It was a Red Moon – our first multiplayer game of Tranquility Base: Soviet Moon (@worth2004, 2018) #boardgame

ROCKYMOUNTAINNAVY Juniors new favorite boardgame, Tranquility Base (Worthington Publishing, 2018) hit the table again for the weekly family game night. Except this time we added Soviet Moon, the in-the-box expansion. When playing with Soviet Moon the Soviets are a non-player that the American players race against. We found the multi-player experience fair. This is not to say the expansion is not worth it; where Soviet Moon shines brightest is as an opponent in solo play.

The Soviet Moon expansion board sits next to the regular player board and is used to track milestones. A set of twelve Soviet Moon cards get shuffled into the play deck and when they come out they move the Soviet lander up or down the track. Several of the cards also are Milestones roughly comparable to the US Milestones in the game. If a Soviet milestone come out before its US counterpart, the Soviet lunar track can be “locked” which prevents the lander from moving backwards (or “setback”) at certain points. The Soviet lander is also automatically advanced one space for every complete round of play by all players.

We used Soviet Moon in a 3-player game and found it lacking. Maybe it was because the cards were poorly shuffled into the deck (my fault) and too many of them came out too close together (like five in a row together, ugh!). Thematically, playing Milestones to beat the Soviets did not seem as important as playing Milestones to race against the other players. In the end, the Soviets “won” the Space Race to the moon…and we just played on to see which of us was going to win. The Soviet win really didn’t matter.

The multiplayer experience differed greatly from a solo play I had using Soviet Moon. Here, the Soviets are the “timer” against who you are racing. It’s all highly thematic and a very good use of the Soviet Moon mechanics.

I don’t foresee Soviet Moon being used in any of our 3- or 4-player game nights. There is enough thematic tension of racing against your fellow players that the non-player Soviet AI is not needed. Soviet Moon could possibly be used in a 2-player game to add the extra cooperative play element in and avoid the game from being a straight-up fight between the two players. The absolute best use of the Soviet Moon Expansion is in solo play; I don’t think I will every play Tranquility Base solo again without it.

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Feature image courtesy http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-soviet-n1-l3-lunar-mission-lk-in.html