Join us at Pandemonium for a special, 3-hour, learn-to-play demo session, featuring Moonrakers! You’re especially welcome if you’ve never before played hobby board games (and are curious about where to start). You’re also welcome to attend if you’ve played Moonrakers before, as we’ll have some other options to explore in addition to the base game!

Moonrakers (1-5 players), foremost, is about cooperation. In this game, you are a ship captain in a federation of other spacefarers, looking to gain renown by completing contracts throughout the galaxy. By yourself, you won’t be strong enough to face the dangers of the work, so you’ll need to negotiate with other players – for points, for money – to finish what you start.

As you get more prestige – and, importantly, money – you’ll be able to outfit your ship and crew to match your playstyle and/or the needs of the table (being an indispensable ally is just as useful as raw, independent power). That’s because, mechanistically, Moonrakers is a deck-building game, where although you and everyone else start with the same powers, over time, you get to choose your own way to survive in space. Each turn is a puzzle of optimizing your card play with your (temporary) allies, making this game highly interactive but also somewhat cerebral. It’s a Pandemonium staff favorite for a reason!

This event is called “Moonrakers +” because we’ll also have some of the expansions to demo as well. And although we’ll likely defer to whatever folks want to play, these are the ones we’ll have available:

• Overlord: advanced action cards, new contracts, and a new metacurrency

• Nomad: travel to claim contracts better suited to your build; discover a new region

• Binding Ties: enhances the negotiation mechanism of the game

• Dark Matter: adds a slightly more intuitive meta currency to certain cards

So if an evening of tense, sci-fi negotiations sounds like fun to you, or if you just want to spend time with others who want to play, come on out! And if you prefer other games, stay tuned to the Events Calendar for future announcements!