Moonshine Empire Board Game (Deluxe Edition)

Outside of the fun pieces (like trucks, atvs and airboats), the artwork on the character cards and customer cards is very charming. The game itself does take a play-through to really get your footing with the strategy and game-flow, but by the second time you'll start trying new, more advanced, things that feel very rewarding.Once you get your shine-on with other Moonshine Empire friends, the game plays smooth and is worthy of rematches that may or may not be coupled with something barrel aged to your liking. Excellent game for groups of 4 and game night hosts!

The game itself is very fancy, with a bunch of fun minis, high quality parts and printing.Gameplay wise, it's got a fair bit of variety (a sort of auction, an interesting movement mechanic, hidden goals, 'random encounter' type events in the swamp tiles). The manual isn't too complicated, but I would recommend watching a how to play video for your first time if no one has played it before.The result of the variety is sort of that you can have plans, but what you wind up with may not be ideal for what you were expecting to do and if you find that you can't complete a goal, the points it would be worth are counted against you instead, so interfering with other players can be valuable, if you can figure out a way to do it without hampering your own progress.

What a clever game! Just played for the first time and it was a blast! Easy to pickup and very well made. This game was cleverly thought out and masterfully designed. Can’t wait to show my friends!

4 adults tried to figure the game out ended up just making their own rules. Fun bit definitely not worth the 60

This game is like running your own business, its a lot of fun and a little bit edgy.

My friends and I play a lot of board games of all different types, many of them having complicated rules and various styles of play. I say that because Moonshine Empire is not the first game of this type that I’ve played before. The artwork, components, and mechanics of the game are awesome. The only minor gripe is there seems to be some deficiencies in the invluded rules that left my friends and I frustrated and making up our own “house rules”. Fortunately the manufacturer has a YT video that explains set up and gameplay and it clarifies a lot of ambiguity so I definitely recommend watching that.The game itself is truly beautiful. There are a ton of little components including plastic vehicles, wooden meeples, and high quality printed cards and game pieces. The construction and artwork of the game itself really is top notch.The idea of the game is you’re a moonshine smuggler trying to move through a swamp to transport moonshine to Pappy’s tavern. There are a bunch of different characters to choose from each one having their own unique starting abilities and special bonuses. There’s a resource management aspect to the game where you put your “shiners” or “cousins” to work to either manufacture moonshine in stills, run moonlight missions to earn money, or actually transport the moonshine to Pappy’s tavern in the center of the board.The different vehicles in the game are awesome and alll have their own unique movements. The airboat for instance can move freely across both water and land tiles but only 2 spaces at a time. The truck can transport 2 shiners (each carrying a bottle of shine) as well as additional bottles but it can only move across land so it has farther to go to get to the center of the board.The game operates in rounds and at the beginning of each round you gain an additional shiner to put to work however you choose. You then have a customer phase where you can grab customer orders to fill, an auction phase where you bid on items to purchase to make your life easier, and then a movement phase where you actually move your shiners across the board.The idea of the game is great and the overall concepts make sense but for us, there was some confusion and frustration in trying to decipher the rules and figure out some of the specific rules and movement mechanics. Definitely watch the video. There was a lot of ambiguity in the included rule book that left us scratching our heads multiple times throughout the game.For starters, we didn’t feel like there was clear direction on setting up the first round. You’re supposed to bid money during the auction phase but for the first round it didn’t say anything about starting with money so we didn’t know how to bid on auction items. There was also some ambiguity in the directions on how to produce the double x and triple x bottles of shine that you need for some orders (hint: Single X jugs left in the still until the next round become XX and then left again they become XXX).The game plays in 8 rounds but there isn't really any way of clearly tracking round progress other than the position of the gators and cops so we quickly realized we had to pay attention to where we were in the game (there are certain cards that get introduced at the half way point of the game, so it’s important).Overall, the game was fun and like most detailed board games of this nature it will get more enjoyable in future games once you figure out how the mechanics work. Definitely watch the official play through video. It helps a lot. I do wish the written rulebook more clearly defined a few things but overall it's a fun quality game . For a $59 game (at the time of this review, I felt it was a little pricey but the quality, artwork, construction, and components of the game itself are amazing. It's got some fun mechanics and it has great replayability so overall I would recommend.

This game became easier after a few times of play. If you like competitive games where you don't really know who won until the end, than this is perfect. It takes a longer time to play so make sure you have adequate time, perfect for game nights. The game looks beautiful and has many peices, alot of thought went into making it. If you like and kniw how to play wingspan, that is the closest comparison I can make to how you play. You end up needing every resource, but it can only go so far. Worth the value for money if you have the patience to learn to play. This is for true game board players. This is an adult game, as the name implies, it refers to alcohol.

Easy to learn game that's actually a lot of fun. Somewhat complex instructions but my game group felt they explained the game clearly.