Inside of the 7 Moons box are the following:

• 4-way folding game board plus 1 market board and 1 moonrise tracker board
• 4 character boards (double-sided)
• 12-page rulebook
• Solo rules booklet
• 11 dice 
• 12 wooden player meeples including horse and dragon meeples
• 12 wooden stronghold towers
• 51 custom tokens
• 39 cards including Shadow, Wilderness, Quest and Reference
• Over 46 treasury coins

Setting up the board

Image by Gunpowder Studios

Open up the main board to reveal the lands of Dragon Reach. Then, make the most important choice of the game (not really, don't worry) and pick your emissary. Will you be Favion or Cindra of Ironside? Or perhaps Tamriel or Avriel of Sisters. Maybe you'll be Ryia or Calute of Temple Haven. Per chance you'll be Bakra or Rokkit of Stonewood.

Who you pick will determine which city you start in; each home base takes up a corner of the map. While it will impact your potential role-play, the choice isn't make-or-break as each city is close to important resources and allies and has an equal chance of being attacked by the Shadow Army (more on that ominous note later).

After picking your emissary, you'll also take a set of three meeples whose colour is dependent on the circle in top right-hand corner of the character board. These meeples include a person holding a sword, a horse and a dragon. Place the 'on foot' meeple (person) on your city. You'll also take two dice of the corresponding colour. There'll be a black, blue and green dice remaining. Turn them all to show '3' and place them on the Market Prices board which should sit near the main map. 

Next, shuffle the 12 Shadow Army Cards face-down, draw six and remove the rest from play. Give each player a card (two cards in a two-player game). Players can only see their own Shadow Army Card(s). The remaining two cards go face-down next to the main board. The Wilderness Cards get shuffled afterwards to also be placed near the board.

On a four-player game, all of the ally tokens get put near the board. On a two or three player, pick only two of each ally and put the rest aside. Next to the pool of ally tokens, make another pool for resource tokens. Continuing with tokens, you'll see dotted around the main board yellow hexagons with a brown circle inside of them — these are campfires. You'll need to fill all the campfires with their lit tokens.

Finally, give nine gold tokens to each player and set up the Moonrise Track by putting it next to the main board and keeping the Shadow Army meeple nearby.

How to Play 7 Moons

Who made the biggest journey to arrive at the gaming table thus proving their commitment to regular board game nights? That intrepid adventurer gets to go first.

On your turn, you'll role your dice for the amount of movement you can do. Starting out, you're limited by how far your feet will take you — roll two dice and pick one for your movement. A Nat 1 can feel devastating but if you choose to take the low role, you'll find a gold coin on the path. You also find a coin for snake eyes (and double of any number really). That gold can then be put towards making haste by paying an extra coin for each move you make above your die roll. Also helping your progress are Faerie gates marked by blue portals on the map. Spending one movement point lets you teleport between the gates.

The game can start off feeling quite slow; the board is large and all three resources are a good trek from each other. It picks up speed tremendously, however, as soon as you get a mount. If you can trudge your way over to Dragonmarch in the centre, you can spend five gold to buy a horse (and swap to the horsie meeple). The price of horses and other potential purchases in-game are neigh bother to remember as all are listed on the left of your Character board. With a horse, you get to role two dice and use their combined scores for movement.

Of course, the dragon meeples aren't there just for decoration. If you're prepared to offer up your trusty steed as bait for the dragon after entering Dragon Mountain along with 10 gold coins, you can fly upon the winged beast. While your movement will still be the combination of two dice rolls, with a dragon, you can fly over any terrain becoming more efficient in your travels.

Image by Gunpowder Studios

Not only must you mind the rivers on foot or on horse but any spaces away from the roads run the risk of bandit encounters. Ending your turn on a wilderness space results in you rolling the die and on a 1 or 2, thieves have either stolen one of your resources or gold coins. While being on a dragon scares away the robbers, ending your turn on a wilderness space and rolling a 1 will make your dragon realise the beautiful nature and freedom around it, leaving you to return back to your adventures on foot.

Maybe best stick to well-trodden paths if you can. But the wilderness offers its own rewards as if you can make it to a campfire, you can draw a Wilderness Card. These can give you mysterious encounters, powerful magical items and dangerous enemies but they're worth the rewards like a cloak which makes you invisible to bandits or a dragon egg. Once you've resolved a Wilderness Card, remove the campfire token so these strange encounters are only trigged once per campfire.

Traversing the board, you may come to some sights of interest such as Deathberry Hollow where the witches reside or Tarndell, home of the wood elves, or even Dragonmarch, the trading capital in the centre of the map. On your turn, you can do any number of permitted actions at each location.

In the homes of elves, dwarves and giants, you can buy wood, iron and stone respectively for one gold a piece. Take the resource tokens and put them on your Character Board with your carrying capacity dependent on which meeple you're using for traversal.

Why do you need these tiny tokens?

If you have one of each resource and you are in Dragonmarch, you can send them back to your city to build a stronghold. Three strongholds — the maximum you can build — will give you an advantage in the final stages of the game. Along with reinforcing your city, on the same turn, you can also sell your wood, iron or stone in Dragonmarch. The selling prices are shown on the dice that sit on the Market Prices board. Your first sale in the game will yield a profit of two gold (all the dice are set to '3') but as soon as you finish trading, you must role all the Market dice to set the new selling prices. This happens after every sale so run as fast as you can to Dragonmarch for trading when a dice shows 6 before another player can snatch the good stock prices.

Image by Gunpowder Studios

Witches, wizards, elves, dwarves, giants and barbarians are all allies you can recruit to help defend your city. Just head to their respective towns and pay 10 gold. Their little shield token then gets added to your home base with only one ally allowed to join from each domain. Like with resources, once the tokens run out, there are no more allies available. We'll explain why your allies are important in the next section.

For now, there is one last thing you can do before you must inevitably face the encroaching Shadow Army and that is questing forth.

When in Dragonmarch, you can draw a Quest Card to begin an epic adventure. These vary in desirability of their rewards and the complexity of the journey but one thing's for sure, it's a good way to earn some coin. Until you finish a Quest, you can't pick up another one and if you don't finish it before the Shadow Army attacks, it will count negatively towards your victory points.

And speaking of the Shadow Army...

Fighting the Shadow Army

So far unaddressed has been the ominous Moonrise Track with the more ominous hulking figure. This Track marks the inevitable descent of the dark forces upon Dragon Reach. Once the Shadow Army reaches the seventh moon space, the true battle begins.

Two occasions trigger the Shadow Army's approach: an ally being placed in a city and a city gaining its third stronghold.

This is where the game's collaborative aspect within competitive play peeks through. Each city's defence getting better brings the Shadow Army closer. All players may be feeling insecure about the state of their city's gates thus must plan together to prevent triggering the Army's pre-emptive arrival.

Now comes the battle.

All movement and trading ceases and the royal emissaries return behind their home city's hopefully defended walls.

Everyone's Shadow Army Cards, along with the two spare next to the board, get taken and shuffled together. They are then splayed out in a row face-down. 

The first Shadow Army Card is revealed. At the bottom, you'll note a Realm Attack number in red and a City Attack in black. In between is an ally token illustration. Here is where allies are key. All players will role one dice and if their combined score beats the Realm Attack number on the Shadow Army Card, the realm is successfully defended from that wave of enemies. However, if you have an ally matching the icon on the Shadow Army Card, you get an advantage and can roll two dice. Losing in realm defence makes each player get rid of an ally or a stronghold from their city. A suboptimal state of affairs for the city defence phase which comes next. 

In defending your city, you use the rolls from your realm defence phase to see if you beat the City Attack score. Ally dice results are also used for city defences and if you have three strongholds, you add +1 to your dice results.

Have you been frolicking around the kingdom on a dragon? If so, you can get to re-roll a dice on each attack wave though you must use the second result regardless of if it's worse.

Should you city end up with no allies or strongholds following disastrous battles then you are out of the game with other players continuing realm defence without you. All cities falling means the Shadow Army has won and all is lost.

To fully defeat the Shadow Army, at least one ally or stronghold must remain in at least one city once all six Shadow Army Cards have been played through. After that cooperative bit of gameplay, things get competitive as the winner is the player with the highest total victory points.

A remaining stronghold is worth 15 points, an ally is worth five and a completed quest is also worth five with uncompleted Quest Cards instead taking five points away from your victory score.

And so the realm is defended and the beings of Dragon Reach are safe. For now.

Rules for solo play

Image by Gunpowder Studios

For those wishing to test their mettle without other's support, 7 Moons includes a Solo Rules booklet.

The game plays the same with you choosing a royal emissary and a city to represent and questing forth. However, gem tokens, a spare dragon meeple and the Moon Phase Chart in the booklet are used to simulate other players affecting the world. By drawing three of the same gems, you trigger one of the three phases. These can advance the Shadow Army, remove the closest wilderness token to you and re-roll market dice.

The Shadow Army fight is likewise similar to the multiplayer only you also roll another dice for each other city. You can set your own difficulty by choosing how many other cities are contributing to realm defence.

 

While it may seem complex at first as you open up the box and pull out more and more tokens, boards and meeples, 7 Moons is a deceptively simple game. With clear objectives and gameplay, it's a board game that you can learn and master quickly. Perfect for groups of friends and families looking for an adventure that's both collaborative and competitive, 7 Moons has an attractive design with visuals that will keep you engaged but not overwhelmed and a clarity across all the rules and card text.

Not only is there great replayability, but Gunpowder Studios also offer extra free-to-play adventures that you can find on their website.

For just £8 more than the standard version, why not get the 7 Moons: Deluxe Edition which comes with real metal coins (that drove us to distraction as you can see here), a velvet bag to store them in and 27 new wooden meeples to replace some of the cardboard tokens.