OVER THE DESERT

building costs and incomes depending on the hex. The land you want to be in control of is very much going to be your opponent or ally – much like the other players.

The game has a turn order that encourages players to sit around the table in the correct order. This adds an interesting constraint to how the game is played out – heaping a kind of asymmetric theming on top in the style of Root. Once you have set of rules like this, it develops play in a certain direction – the person before you isn’t just the person you’re most likely to be reacting to, they also have a special relationship with you over the board too.

“It’s basically in order of military might because that is what works best for the game,” explains Mathers, “there is often a last mover advantage, particularly in the scoring round, and it would be unbalanced to hand that to the strongest military powers. Moving last is best suited to the militarily weak, a but sneaky Murshid, who can wait to take advantage of weaknesses created by conflict amongst their more powerful rivals. Thus the military powerhouses of the Warlord and Caliph move first, followed by the more cautious and calculating Nomads and Sultans, and the Murshid last of all.”

Each faction within the game has its own goals, “there is some difference in actions they can take as well, but most actions are common to all factions,” says Mathers, “for instance, all factions can build fortifications except the Warlord. However, the Warlord isn’t greatly concerned by this because his goal is not to build but to destroy.”

While the Warlord faction’s goal of winning battles and sacking cities looks most like the Khorne of Chaos in the Old World, other factions have their own goals that weave between these. The Caliph wants to control areas, Murshid spreads influence (a pseudocontrol currency), the Nomads want to become rich and the Sultan wants to build independent cities.

“The great thing about each faction having divergent goals is that they aren’t automatically in direct competition with each other,” says Mathers, “it allows room for compromise and uneasy alliances. The Sultan, for instance, wants to build cities free of foreign control or influence. The warlord wants to sack those cities. The Caliph wants to preserve, but control them. The Murshid wants to preserve, but influence them, and the Nomad wants to hire mercenaries to anyone willing to buy them. This tangled web of goals makes for more nuanced and varied negotiations between players than a game like Diplomacy where the discussion is only ever about agreeing on boundaries and promising non-aggression.”

These discussions are the political grease to the wheels. Getting away with a plan to enrich yourself without any real cost can feel amazing in any game. Here, where your turn order and relationships is set, you can see a distance between promises – someone with a specific desire three moves away who might affect you is more difficult to make a pact with as their ability to be interrupted by events before their turn is greater.

“The best moments in the game come about due to politics,” says Mathers, “often there is only so much a player can accomplish directly through performing a mechanical action. But quite often, by using a carrot and/or stick, you can convince other players to accommodate you. This type of interaction is seen in many games, of course, but a Crescent Moon game is thick with them from start to finish.”

We ask whether diplomacy can get in the way of a good war?

“This feels like a leading question,” says the designer, which it is, “Crescent Moon is not a

wargame. It’s a political game where warfare is one tool in a players’ bag to achieve their ends. I mean, it’s an important tool – there will be military conflict for certain, and for some factions such as the Warlord, quite often. But for all factions, the best option is always situational.”

How we resolve these conflicts is through a little bit of number crunching. We won’t find the randomness of dice here, instead we’ll have the deterministic style where players know whether they’re going to win or not going into the punch up. Nearly, anyway.

“Each side totals its combat strength from units and fortifications, and this score determines both the winner and the casualties inflicted on the enemy,” explains Mathers, “the winning side claims the battlefield and the surviving units of the losing side retreat back to their faction mats to be redeployed at a later time.

“So far this is deterministic,” he continues, “however, you may play cards that could add to combat strength, move units into or out of the conflict, absorb casualties, defect units, or assassinate leaders and so on.”

From the examples we’ve seen, the assassin card looks like a reaction card to remove other players’ cards in combat, or to tip an influence contest one way or the other. The Seize card on the other hand gives you a combat power boost that will see you also take hold of an opponent’s fort if you do win. Some of these cards are terrain dependant – for example the Camelry (like cavalry, but on camels) are only effective in the desert.

“So combat becomes non-deterministic, and there is an element of hand management, as some cards are one use, while others only return to your hand at the end of a full ‘year’ of play. Lastly, one of the Murshid special abilities is to meddle in combat between other players, and they can be bribed with victory points to do so.”

With the mention of victory points, we should ask – how do we win?

“From a mechanical point of view, each faction has its own primary and secondary goals, and they generate victory points by achieving them as often as they can,” says Mathers, “as for strategy, that’s a hard question to answer because each game is so different to the next and each winning strategy so situational.”

While it’s difficult to really give tips at the point without churning out a strategy guide, Mather’s does offer this sage piece of wisdom, “generally the winner will be the faction that doesn’t get embroiled in fruitless and protracted conflict, and is able to exploit opportunities as they arise, or engineer those opportunities.”

Which is good advice for anyone.