Moon Colonization is not for the faint of heart

A board game where everything you build comes crashing down in front of your eyes is our kind of problem. Jared jumps back on the mic to talk through Moon Colony Bloodbath, the new standalone design from Donald X. Vaccarino, and why our table couldn’t stop laughing even as robots, hunger, and “paperwork” turned the moon into a meat grinder. We also catch up on why Jared’s been away and what it meant to have support during a rough stretch.

We walk through the mechanisms that make this game click for engine-building and tableau-building fans: simultaneous turns, a tight menu of actions, and a facility tableau you build up with money, food, restock boxes, and other resources. Then we get into the real star, the shared progress deck. It starts with a few dependable work cards, but every reshuffle drags more event cards into circulation, so the ratio of “good turns” to “bad news” gets funnier and more brutal over time. The most important twist is that your remaining people are basically your survival clock and your victory points, so every decision feels sharp.

Transcript

Welcome and Roomba Chaos

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast. I am not your host, Clay Gable, and I am here joined with my long-lost brother in board games. We just got done fighting off a Roomba. Jared is here with us at long last.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Hey, what's what's going on, Clay? Not too much. Yeah?

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Just got back from DC getting to play a game with you.

Jared Returns and Shares Life Update

Why Moon Colony Bloodbath Hits

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Oh my gosh. It was top notch. Um, but I'll tell you what, I I drank a mini Diet Coke. We maybe need to discuss that on and over the fence, but mini Diet Cokes got me hyped for today's episode. Um but obviously, if you if you allow me, Clayton, for a second, just to address the elephant in the room. Yes, I have been taking a break from uh the podcast. I I did have an unfortunate death in the family, lots of craziness going on uh at work, and so you will see less of me, but that's okay. My love is still with the podcast, and I just wanted to say publicly thank you to Clay and to Travis for really supporting me and my family through a tough time. And I know you guys always got my back. And I love you, Clay. I love you, Travis, when you listen to this podcast. Um we love you too, big guy. Uh, but I I just want to take this chance to absolutely shout out an awesome game like you alluded to that we played over the over the weekend while you got to run down to DC. Um it's Moon Colony Bloodbath. Okay. Donald X Vaccarino, absolute legend in the sport, um, the creator of Dominion. A game that I have not played yet, Clay. So add that to your list.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Yeah, that's that's a that's a big blind spot. Yeah for you, Jared. The deck building man himself has not played the granddaddy of deck building games.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Yeah, the yeah, the Catalina wine mixer. I haven't done it. Um, but this awesome uh is a card build, uh, a deck builder, tableau um builder, your your resource gathering. Yeah, did I hit all the mechanisms?

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Yeah, I mean you got the engine building, tableau building. I don't know. I think you I think you got them, and it is a little bit of deck building, but not your personal deck. You're building that progress deck.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

It's like you're in this terrible bloodbath together, but you don't want to be in this bloodbath together. I love the way that the game progresses because you are all drawing kind of these action cards from a single deck, and everyone gets to take their turns simultaneously. There's not too much interaction between the two players. Like, I can't put a card into the deck that makes clay lose a bunch of points necessarily directly. Um, but you essentially keep going through your turns, and there's only four actions, uh four uh good actions, I would say, that are built into every kind of cycle in this game. And so you can you can either take resources, uh, there's a couple different resources, money, food, um, and boxes, kind of like these these kind of boxes. I don't yeah, what are what is the technical term on these boxes? See if we can pull up a picture of it.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

It's the action's called restock, so restock, yeah.

People as Points and Survival Timer

The Progress Deck That Gets Mean

SPEAKER_00 4:04

It's like you you're in an Amazon warehouse on the moon, and these robots are trying to kill you, so you better restock. Um, but you can use all three of these different resources for different things to help you extend your life on the moon bloodbath that you're a part of. That you just you don't want to be there. Oh, and I I failed to mention the people resource too. You have a certain number of people on the colony that are slowly dying uh as these horrible bloodbath events happen. And like I was mentioning, you can play, take different actions, or build buildings that give you benefits. That's the engine building part of it, that either help you, you know, get more of the food or the more people on your colony, or help the boxes have, you know, they have like special effects or something like that. That was really cool. And so there is like a central draw pile for these buildings, and that's one of your turns too. You can research to grab more of these cards to look at and say, hmm, which one of these will work really well with my engine? Uh, we did play it with one of our buddies who absolutely throttled us both times because he just he was able to figure out how do I piece together this awesome engine? And it like, I don't know, he it just clicked with him. Maybe it's the space force and you guys, I don't know. Uh yeah, it didn't work for me. Yeah, way above and beyond. It was awesome. But one of the cool things about building these buildings and you know, building your engine is when you put down the building, it costs money. Um, and so like you can put down a maybe a card that doesn't really have a lot of benefits for your engine, but it just gives you a ton of people resource. Um, and maybe I should explain this a lot sooner. But the way the game ends is whoever runs out of people, that the first person that you're playing with, um, whoever runs out of people first, the game ends right then. And then the main important resource to have, which is essentially your victory points, I guess, is remaining people on your colony. So Clay's got up on the on the video a couple different um cards here, and each one has different corresponding costs and different corresponding how many people will be in that um in that building that you build, or you know, fuel cells, cargo bay, whatever. And the the cool mechanism too that I like about these these facility cards is you can't harvest those people until you absolutely have to. Like you have those little chits for the people, and let's say a robot comes out of the play deck and it says everyone's got to lose five people. Well, if you have little five little people chits, you can lose those five people, no problem. But if you have not enough chits to do that, you can kind of like sacrifice your buildings so your engine builds up, and then it I think it kind of just there hits a climax point where robots are absolutely destroying everybody that are playing, and it slowly goes your engine, you know, retrogrades, and the person who can make their engine last the longest um and keep people around the longest, you're gonna be the winner in this one. Um, but Clay, what were you mentioning about the the progress deck? Uh, I want to make sure we hit on that really good and make that clear for the listener.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Yeah, so you you touched on a little bit, but the the progress deck is like what drives the whole thing. And you know, like you said, it at the beginning it's seated with a fairly benign set of cards. You have four work cards, and the work cards let you do your actions, and then you have a couple twist cards. Those can be good or bad, those aren't necessarily one way or the other, and then there's trouble cards in the progress deck. So the starting progress deck is like six or eight cards, maybe. And so each round you flip over these same cards and you go through it, but as the game goes on and trouble happens, you start adding the events, and the events will be not good. So it starts out easy, you get hunger added to the deck. So now with hunger, you have to every time that comes up, you have to pay a food for every building that you have. And if you can't do that, you lose people. And then you know, the next event is called paperwork, and that gets added to the progress deck. And so now every round you have hunger coming up and you have paperwork coming up. Paperwork makes you draw a card, sounds good, but not really, because then you have to discard two cards. So you quickly start having to contend with this progress deck that keeps building negative things, and you only ever get to keep doing your four work actions.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

So each round it just gets built up, and you have ways to everybody has their own little hand of perk cards that you can put into the progress deck, which are super nice. So if you play a card that says you may add a perk to the progress deck, well, now every time through the progress deck, your little perk's gonna come up and you're gonna get to get like two money just when it comes up, and that's just a thing for you. That's a nice little play benefit.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Yep, and then you go to the next thing that says I was definitely getting a little jealous when I saw your perk cards continuing to pop up, so yeah, that was frustrating.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah, so I just I I'd never played a game like this where you are like collectively building this deck that just keeps progressing. Like, I mean, there's certainly games where you have an event deck, but I can't think of one I've played where it builds in this way. And I thought it was super cool just as you go through the game and you know what's coming up, and you're like, okay, I know I want to have a a box ready because this one card, when it comes up this round, I'll be able to use my box to get four food, and then I can do XYZ with it. But like Jared mentioned, the the rate at which the bad things start to ramp up is almost comical. I mean, yep. We flipped over in the last round, I think we flipped over eight cards in a row that were all like lose seven people, lose five people, lose four people, and you know, you're just okay, uh, this building's gone, this building's gone, that building's gone. Oh my god, there's nothing left.

Perks Engines and Risky Build Effects

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Yeah, yeah, it was it was absolutely nuts. Yeah, and the worst part is yeah, that once that progress deck goes all the way to zero, you just restart, you reshuffle all the hate and bad things. And oh, here's some on the video, here is some good event cards that go in there. You're adding robots, you're adding these like lose people. You have to like have an like one of the times one of the robots, maybe it's like you have to have at least eight food, or else you lose three more people. So go F yourself. And so, like, you only know there's gonna be four good things in this whole damn deck, and as the game progresses and you reshuffle again, there's now there's 20 cards, and you still know there's only four good things, so it's you have to really build your engine quick and then, like I mentioned, make it last as long as you can. And don't take advice from me because I came in last uh, I think both times we played this thing, but I had a ton of fun. Uh, I like the decisions that you can make. You know, there are five simple decisions, and you can take the same action over and over again. Like I could just stock up on all the money to prepare for you know building a building or whatever, but then you're losing and then you're opening yourself up. You're vulnerable to other aspects of the game where you know you're gonna get whacked by not having enough food, or ultimately it's all about the people and the colony, making sure that stays high. Um, really cool action too that I want to mention was like every time you build these buildings and build your engine, a lot of the cards will give you like an instant ability. Right when you build it, you get some cool action. And then the lingering effect is also really cool. Some of those, like, and those when you build it, that initial uh action or like benefit, it actually Fs up everybody, everybody. Like it's like add another robot or add the go to the next progress event or whatever. And whenever you add a card, it goes essentially directly on top of the draw pile, and you that will absolutely happen right away, and then you know next time it's gonna be shuffled in, and you don't know when it's gonna come up, but you know that you just put hate into the deck, so it's unless you're putting perk in, and perk is only really for yourself, so it's just fun. I'll I liked it a lot, so a lot of fun. Huge, huge fan. Is this a certain game in a series of games, or is this the base game? What what do we got going on here for this?

SPEAKER_01 13:42

This is like a standalone, this is all there is this just came out all by itself to to no parents, it's got no siblings. Yep, it is a standalone orphan game from the mind of Donald X Vaccarino. And I this is people that have listened to this show before know that I get lost in the sauce sometimes with tableau building and engine building because I hate keeping track of abilities, you know, like things that say, oh, every time you do this action, you get to do XYZ. When I do this action, I have five things I need to remember to do. Well, the great thing about this game was I never got that many things I could do before it all fell apart in front of me. And it, you know, with the paperwork thrown in there, I never had that many cards in my hand that I had choices from. Like it just the way it cuts you off at the knees pretty quickly. Yeah, it keeps it manageable for my taste.

Retro Space Art and Table Vibe

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Yeah, and we learned it really quick, like it's not that complex. You can run it back really quick as well. Uh like the reload is super quick. And um one last thing I was gonna shout out is the art on this thing. Uh, it gives you that the vibe of like 1950s, like the space is is like you know, not high-tech space. It's giving you aliens on the moon. Um, what was that show? Uh like I don't know. There's there's some good examples of the art in the in the video that we're showing, but it's like I like that they didn't try to go futuristic or it's it's giving you old school space vibes, and that's what I like. I like I feel like I'm in a little sitcom from the from the 50s and 60s. Um real big hair, you know, bumpets and stuff. I don't know. I'm all about it.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

It's a good vibe, it's a nice vibe. It all the production and the you know the vibe of the game all come together really nicely.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

And it was a it I like I don't normally have fun playing these type of games. Like I find them engaging and they're interesting puzzles, but this just gets to be silly at some point. Like, you know, you can't even at some point you can't even take it seriously anymore because you're just getting absolutely slaughtered as a collective, and you're like, oh my god, look, Jared just had to sacrifice his kale farm over there, yeah, to to feed the robot.

Two Player Death Match and Next Games

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Yeah, I do like that. It's like you can't get necessarily too I mean you can get competitive, but you can't get like mad at a certain person, or it's the deck that's happening to all of us, it's not just you know uh one on one on one. But I was curious how how does this play at two? Because I think you played with Mary one-on-one, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Same. Uh I mean it was it was just good. The way I mean with the simultaneous actions, I think it'll play well at any player count. And at two, it's just like a a liter like a literal death match to see who who dies first. Yeah, who dies first.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Uh yeah, you don't even need to count the people if you have any remaining.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yeah, yeah. What do you think? I mean, do you think this is a game that you could be a stepping stone to like a terraforming Mars?

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Whoa.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Like that you would introduce to people, and it's got similar things going on with Tableau building and the space theme.

Closing Thoughts and Staying Connected

SPEAKER_00 17:35

And yeah, um, I pay I was literally thinking about this because our buddy, our good friend, he invited me to a another party this weekend, which I might be attending. I don't know. We'll see. And they're talking about space themes and stuff like that. And he brought up this game, and I was like, you know, what would be a great follow-on to this one is terraforming Mars the Dice version. And I I mean, I think we kind of talked about it this weekend. Terraforming Mars itself is a great engine builder, but it is so damn complex, and keeping track of like 30 or 40 cards and like continuous actions and you know, actions that you can take once something happens, chain reactions, it gets a little uh mind-numbing. But the weight on this is so nice, and then going to maybe a Terraforming Mars Dice edition where it's not as taxing on the brain, but it still gives you that engine building vibe, same theme kind of you know, you're going in space. So I think this is like a good if you're having a space themed party, this could be maybe an intermediate or beginner uh game you get to the table at the beginning of the night, yeah, and then open up to something maybe arcs, like a good hardcore boom. Oh uh, you get something like that. I I loved it, huge fan.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Uh I was so excited to show it to you and Cole because I know you're you're a little engine building boy, and Cole likes a good theme. And I mean, Cole was re he was like immersing himself in in the world he was building. Oh he was like, Oh yes, I I like that I just put this kale farm here. This is a perfect kale farm for my colony, right next to my oxygen farm, you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

He's arranging them like a city.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, absolutely all day.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Dang, Jared. Well, it was freaking great to have you back on here for a quick little debrief. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about this game. I mean, I could have done it, but I was like, you know what? I played this game with Jared. Can I get him to just come on and give us a little beautiful debrief about Moon Colony Bloodbath? And you did an amazing job. Not even Rusty.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Oh, I I mean, I've been listening to Operation Game Night on while I've been, you know, in the reserves, I guess you could call me, uh, on my downtime. Yeah. They keep they're keeping me strong. Uh, I'm really proud of what you guys have been able to do. Um what we have been able to do with this podcast. And it was a pleasure coming back on it. And I hope I can sneak in a couple more episodes every now and then.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

So you'll have to keep me posted on game night this weekend.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

I will. We might have to do a little debrief, a little over the fence, maybe something that kind of vibe. I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

Well, we'll we'll stay in touch. We'll stay in touch.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Yeah, yeah. Hit me up on Instagram.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Yeah, I know where to find you. Did we do it though? Uh I think we did it.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

I think we did it.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Shoot. Well, uh for Operation Game Night, I've been Travis. And he's been and I've been Clay. Yeah, and uh I guess we're out then. Click that button. Shoot. I wasn't I wasn't on the button. Here we go.