The past couple of years have seen an explosion of small-box trick-taking games that each bring their own twist to the category. Scout has multi-numbered cards. Ruins has players building better cards. The Crew is cooperative, but without verbal communication. Seers Catalog lets players break the normal rules. Lone Wolves and Katmai actually work at the 2-player count. Cat in the Box makes players predict their winning trick-count and the cards have no suit. I could go on.
Now there’s Lunar Skyline, a new trick-taking game with a few new tricks of its own. Suitable for 2-6 players and lasting 15-30 minutes, Lunar Skyline includes trick-winning predictions, dual-suited cards, and a mechanism to win tricks even when you lose. Did I mention it also works at the 2-player count? Those are some lofty design elements for sure, but are they sufficient to allow Lunar Skyline to rise above the trick-taking pack?
Gameplay Overview:
Lunar Skyline contains six unique suits or symbols that are grouped in various pairs of two across its various cards. There are also some single-suited Ace cards. The game is played over three rounds, and at the beginning of each round, players must secretly select one of the cards from their hand to use as a predictive bid of how many tricks they will win that round. Choose carefully, because the reward for meeting your bid is getting to select a goal card to score; if you fail to meet your bid, you will miss out on these points. However, if you win more than your bid, you’ll lose points for those extra wins.
The tricks themselves are fairly straightforward: somebody leads with a single card, and then moving around the table just once (or twice for two players), everyone must follow with a single card that contains at least one symbol of those present on the leading card, assuming they have such a card. The highest numerical card wins the trick. The player winning the trick claims the entire stack of cards in the trick and selects one to be on top; the symbols on that top card will be eligible for scoring.
When following, if you truly do not possess any cards with a single matching symbol to the lead card, you may select one of your cards to smuggle away to your scoring/resource area; this smuggled card counts as a won trick, and its symbols will count towards scoring, even if somebody else wins the main trick.
Once players have depleted their hands, you proceed to scoring, which includes:
- -2 points for every won trick above your predicted bid (including smuggled cards). You must also discard tricks equal to your overage
- +1 point for every symbol on smuggled cards or top cards of your winning tricks that match symbols on your opening bid
- Points based on the goal card you earned for meeting your bid
After three rounds, the highest score wins.
Game Experience:
Lunar Skylines includes several trick-taking elements that encourage players to plan differently. First, there’s the fact that winning tricks does not beget points automatically; rather, you only score if there are symbols in the trick that match those on your bid card. This means you’ll want to try harder to win tricks containing cards with matching symbols, and conversely, when you know you can’t win a trick, you can purposely play a card that doesn’t contain symbols your opponent needs.
The game accommodates 2-6 players, which is a rare range, and it really does work—so much as the game works—at all player counts. Randomness is a bit greater at the higher player counts, but it’s a relatively light and snappy game, so that’s fine. It may actually be best at 2 players where 2 cards are played per round, and there’s more opportunity to learn what symbols your opponent has and strategize around that.
The predictive bidding element is not completely novel, but it works well here in that it creates a tension; you’ll want to win at least a certain number of tricks to score matching symbols and also obtain a goal card, but you need to be careful not to go over your bid, or you can lose a decent chunk of points.
Smuggling cards when you cannot match the lead symbols is a novel idea, and it gives the smuggling player some level of flexibility regarding which card to score. There is a strategy of purposefully eliminating specific symbols via smuggling and regular trick participation, so you can be eligible to win more tricks in the future via more smuggling, but this is where the game starts tripping over its own dual-suited mechanism.
With double-suited cards, any given player has a lot of suits in their hand at any given time, which means even if they hope to win a trick via smuggling, it’s often challenging to do so because something in their hand is likely to match. Smuggling doesn’t usually tend to happen very frequently at all until a round is almost over and players have 3 or fewer cards remaining.
The randomness of the smuggling mechanism means the game is overly dependent on having a strong starting hand. Scores will generally be higher if you win more tricks, and it’s simply easier to do that if you start with a lot of high cards or a homogenously suited hand to allow for more smuggling. In this sense, Lunar Skyline can’t compete with Lone Wolves, a fantastic 2-player-only trick-taking game where the consolation prize for losing tricks can actually be good enough to win the game and thus becomes a legitimate part of the strategy. As it stands, Lunar Skyline feels like it is often driven more by luck than clever decision-making. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not fun, but for players desiring a more thinky experience, there are better options out there.
Final Thoughts:
Lunar Skyline is an ambitious, small-box trick-taking design that combines several interesting features, including dual-suited cards, predictive bidding, and the ability to smuggle away losing cards that count as wins. The predictive bidding adds a nice tension, and the reliance on matching symbols on your bids for scoring introduces a new strategic layer.
Unfortunately, the dual-suited nature of the cards gets in the way of effective smuggling, making this key mechanic more random than strategic. The rules do work well at the full playercount range of 2-6, which makes the game a conveniently flexible filler if you don’t mind a healthy dose of luck.
Final Score: 2.5 stars—a trick-taking card game with several unique elements, only some of which shine
Hits:
• Fantastic card quality
• Flexible player range (2-6)
• Bidding adds fun tension
Misses:
• Feels more lucky than strategic
• Two-suited cards work against the smuggling mechanism
