Astronauts, Cosmonauts, and a Rover for Lunar

                                         

Like many children of the 1970s, I was obsessed with space and the Space Race. Armstrong landed on the Moon only about two years before I was born and even in the late '70s the competition between the Soviets and the Americans for space superiority was a matter of the very recent past. And with all the secrecy surrounding the former Soviet Union, speculation about what happened in their space program was rampant. So it was almost inevitable that I'd be interested in the Lunar miniatures game from Black Site Studios.

Lunar is basically a miniatures game where astronauts and cosmonauts (and taikonauts if you're so inclined) fight it out on the Moon. The alt-history background diverges from our own in that the Soviets were first to land a man on the Moon, and NASA was not to be deterred from continuing the space race onto the very lunar surface. You can see how that would go. 

The basic game was reissued and updated in 2023 and the two-player box includes 6 resin models (three NASA astronauts and three Soviet cosmonauts), the rulebook, cards and tokens, special dice, and a small decal sheet. I also picked up some more models (the "Heroes and Icons Vol. 1" set) that includes four more figures and a cool unmanned rover. My set had unit cards for the four humans but not for the rover - I've emailed Black Site about that. (And yes, the astronaut above is wielding a pistol and meat cleaver) 

The models are 40mm-ish in scale and come with 32mm bases. I was excited about the decals because I wasn't jazzed about painting US and Soviet flags on the models' arms, but it turns out the decals are much too big to use for that anyway, so I hand-painted them to mixed results. 

Black Site offers all kinds of stuff for the game including a mat (24"x24" is the play surface) and STLs of craters and Moon-surface stuff like oxy tanks and gantries, I'm having Challenger Byron print those for me. But it occurred to me that what you really need for LOS-blocking are just big rocks and Canadian Tire came to the rescue with a bag of lava rocks for the barbecue - $7. I might paint them but they don't look bad as is. I got my mat from Mats by Mars because they make good mats and it was cheap as chips.

The game rules seem pretty cool and it looks like games play very fast. You only have 3-5 models per side and combat in a vacuum can be... dangerous. The game simulates low-G combat with lots of knockbacks (basically many of the weapons are non-lethal "kinetic" ones rather than penetrators, but when you get knocked back you fall prone and the pointy rocks on the Moon's surface are dangerous too). Looking forward to trying the game out soon. 

Cheers,

Dallas, listening to the lost cosmonauts recorded at Torre Bert :-)