J couldn’t make it last night, so we invited a different gamer whom we all knew. He and A shared the same first initial (“A”, in case you hadn’t guessed). So I’ll refer to the original A as A0 and the other as A1.
The game we played was Micro Moonshine. The players are running illegal liquor operations in the 1920s. You send out workers, represented by cards, to make booze and accomplish other tasks.
The game was apparently designed in Poland. It seemed to us that whoever translated the rulebook into English did not do a good job. There were abiguities in the wording of the rules.The main game area near the start of the game. The word “micro” in the game’s name refers to the size of the game box. It’s surprising that the game’s designers were able to fit so many good-quality game components into a small space. The neoprene mat is an exception; it can’t fit in the box.This is my play area near the start of the game. The cards represent workers in your criminal enterprise. Every round you start with four; you can see I’ve spent two. You need one of these cards to visit any location in the previous photo.The main board at the end of our game. The cards in the center of the area represent contracts; these are the main way of gaining victory points. You can see that we’ve executed most of the contracts in the game. The winner was M, playing white; if you look at the scoring track on the left, note that her score piece is turned over the +50 side for a total of 58 points.M’s play area at the end of the game. The key to Micro Moonshine is handling its limited action economy. From the number of contracts that M fulfilled, you can see she figured out the right combination of actions and workers to earn her victory.
A0 and I had a hard time figuring out the game’s action economy, and did not do nearly as well. A1 did better, and came in second. Oh, well… you can’t win them all!
