Moon Colony Bloodbath – Justin Bell
The 2025 release Moon Colony Bloodbath—designed by Donald X. Vaccarino (Dominion) and published by Rio Grande Games—has gotten a lot of pub this year. A friend in my Wednesday group picked up the last copy at a local game store, so we got it to the table to have a look.
Moon Colony Bloodbath is a hard game to describe. It is not, contrary to my initial understanding, an engine destruction game similar to something like Space Station Phoenix (another recent Rio Grande game), because in Moon Colony Bloodbath, players don’t actually start with any buildings or structures that can be stripped for parts. The game does slowly add event cards to a shared deck that wreak havoc on all players…so the game becomes a chance to trigger actions from a player mat while finding ways to stay alive just long enough to watch the structures of other players burn to the ground.
Two turns into my first play, I began looking online to buy a copy. I absolutely loved its initial rhythm. The system is so easy to teach and building cards out of my hand was a breeze but featured interesting decisions. The events were rough, and losing citizens to funny accident cards made light of everyone’s situation. But by the mid-game, every turn became “same-y.” An event would murder six citizens off of our boards. A robot would show up and axe another five. After getting a slight boost to our populations, more negative effects set in. Staying afloat became impossible, and even making conservative decisions to keep bodies in play was not enough. The game ends as soon as one player loses their entire population, then the player with the most bodies left wins. The game’s best asset is its pace; our three-player game took about 40 minutes. Still, I haven’t played a game all year where I was so excited when play began and then later so excited for a game to be over.
Ease of entry?
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?
★★☆☆☆ – Would play again but would rather play something else
Read more articles from Justin Bell.
Xylotar: Unhinged – Andrew Lynch
Like Justin, I came out of the gate hot on Xylotar, though I’ll confess that it hasn’t maintained its hold on me. It’s a fun trick-taking game with a good gimmick, but with time I have found that it presents neither as many fun surprises nor as many tough decisions as other, equally light trick-taking games.
The announcement of an expansion got me excited to revisit it, though. Immediate bonus points for the packaging, a thinner box that comes with a new insert for the base game that allows you to keep the regular Xylotar deck and the expansion cards separate. That’s good, thoughtful production.
As for the expansions themselves? They’re fine. Bonus Beats gives each player two single-use abilities that can be used across the game’s three hands, which allow for all sorts of rule-breaking shenanigans. Off-Key Cards introduces fractions, with cards that sit in between the values of other cards. Neither seems to have much of an impact on the experience of the game. Expansions for trick-taking games are rare. This may explain why.
Ease of entry?
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?
★★☆☆☆ – Would play again but would rather play something else
Read more articles from Andrew Lynch.
Hellas – Andy Matthews
Full disclosure, I’ve played Hellas before, but it’s been years and years. But a friend wanted to play it and so we broke it out. And I was reminded again why it’s remained on my shelf since I picked it up. Hellas places players in Greece, as rival marble vendors, each attempting to earn the most points by building villages, town squares, palaces, and temples. The beauty lies in the way players select actions. Each player receives a limited number of action markers and on their turn they select an action to perform. Some actions are for them alone, while the rest of the actions are also performed by other players. Want to build a house? Great, but that means every other player gets to do it right afterwards—potentially interfering with your clever plans.
The other gorgeous part of the design is the way players collect marble (which is basically your currency). There are only three marble quarries on the board at the beginning of the game. And everyone will rush to build next to them, since that’s the only way to earn marble. But each time a player selects the Produce Marble action, every quarry becomes slightly degraded, producing fewer blocks. Until a quarry is shut down, never to produce marble again. This forces players to spread out across the board, hoping desperately to wind near the next quarry to open so they too can continue to earn income.
I believe Hellas is out of print, but if you can get your hands on a copy, it’s well worth your hard-earned money.
Ease of entry?
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?
★★★★☆ – Would like to play it again
Read more articles from Andy Matthews.
Tokkuri Taking – Kevin Brantley
The cover art grabs you right away. Cartoon dinosaurs drinking bottles of sake? Now that’s a hook. Much like SUMO, this quick Japanese card game features handsome, minimalist art and comes from Bright Eye Games.
Tokkuris are the traditional vessels used to serve sake. Players can use cards in two ways: play them facedown as a tokkuri with ten levels of sake, or play them faceup to drink from any available tokkuri. Each card shows between one and four numbers, and each number must be consumed from a different tokkuri. You also can’t “overspend”—you must play a number that matches exactly with an available level to score.
At the end of a round, players lose points for every tokkuri still at level three or higher, while completed tokkuris score positively. Scores are tallied, and players pay the difference in tokens to the winner (the highest scorer). The game ends when one player goes bankrupt.
It’s an interesting little counting game, and some card effects shake things up—forcing players to swap hands or revealing “dummy” tokkuris that don’t score at all (to the delight of opponents).
That said, the game is swingy. A poor hand often means a poor round, and some cards feel far more powerful than others—especially the one offering a range of one to three and a card draw.
The art is undeniably cute—who knew cartoon numbers could be so charming? Still, it’s not something I’d rush to bring to the table. With its quick gameplay and quirky mechanics, though, it’s at least worth taking a sip of sake to decide if you want to finish the whole tokkuri.
Ease of entry?
★★★★☆ – The odd bump or two
Would I play it again?
★★☆☆☆ – Would play again but would rather play something else
Read more articles from Kevin Brantley.
10 to Leave – Andrew Lynch
I’m a big fan of Knizian card games, simple rules with hard tradeoffs that occasionally leave you desperate to pass. 10 to Mosquito is clearly in that family, kin with Lost Cities and Photograph. The goal here is to have as many of your mosquitoes survive as possible, as you terrorize a helpless sleeping child.
A+ for the setting. More of a C or a C+ for the game. It’s almost interesting. It’s so close. You can almost taste it. Almost. But it doesn’t quite click. It’s a little too abbreviated without feeling satisfying, an amuse bouche that doesn’t amuse. Ah well. Maybe next time.
Ease of entry?
★★★★☆ – The odd bump or two
Would I play it again?
★☆☆☆☆ – Would play again but will cry about it
Read more articles from Andrew Lynch.
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