Bad Moon Rising
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Bad Moon Rising is another of Paul Rohrbaugh's card activation system games, and this one is probably the best of these that I've played so far. It probably helps that my usual opponent played. All the previous games I've played using this system have been played solitaire, and were not as much fun.
Some things to like
Simulating a battle such as occurred at Firebase Illingworth is both easy and difficult. The difficult part is figuring out how mechanics for how units fight each other without being eliminated too quickly, while still allowing a realistic casualty rate by the end of the game. The morale mechanic seems to be a decent way of managing this. High morale units are more difficult to stun and kill, low morale units much easier to stun and kill. This is coupled with the requirement for first pinning a unit before it can be stunned, then eliminated. I like this and haven't seen this done anywhere else. It would work well in Stryker's War.
The card activation mechanic seems very appropriate. The helps model the easy part, which is the high degree of randomness in any of these sorts of battles. They were intensely chaotic, and could turn one way or another seemingly at random. Artillery and Air assets were not always predictable, and from a game play situation, they might as well be random. This amount of randomness did not always feel quite right in some of the other games using this system, but it does feel right in Bad Moon Rising.
AS provided a more specific list of likes and dislikes. Likes:
- Overall playability.
- Card activation mechanic.
- Fast paced game play.
- No ZOCs to contend with.
- Clear, easy-to-road board.
He didn't like the following:
- Lack of clarity in the rules, specifically around combat resolution.
- Errors in the rules, thing missing.
- No index.
The game comes with more or less two errata sheets, which we weren't able to fully integrate with the main rules. Some of our difficulty would likely be remediated if we went through the errata very carefully. But it's still pretty annoying to deal with errors which should have been caught during development.
Turn sequence clarity
Here are a few notes for helping understand how a turn progresses. Details are in the rules, which do not have a turn sequence.
Start of turn
- Determine artillery.
- Determine US air support.
End of turn
- Resolve Ammo Dump situation starting at the end of Turn 2 (skip this in Turn 1).
- Remove Pinned markers.
- Flip Stunned Markers to Pinned.
- Reshuffle decks.
- Move the Turn Counter on the Turn Track.
AAR and thoughts
I want to like this game more than I do, which goes for most of the games in the system.
Our game went 7 of 8 turns whence the Ammo Dump blew up, and we called it after that.
Here's what it looked at around Turn 5 or so:
