I got Stoned – A Moonstone Tournament Report

I was privileged to attend my first ever tournament this past weekend for the whimsical fantasy game of Moonstone.

This report is my own opinion and will certainly be biased in my favour.

I have split the report into a few sections, so it is easier to skip to parts you might want to read or read it all at your leisure.

This was my first ever tournament experience, so I may express somethings that are obvious to some, but hopefully this will also help expose Moonstone to others, but also help those also wondering whether a tournament would be of interest but aren’t sure, like me, if they would enjoy it.

A game by Goblin King Games set in the Fantasy world of Tauber.

Official description:
Moonstone is a tabletop skirmish game for 2-4 players set in a grimm fairytale world. It uses unique Poker-like mechanics; players must read their opponents intentions well and bluff their way to victory.

The game is played over 4 turns with the aim to be holding the more moonstones than your opponent.
You will typically play with 5 or 6 models per side, making this a perfect sized skirmish game, played out on 3’ x 3’ tables.
All the models in the game are named and the sculpts are absolutely jam packed with detail and character, such as Baron Von Fancyhat, Boom Boom McBoom and Doug the Flatulent (yes he can fart to do damage!)

There are two main factions within the game, The Commonwealth and The Dominion. Within the main factions are sub races, such as goblins and faeries, humans and gnomes.

The rules are very straightforward and quick to learn, but the depth come from the unique abilities that the characters have and how the interactions and activation order changes how you play.

Races do have a style of play distinct to each one, yet with the wide range of characters within each race there is subtle variety even if you only play human or goblin.

Alongside the superb character of the game, making each game feel like you are seeing a story play out in front of you, there are unique card-based mechanics for range and melee attacks.

The rules are available to download here, as well as paper doll downloads to try the game, which I highly recommend.

The game was super successful on Kickstarter and is also now available in retail, at time of writing, from firestorm games.

Once I had decided to break my Tournament cherry the Tournament rules were set out well in advance to assist in what to expect and also how the format would be and what restrictions would be in place for Troupe choice.

The Tournament was going to be timed rounds, with each round being an hour and a half, with 3 rounds in total.

We would be using 5 moonstones in the game with a Troupe size of a fixed 5 models, so using the same 5 models for the entire tournament.

An efficient Swiss system

A swiss pairing system was going to be used. I did not know what this was, so had to read up on it. This method is a popular format for the big Fantasy Flight Games tournaments, basically it works to match people up based on the points scored.

Games would be scored as 2 Victory Points (VP) for a Victory, 1 VP for a draw, with any ties on points broken by the most moonstones claimed.

So round one, all players are randomly paired, then under normal Swiss system, the next round you would expect to play an opponent with a similar result to you in round one, with round 3 being the top two playing to claim overall victory.

This means that if you happen to get drawn against an experienced gamer in round one and lost, you would probably play someone who also lost in round one in round two. This means that you get a kind of balance after round two, and it meant it felt that even losing round one, you still had chance to win the tournament.

In larger tournaments (we had 6 players), they introduce a Cut and Strength of Schedule also can be used – but I’ve not read on how Strength works and seems very complex, but aims to balance out your losses are not quite as bad if you lost against someone who won all there games.

As an example:

6 players.

Round 1 – random pairings

Player A vs Player B

Player C vs Player D

Player E vs Player F

Round 1 results

Player A 3 – 2 Player B (Player A Victory, holding 3 moonstones  to player B’s 2)

Player C 4 – 1 Player D (Player C Victory, holding 4 moonstones to player D’s 1)

Player E 3 – 1 Player F (Player E Victory, holding 3 moonstones to player F’s 1)

Round 1 Table

So under the rules, the table is sorted by VP’s first and then moonstones held, where moonstones were tied, the number of moonstones the opponent held factors in, this would be different based on the game and tournament organiser (TO).

So Round two matches are then basically done top down from the table. So based on these round one results round two would be:

Player C vs Player E

Player A vs Player B

Player F vs Player D

Round two results in:

Player C 3 – 0 Player E (Player C victory)

Player A 3 – 2 Player B (Player A victory)

Player F 3—2 Player D (Player F victory)

Round two table would then be:

As this was a three round tournament, this meant the final round would decide the final standings for the entire tournament.

Again the pairings are juts taken top down, but using the swiss system, you can see that the strongest players end up at the top, with both C and A winning both their games, so then will play each other, with whoever winning having won all three games and claiming first place.

Hopefully this helps illustrate the Swiss system a bit more easily.

So I had signed up for a Tournament! How on earth do you prepare for this! The word Tournament makes it sound super serious, super competitive, and I am neither of those things, so I was very nervous, as I expect most people are when trying out a new thing.

But the first thing I concentrated on was the two main things, painting models and deciding on the models I was going to take.

Now I am not a great painter, I struggle for time due to family life, and I don’t feel like I paint enough to practice and improve. The best thing I ever did though was to get it straight in my mind that what I see on the internet is something I should aim for, but should not be used as a critique against my own work. Seeing Angel Jiraldez work being utterly amazing and then thinking that I should be producing similar quality is daft – but that is the pressure of social media and it is the bane of our generation to be the first to understand how we manage our overexposure to information.

I have got to a point in my hobby that I paint for me and as long as I am happy with the result then I have achieved. Yes I can improve and yes I want to improve, but for many years the paralysis of not being great meant I didn’t even try.

Moonstone sculpts are amazing for me, they are so detailed and full of character that you can get really good results, and I am happy with all the models I have painted so far from this range.

For me this was so tough. There is a lot of synergy in models, and it is very easy to come up with pairings in moonstone, so having the Tournament limit the Troupe size to 5 was such a headache, but was a highlight for me as well. It meant trying to decide on synergy or go for some models that can standalone but lose the overall synergy.

My faction was chosen on the basis that I had a painted Baron Von Fancyhat from an earlier kickstarter, so one Commonwealth human painted, by starting with the Baron meant I only needed to find time to paint 4 more models – faction choice decided lol.

My missus helped me out with a couple of test games to help me learn the mechanics of the game and to get a feel for the nuances of the interactions and abilities in game. It is far too easy to think an ability is over or underpowered when you read them, it isn’t until you play a game and see them in action that you can appreciate the subtle way they affect gameplay.

In the end it also came down to the characters and I wanted to have fun, so rather than go super meta and be so hung up on the most perfect of choices, I went for fun and narrative, with a bit of tactics in the back of my head lol.

In the end my Troupe choice was:

#1 : Baron Von Fancyhat – tank role, who can standalone without buffs and amazing in melee to defend moonstones and draw focus from the opponent, plus his hat his amazingly fancy.

#2: Fritz – tank, super damager output, a killing machine in melee.

#3: Quack – the human wizard healer, having two standalone tanks, Fritz especially has no defence, so to keep them alive I needed a healer, I went with Quack the wizard doctor over Eric the squire, as Quack has an offensive side that I though would get overlooked, he can throw blinding powder to reduce melee stats on the opponent, Quack blinding and then Fritz or the Baron to melee afterwards is nearly always a one turn kill.

#4: Flintlock – Long range sniper, I had a lot of melee focus, so wanted a ranged threat.

#5 Graddock – He was my only gnome, and took as he can remove abilities from people without needing to test, wanted a general support in case I came up against ability heavy teams to try and limit their tricks to allow quack and the melee guys to do their thing.

I like most people own all the things, yet never play the things. I loathe myself for buying things and leaving them unused, but then something new and shiny appears and it joins the ever growing loft collection.

That being said, I found myself in a wonderful side effect of signing up for a tournament. I needed to practice the game. I didn’t want to turn up to a TOURNAMENT with in my head professional gamers and have to ask rules, not really have a clue about the game. So I set my self the goal of playing some practice games, so I could basically bluff that it looked like I knew what I was doing lol.

I would recommend this to everyone, obvious I guess, but as a very casual player, I don’t go into things to focus on winning only, I want to win of course, but I want to have fun more.

As a testament to the Character of Moonstone, my wife (an avid non-gamer) agreed to help play a few games with me. She took time to look at the models, goblins straight away, the models drew her in, she loves them. Yes she didn’t get some of the rules and why/when you would do certain actions or activation order, but every game we played we had a laugh, whatever the outcome (me winning of course) the focus for her was never the outcome, she would easily forget that she had lost, and only remember the story that evolved. She still reminds me of the game where Seasick Stu kept taking all the Barons energy so he could only stand and watch as Doug the Flatulent walked up and farted at the Baron, killing him dead. She might have lost the game, but she farted someone to death.

So yeah, practice of course is a must.

To help with my nerves of meeting new people (I am really shy) and playing a game against people, who in my head would be Moonstone experts, I recruited a mate to come with me. Luckily I had insisted he got a demo of Moonstone in at Salute earlier in the year, he did, he bought the game straight way from the limited stock at Salute. So was more than happy to Tournament with me.

We played a few games against each other the day before the Tournament, to help us both with the mechanics of the game and feel at least happy we both kind of knew the basics.

So yeah, practice if you can, try to practice against different people, it will help learn the basics, if you are new to a game, or even new to a tournament game. It surprised me how much extra pressure I mentally put on myself, just because it was a Tournament, and we are conditioned to know a tournament has a winner and all the rest are losers.

Spoiler- there were no losers at this tournament, every person and every game was a pleasure to spend time with and enjoy getting Moonstoned.

We had the absolute pleasure of being hosted by Firestorm games in Cardiff for this tournament. I had purchased stuff from firestorm online, but never been to the physical location, or even Cardiff for that matter.

The venue is amazing and makes me wish I had something like that near where I live.

A well stocked shop for buying all the things, a nice little food canteen which did nice burger, a bar with Tiny Rebel on draft!!!! You all need to try the marshmallow porter!

Soft drinks and coffee vending machines all meant they are well geared up to spend a full day gaming and you felt really well looked after.

There was also the amazing space of 50+ gaming tables, room for 100+ people tournaments! Wow!

We have a couple of tables for the tournament, and also really good to see the retail boxes of moonstone on the shelves in the shop too.

There was ample space, well-lit and airy. The venue was about a third full all day with various games being played, from X-wing, Moonstone, D&D adventures happening.

If you are near to Cardiff, you MUST go here. Was amazing.

I have had the pleasure of going to a Beastsofwar bootcamp for Wolsung, and the one thing that made sure Wolsung remains such a special game to me, was the designer being there. Being able to put a face to the name, chatting about the game, seeing the passion for their game, sharing in the enjoyment of being able to play their game, letting them see people enjoying their game was immense. It also meant I will always buy all the Wolsung I can get, I want to support the designer as he is a friend and no longer just a face.

 Upon getting to the venue we found the Moonstone space and met the Goblin King Games crew. Super excited to meet them and after the pleasantries were done, they were very attentive to make sure we understood what was going to happen in the tournament and where we needed to be and made sure everyone was happy.

It was great to chat and see the passion the team have for the game and the development and future of the project. It creates a very personal connection to the game, which is not a bad thing.

Like most skirmish games, terrain plays a huge part in dictating the gameplay but also adding extra narrative and immersion into each game.

The team of Tom and Richi had done a fab job in setting up tables ready for us to play on, with a super board reserved just for the top table.

Not only was there great boards to play on, they had themed each one to a place in the Moonstone world, and each one offered a very unique setup, and led us to have to play differently each game.

This Board was configured to show a typical town within the world (they did have the specific town name but I forgot to make any notes)

I would say this played the most straightforward out of the boards, cover along the flanks with the main square being open, so a good mix of advantage for melee and ranged types.

This board did not have any elevated positions, so ranged characters had to rely on good cover and didn’t get any extra distance on their range.

The next board was more of a richer province town with a good few crazy looking buildings.

This also was configured with a couple of covered flanks and a town square, but this time on one edge was a tower to deploy ranged shooters onto.

When elevated a range attack reduces cover by one level but also gains an additional 2″ on the range of the attack.

This board was very unique, lots of chance to block line of sight and this board really made you think about movement and positioning. Out of all of the boards, this one really made you think about activation orders of both sides.

The last of the boards used in the rounds was configured with ruins around the edge, offering flanking and elevation too.

A central square too (as you drop moonstones in the middle and see where they land) with a few trees to offer some cover from turn one elevated sniper shots.