I first played this game designed by Franz Coudrec and illustrated beautifully by Sylvain Aublin at EGX where I was asked to demonstrate it.

And I loved it so much I walked ground to Firestorm Cards and bought it then and there.

The Jist

The grand annual Moon-Bots tournament sees the galaxy’s most gifted scientists gathering on the moon to build robots to fight one another, upgrading them as they go.

The last robot standing wins the game and you start off with a basic robot which has one attack, and one dice.

The first phase of the game is a card drafting phase in which you salvage parts to make your robot better, these components costing you either 2 energy, 1 energy or being free. This is important and energy is also your robots life, some particularly good components like re-rolls and extra dice cost you an additional energy.

The market place is a grid of six cards in two rows, with the cost rising depending on how high in the grid it is, if a card below another one is picked, the cards above it move down and get cheaper.

There are certain cards which you have no idea what they do, these are never allowed to be feee so if they drop onto the lowest level of the grid they disappear, but these can be really good, like allowing you to scour through the deck to find an upgrade you want for free, or indeed some of them cause you problems.

The parts you salvage are added to your robot, and the art matches up with the robot on the player boards, and enhances your combat ability. Some upgrades, such as extra dice or defences go to the top and side of your player board.

The second phase is the role of your dice, and this is very much like Machi Koro in that your rolls determine what actions you take. Initially the robot will either punch on a roll of 1 or fire a missile on a roll of 6, but as you add more dice you get more possible things you can do, such as a leg which does a rocket attack on a 2, 3 or 4.

You can then attack the player on your right, or your left only, or split the attacks between them and damage their energy levels, once one of the players next to you is eliminated you can then attack the player next to them as if they were next to you.

Components

The box gives you a bunch of upgrade cards, four dice in each player colour, four energy markers and four player boards.

The cards are on a fairly average card stock, nowt to write home about but they do the job well, the player boards are double layers so that the upgrades slot in and fit rather nicely where they should be, and the artwork all matches up perfectly.

The dice are nice and chunky and use Arabic numerals instead of pips, which actually fits the game rather well art wise.

Look

I love the artwork and that drew me in fairly early on, it’s cute and I knew right away that would get Megan and Lindsay to want to play it.

What’s Good

I really enjoy the game and it can be played in around 15-30 minutes, and gives you a good game experience whilst not taking too long.

Lindsay picked it up in a couple of terms without needing to read too much of the instructions, and she did rather well.

Simple, yet lots of fun.

What’s Bad

It’s easy for two players to hang up on the player between them to eliminate them from the game early on, so here is hoping your group is fair and nice.

The instructions aren’t the best however, they just don’t feel the best written.

Final Score

This game is cute, it has a similar vibe to King of Tokyo and a lot of Machi Koro, it’s a very enjoyable little game.

Have to give this 7 out of 10.


I will not lie I have looked at other reviews to get an idea of how to write this, I am no pro, but there is a possibility that I may have been influenced by reading them and some stuff may have filtered through to this review.

If you do spot anything that could be seen as heavily influenced by what someone else has said, let me know and I will be sure to credit and link them.

Game Details
NameMoon-Bots (2019)
ComplexityLight [1.43]
BGG Rank [User Rating]10349 [6.48]
Player Count2-4
Designer(s)Franz Couderc
Artists(s)Sylvain Aublin
Publisher(s)Blue Orange (EU)
Mechanism(s)Auction: Dutch, Open Drafting and Player Elimination