Life & Death Struggle is the new Two Player Starter Set for Moonstone, the fantasy skirmish game with a whimsical twist! Pitting Fauns against the spooky spirits of the Shades of Moonreach, the box contains everything you need to get started with the awesome UK Games Expo Best Miniatures Rules winning skirmish game! But what comes in the box and how do the miniatures stack up against other miniatures ranges? In this full unboxing we’ll be checking out the contents, having a chat about how the game plays and building and painting up all the miniatures!

Massive thanks to Goblin King Games for sending us over a free review copy to check out. If you would like to support the site then why not get your Moonstone goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing of Life & Death Struggle, which you can see just below or over on YouTube.

So let’s head to the fantasy realm of Tauber as we check out the brand new 2 player starter set for Moonstone!

Moonstone – Life & Death Struggle Unboxing and Review

I’ve always been a big fan of skirmish games, but as I get older it seems that I tend to gravitate to them more often. We’re big fans of games such as Necromunda and Warcry, and have dabbled with Skirmish systems from other companies such as Fallout Factions, but there’s one game that has always turned my head at the UK Games Expo.

Moonstone is a little bit different than some other games you may have seen. Firstly, it’s a fantasy game with lots of whimsy and models based on fairy tales – alongside your usual humans and goblins you’re also got fairies, and gnomes and fauns! And the models are gorgeous, dripping with character and charm – Start digging into the website and you’ll soon want to pick up a collection just to paint up for fun!

Each player only has 3-6 models, and battles take place over a small 3×3 battlefield. At the start of the game a number of 4 sided dice are dropped onto the battlefield, and these represent the valuable chunks of Moonstone that the troupes (player warbands) are fighting over, with the number on the D4 representing how deep it is buried.

Rather than combats and abilities being calculated using dice rolls, Moonstone uniquely uses two decks of cards to work out what happens in these encounters. Combat works much like rock, paper, scissors, with players trying to outwit each other by picking the action that works best against the action they think the other player is going to draw. So for example if you are up against a character that deals a lot of damage with a Rising Attack, and play your Low Guard to stop any damage and ready yourself for a follow up attack, but maybe your opponent just wants you to think they are going to play a Rising Attack to try and draw your card out of your hand early.

This is a really clever system that make it as much a game of bluffing and deduction as it is a game of reading the other players faces rather than being based solely on dice rolls like some other games.

Abilities take this a step further with a mechanic that involves you playing cards face down and saying what the result is in order to activate your abilities. Now, the twist here is that you can just lie, and if the opponent accepts this then you get to use the ability even if the card you played was actually rubbish. If they challenge you, you reveal the card and if you are lying then they get to pick the card that is played, which may have negative effects on you. However, they can’t just accuse all the time, as if you are telling the truth then you get to use the action twice!

This keeps games fun and exciting with lots of moments for shenanigans and counter play, and this also makes this a brilliant game to play over and again with the same people as you can start to really catch them out by acting out of character.

We’ll be digging into the full rules for Moonstone in another article, but in this post we’re going to crack open Life & Death Struggle and chat about what you get and if this makes a good jumping in point for people looking to get into Moonstone.

We’ll get the miniatures shortly, but this box really does have everything that you need to play the game. First up we have a punch card sheet with energy tokens and a range ruler which covers the distances covered in order to play with the included minis.

You also get a full deck of cards – this includes the combat and arcane decks, and you’ll only need one deck for two players to play together. Now if this box is getting split between two people who will be playing with other people rather than just against each other, then you might want to pick up a second deck. But if you are looking to get this just to play with the two of you then you are fabulously fine just sticking to the one deck!

A slim rulebook is also included with the core rules. Goblin King do sell a larger expanded book, which you’ll probably going to want to pick up if you get into the game, but for learning to play the one in the box has everything you need and will get you up to speed on how to play the game in no time.

You also get character cards for every single miniature. This is something that Goblin King Games do with each Moonstone box – there’s no rules for models tucked away in other books, everything that you need to play the models that you buy is included on the card that comes with the model. What’s more, the cards also have a health track on them which is used to see how much damage they have taken and what energy they generate each turn (I would maybe recommend picking up a set of card sleeves so that you can use dry wipe markers directly on the sleeve rather than the card, but that’s a minor quibble)

You also get card tokens to represent the Pschopomps that are summoned by the Shades side of the box – these can later be upgraded with miniatures with the Charge of the Fright Brigade box, and Goblin King Games also sent us that set too, which looks really fun to paint up!

The start of the show for Life & Death Struggle is of course the miniatures, and the ones included here are absolutely brilliant! We get two Troupes, the Fauns and the Shades, each with their own style

These are resin models and each side is made up of the contents of two of the separately available Moonstone boxes. For the Fauns we get the contents of the Hunting Horns box and the Jackalope. This is the more whimsical side of the box and is very much based on fairy-tales of fauns and satyrs and various woodland mythical creatures. Oh, and a giant killer bunny!

When putting together the box I was most excited about doing the Shades, but when I actually started painting the models I absolutely fell in love with the Fauns! Across the 4 models you’ve got lots of different textures and styles with lots of fun stuff to paint from the cheery Mr Toodles and his flute to the very dynamic Jayda, the beastman looking Hoff or the manic gaze of the Jackalope itself!

While I can see benefits to painting each of these with their own distinct style, I actually decided to try and tie them together with a limited colour palate so that they would have an identity as a troupe on the battlefield. This way as my collection grows I’ll be able to see visually which faction the models sit in – though this will get harder with duel allegiances. All models in the Moonstone range fall into one of 4 factions, but some (such as these in the Fauns) actually can be taken by two different factions.

List building in Moonstone is really easy, there’s no points costs, you simply take 6 models you like the look of, leaving you lots of scope here for just picking up another box to add to your collection.

The other half of the box are the Shades, these are spooky ghostly undead types, and are a massive amount of fun to paint, and like with the Fauns you get the equivilent of 2 boxes worth here in the Life & Death struggle box. For the Shades you get the contents of the Never Ending Knights and the Angerboda Frost Giant boxes. These are newer models in the range and are just as full of personality and humour as the Fawns are. Weird giant Donkey man? Skeletal crossbow guard with a little psychopomp friend or a massive frost giant, there’s lots to love here! These are not the vanilla undead you see in other games, and I love that they all have their own personality and vibes to them!

Like with the Fauns you can pretty much pick up any other Shade box to pad these out to a full 6 man Troupe, and there’s lots of potential for picking and choosing as you mix in more models as the collection grows.

If you’re a painter you’ll thoroughly enjoy working on these, without the dangers of burn out that you get when you’re trying to batch paint an entire unit. I can see myself picking up more Moonstone models just to paint up as something a little different between projects.

So how does Life & Death Struggle work as a two player starter set? Well the price point is reasonable here with an RRP of £80 (Or £76 over on Element Games) with just the miniatures alone costing £94 in total if you got them outside of this set, add in the card deck (RRP £12), the accessories and rulebook and you’re getting a decent saving on the components. What’s really nice here is that the models are all different from the previous starter set, and if you already have this then there’s even potential for mixing and matching across them to make some different troupes too!

For players looking to have a full 6 character Troupe you’ll probably going to want to pick up another 3 character pack for each faction, but the game works just as well with 4 models each, and once you have learned how to play and what your playstyle is you can easily then pick up models you think that look cool and rotate them in. With all the stat cards being on the product pages on the Moonstone website you can even check out exactly what each character does before you buy them, which goes a long way to making this as open and accessible as possible.

Moonstone has gorgeous models and brilliant gameplay, and if you’re looking to pick up something that is a little different to a lot of games that are currently out there then I’d certainly give Life & Death Struggle a good look! While it is a tad more expensive than the previous set (Dusk till Dawn), I personally think the models in the new box are a big step up and are worth every penny!

We’re going to be doing more Moonstone coverage right here very soon, starting with a deep dive into the core rules – we’re also planning on doing some Moonstone battle reports, so stay tuned!

Goblin King games provided Sprues & Brews with free review copies

Published by Matt Crowther

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