Tsukuyumi: Full Moon Down Review

The Moon has fallen to Earth causing catastrophic calamity! The ancient dragon god, Tsukuyumi, who rests within the Moon has awoken and now Earth’s survivors must battle for control of the scant remains or fall as certainly as the Moon itself.

2-4 Players 90-180 Minutes Age 12+

Designer: Felix Mertikat

Artist: Felix Mertikat

Publisher(s): Grey Fox Games, King Racoon Games

紹介

A 2-player game ready to go!

Tsukuyumi: Full Moon Down is an area control game from King Racoon Games designed and illustrated by Felix Mertikat. This second edition returns with a broader player count, now supporting as few as 2 players instead of requiring a minimum of 3, sculpted minis for every faction as opposed to the cardboard standees of the first edition and updated rules among other quality of life changes. If you haven’t heard of Tsukuyumi, then you’re not alone. The original game’s release was limited and until the second Kickstarter hit, not a lot of gamers outside of Europe had heard of it. The original was only available in stores for those few retailers who had backed the retail pledge during the Kickstarter campaign, the result was a fairly limited release. Did King Racoon Games use the lessons they learned from their first Kickstarter and come back swinging with a stronger, bigger reiteration of Tsukuyumi: Full Moon Down? Let’s dive in and find out!

概念

The Cybersamurai faction board

The world of Tsukuyumi presents a dark and desolate future for our world after a group known as the Cybersamurai caused the Moon to fall from the sky and impact the Earth. It turns out the Moon is in fact a gigantic egg enclosing the slumbering dragon god, Tsukuyumi. The Cybersamurai had been trying to destroy Tsukuyumi, but their meddling and the resulting calamity laid waste to the oceans, continents and wiped out most of humanity. The few survivors who remain and the mutated or evolved beasts that have risen since the fall now all contend with the mysterious Oni, the servants of Tsukuyumi, and one another as they strive to control the remnants of their shattered world and prevent Tsukuyumi from awakening. The objective is to score the most victory points by the end of the game. Tsukuyumi is a low scoring game, so every VP counts! You can race to the centre to try to control the Moon, or you can attempt to wage war against your opponents or the Oni, a faction which is controlled in turn by the players themselves and functions as a kind of third party interest that all players can use to mess with one another. Underlying this conflict, the ever present threat of the great dragon god casts its shadow under the remains of the broken Moon.

どのようにプレーするか

The Oni control the fallen Moon

The game plays over a series of 4 rounds, with the option to play a shorter 3 round game or a longer session at 5 rounds. A hand of six action cards are dealt to each player who all then choose one card to play that round. Each round is divided into 4 coloured phases. The first is the white phase which comprises one whole side of the action card and is the same for all players. The white phase provides a choice of the four basic actions, draw and play a card, produce, move, and combat. The next three phases are the blue, green and red phases in that order and are all different depending on the cards played. Careful selection is a requirement as the remaining cards from each round get passed to the player to the right and then the next round and action selection begins. This is an excellent drafting and action selection system which not only encourages careful planning on the part of each player, but also allows some limited knowledge of what your enemy might be up to, likewise, they know what options you have to select from as well. This limited information and action selection makes for some tense emergent strategy as players will find themselves wanting to do all the things, but having to give up most of them for a single optimal card. Often its as much about denying your opponent a certain set of actions as it is about playing the best card yourself, and if you can manage to do both at once, all the better for it! Play continues until the end of the final round (of course) where the precious VPs are added up to determine the winner.

良い点

Just some of the weapons available to the Cybersamurai!

Tsukuyumi does a lot of things I like. While playing at 3-4 players is likely the preferred way for many, the 2-player variant is an excellent tug of war. Additional factions are available at retail or if you were able to pick up the Kickstarter version, it’s likely you already have them. Either way, the additional content allows for high replayability and variety of faction powers and strategies.

The factions are highly asymmetrical, with the four included factions each adding their own distinctive play style. As such, if there isn’t currently a faction that grabs you, it’s likely there’ll be one coming that does. For me I can’t wait to try The Lords of the Sea expansion, evolved whales who now traverse the dried up sea bed of the Pacific Ocean on their flippers akin to the way seals move about the land. This type of imaginative, unique faction is what makes the world of Tsukuyumi so inviting. Even the four base game factions offer styles of play absent from most other area control games. The Dark Seed for example are a host of evolved insects who spread across the map dominating areas and for every one an enemy takes down, another springs forth from the eggs dropped upon their defeat. Another faction, the Boarlords, are evolved boars who create tunnels and entrench themselves in strongholds making them difficult to uproot.

While the factions are vastly different, the game doesn’t necessitate a separate rules teach for each one such as with many other asymmetrical games, the baseline rules remain the same for everybody. The asymmetry comes from unit strength and disposition and unique faction abilities. No luck to be found here, Tsukuyumi rewards the player’s own skill and strategy.

悪い点

Action selection cards, no luck involved here!

That’s not to say there aren’t a few issues, for a start, the game can be a table hog at larger player counts as the more players there are, the more tiles are used to create the play space. add to that all the multitude of players aids, cards, faction boards, tokens and minis and before you know it, you’ll be wishing you had the dried up Pacific seabed just to fit it in.

Notably, in this second edition there’s less overall content than the original due to the switch to minis from the original standees. For most players this won’t be too much of an issue since people love their plastic these days, but this brings with it another issue. The original standees had the unit’s stats printed directly on them, while not exactly pretty, it was functional and convenient. it also saved space! The second edition’s answer to this is to include reference cards for each faction detailing the stats for each unit within that faction and to have copies of each of these cards for every player, meaning in a four player have you’ll end up with 16 rather sizeable cards taking up space around an already overwhelmed place area. These issues don’t affect the quality of the game itself as the gameplay is extremely solid, but space is a factor and it’s worth considering the size of your play space before committing to the investment.

芸術とコンポーネント

The Dark Seed cometh!

As for the art and components, there are a lot of minis! They’re well detailed considering the plastic used is rather soft, the sculptors did a commendable job to produce this level of detail which I can only imagine would reach their full potential with even a rookie level paint job. The base retail game has a limited variety of units so unless you have the Kickstarter version you may feel you’ve missed out on some of the larger, cooler units. Many of these will become available through retail channels in the future however.

Card quality is decent, though they lack the linen finish that I personally enjoy, and, while I can understand the desire to reduce costs in a large production such as this, the price tag would justify going the extra distance and providing higher quality cards.

Not quite how Pink Floyd described it

The art work is gorgeous and the second rule book, the Codex, includes multiple pages of comic stories based around the different factions and not only serves to flesh out this intriguing world, but is also testament to the level of love and passion the creators put into this game. As fo the rest, there are plenty of tokens and cards to play with and the Moon and terrain tiles look fantastic with the various terrain types bringing life to the table and providing immersive visuals to the battlefield. Overall a solid production with a massive amount of minis, this is a serous box of goodies!

結論

The Dark Seed faction board

Tsukuyumi: Full Moon Down second edition, is a worthy successor to the original game. It brings with it a number of quality-of-life changes, and, while not all these changes will appeal to everyone, the game remains a solid entry to the area control genre. The absence of luck is a huge point in it’s favour as it gives agency to the players, and any win will be well earned. With so many derivative games making their way to store shelves these days, it’s refreshing to find a game with so much originality, passion and development behind it. Every component speaks to the care the developers put into this project and it pays off. I look forward to seeing more from King Racoon Games in the future!

Let the battle commence!

Thanks for reading! Does Tsukuyumi sound like your kind of game? I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments below or you can join our Above Board community page here! If you’d like to get your hands on your own copy of Tsukuyumi: Full Moon Down, you can use our affiliate link here, doing so helps us keep the lights on at Above Board so we can bring you more great content! Thank you!

* Review copy kindly supplied by Mighty Ape

**Special thanks to my wonderful wife for her support with this review.