Moonrakers Review

Keep your friends close, but not too close.

Moonrakers is a game that combines several mechanics including deck building and negotiation in order to fulfill contracts and become the next leader of the Moonrakers. On your turn, you'll either select a contract or stay at the base. When you select a contract, you must be able to fulfill all of its requirements by playing matching cards from your hand. Here's the problem, you only have 5 cards in your hand and there's more symbols than that on the contract. This is where the negotiation comes in to play. You'll need to enlist other players to help you with contracts. You'll determine how the pot will be split and the other player(s) will chip in their cards to assist. If it's successful then the players divide their winnings and the next player will go. If it fails, you get nothing and you might lose some prestige. Don't fail. The other option that players have is to stay at base and collect some cash and some new objectives. Players will then get to buy new ship parts or mercenaries to add to their decks to make them stronger. Once a player reaches 10 prestige points the game ends and they become the next leader of the Moonrakers.

The Good: For a game that blends mechanics the way that it does, Moonrakers does a fantastic job at doing so. Cards are all multi-use allowing them to fulfill parts of the contracts and add actions. I've never been big on negotiation games but this game changes that. I love the temporary alliances that are constantly made and that you have no obligation to help out if you don't want to. I also have to mention the components. The artwork is great and the overall quality is top notch. I just like to look at it sometimes. It's not weird I promise.

The Okay: This is more aligned with the solo game but when I played it this way, I had a really hard time actually fulfilling contracts. The mercenary deck is a cool idea to simulate another player but I ended the game with zero prestige because I couldn't complete contracts to save my life. This could have been poor shuffling on my end as well but I need to revisit this solo.

The Not So Good: Similar to above, this is a game that's tough to play at lower player counts. It's not impossible but because it's so reliant on other players when you play a 2 player game it's no real surprise who you'll be enlisting. It still works just fine but it plays so much better with more people.

Overall: 8/10

I really liked Moonrakers. The first time I opened the box I knew it was going to be an interesting ride. I'm not always a huge fan of space themed games but I'm a big fan of this one. It's a game that you can play with just about anyone and it never feels like you're set up for failure. This isn't one that I see leaving my collection any time soon.

Thanks to IV Studios for letting me take a look at this one.