New Moon is a small expansion for lui-meme's werewolf game,
The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow. It's distributed in the US by Asmodee Editions.
The Components
New Moon comes in a small, square box, identical to the original Werewolves of Millers Hollow box. You probably won't need the new box once you get the game, as you can fit everything into the original.
Rulebook: This is listed first because it's really the heart of the supplement. You get a booklet describing nine new ways to play The Werewolves of Millers Hollow, as well as some rules for new characters.
New Characters: These are rather disappointingly distributed as five stickers which you'll affix to five of the villager cards from the original game. They feature the same attractive, simple art as found on the original cards, but a lot smaller.
Event Cards: A set of playing cards each of which features an individual event to shake up the game a little. They're a somewhat odd contrast to the rest of the game, because everything else features beautiful artwork with no text, while this is all text with just about no artwork.
There's nothing wrong with the components in the new set per se but they don't live up to the very stylistic original. However, the price is good, at just $12 for this expansion. I've overall given it an average rating of "3" out of "5" for Style.
The Gameplay
New Moon comes with new characters and new ways to play the game.
New Characters: There are five new characters, each of which is a villager with some special rules:
- The Village Idiot: Can't be killed by the village vote, but once he's revealed, can't vote either.
- The Elder: Must be devoured by the werewolves twice to die.
- The Scapegoat: Eliminated if the village vote ends in a tie, but can then designate which villagers vote the next day.
- The Defender: Can protect a player for the duration of the night.
- The Piper: Charms players and eventually wins if he charms everyone.
Some nice attention has been given to how each new character interacts with all the old ones.
New Rules: The rulebook contains nine variants which can be used to change up your werewolf game:
- Moonlight: The game is played outside by candlelight.
- Community of Hamlets: Multiple games are played simultaneously, with villagers have the option to move among villages.
- "In Any Case, It Surely Isn't Him!": Voting is changed to a simple pick 'em; the last player not selected is eliminated.
- The Writing's On the Wall: Before nightfall, villagers can write anonymous notes.
- Double "You": Players all have visible village roles and hidden alignments of village or werewolf.
- Harvest Festival at Millers Hollow: Everyone's drunk: werewolves can only devour adjacent players, while all other powers are impacted in various ways.
- The Black Death: A secret variant that only the moderator gets to know about.
- Lycanthropic Fascination: The werewolves mesmerize their victims rather than killing them.
- New Moon: The event deck is used, with a new event coming out each morning.
New Cards: The event cards allow for a variety of one-time and permanent effects. A few examples: "Backfire" makes an eaten simple villager turn into a werewolf, or else kills a werewolf is someone else is selected. "Influences" makes the next vote happen in order. "Flood" temporarily segregates men and women."Touch of Death" forces werewolves to touch a victim to kill them. There are 36 cards total.
Relationships to Other Games
New Moon is a supplement for The Werewolves of Millers Hollow, which is itself a variant of the public domain werewolf/mafia game. The rule variants in New Moon could probably be used with most other werewolf games.
The Game Design
New Moon offers a lot of nice variants to The Werewolves of Millers Hollow. There's little that changes the game in a major way, though "Lycanthropic Fascination" keeps as many players from being eliminated from the game and "Community of Hamlet" offers a really cool way to have a much, much larger game with many more players.
Overall, if you only play The Werewolves of Millers Hollow once in a while, you won't need this supplement, but if you play it with any regularity, it'll be invaluable, as it offers thoughtful and (mostly) well-considered variants that will change up your game and keep it from being the same 'ole, same 'ole. I've given it an average rating of "3" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
New Moon offers a large set of variants for your Werewolf game, which will be of interest to anyone who regularly plays the game.
Review Summary