanisms from the classic Welcome To... concept, and when you play in campaign mode, you'll make choices that change the next adventure, which means that each campaign will differ from the previous one.
Weight 2.39/5
A Little More Info
Welcome to the Moon is the last episode of the Welcome to... trilogy of games. After the residential housing estates of the 1950s, after the casinos of the 1960s, you will aim to conquer space...
(from the game manual)
What sets this game apart is that you do not have to play the campaign to begin enjoying the game. You can opt to play the individual adventure missions before doing the campaign if you want to.
Each non-campaign adventure also has three mission objectives in play (out of six) to try to complete. The adventures have different end game triggers as well to match the narrative of the story.
The campaign book is set up like a “choose your own adventure” story that throughout it, you will select from the options given to you to complete the narrative.
The campaign also unlocks a lot of cards to be used later in the game.
What we like about the game
To sum it up using my wife’s words, “EVERYTHING!!”
The game play is fun and easy and the basic rules are simple enough to follow. As you progress in the game, the rules do change based on which board you are using so that adds an exciting touch to the game. The changes we have come across so far does not make the game more complicated; it just forces you to think a little bit more as to where to write your numbers and how to maximize the challenges ahead.
What is also nice about this game is that everyone takes their turns at the same time. The downtime between turns is solely based on waiting on the slowest person of the group to finish their selection.
The artwork on the player boards and the box does take me back to yesteryear (the golden olden days) and to the comic books of my youth. The player boards are nice and bright and colorful that makes you just want to put a smile on your face while playing.
The last thing that I really appreciate with the game is that the predicted playtime on the box says 25 minutes and even with distractions of a young energetic child (or children in my wife’s sister-in-law’s case) that time does hold true. Without distractions and with more experience playing the game, I am sure the play time can be decreased to even 15 minutes or less.
What we don’t like about the game
We all have agreed with what other reviewers have stated about the minor issues of the game. The first being the dry-erase pens have no eraser and the caps do attach to back of the pens when being used. The second, is the individual storage boxes are nice but do not fit sleeved cards well.
Other than those petty minor little things. The game is wonderful.
FINAL THOUGHTS
We really, really, love this game and is our favorite of all three in the series. Being able to “choose our own adventure” or following the campaign adventure stories creates endless replay ability. Your card combinations change throughout each game so how you accomplish the adventure takes a bit more luck and skillful planning.
So how did we fair in the 10 plays in this past week? Let’s just say that the first adventure is great, the second adventure is a learning process because of the change in the rules and usage of the card combinations, and we left my wife’s sister-in-law mad that we had to go home because she wanted to keep playing to beat, specifically, me. We are looking forward to completing our journey to the moon via the rest of the adventures and even the campaign.
To leave you with some quotes by a late, great actor, Jackie Gleason…
“To the moon, Alice, to the moon!” &
“You’re a riot, Alice. You’re a regular riot. Hope they like those jokes on the moon, ‘cause that’s where you’re goin’.”
-Ralph Kramden (The Honeymooners)
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