As we head towards the New Moon this weekend, we’re taking a look at 13 Moons from Mira Blackman. This celestial Rummy-inspired trek through the Moon’s phases is not only a race to 354 points (the number of days in a lunar year) but also brings players together in a unique way. In addition to having educational elements regarding the Moon and the science thereof, 13 Moons provides talking points for group meditation based on the current Moon phase. This stunning, cozy card-matching game is for 2-4 players and, as of the time of this review, has a crowdfunding campaign live on Kickstarter.com. We were happy to provide a review of this project and help get the word out to our readers.

In addition to the rulebook, if you’ve never played Rummy before, the rules can be easily found using your favorite search engine. Players begin with a hand of 8 cards and take turns trying to collect points by creating melds comprised of sets of Moon phases or special lunar events. Each player begins their turn drawing a card either from the communal draw deck or the discard pool. If they have created a meld (3-4 sequential Moon phase cards or 3-4 matching lunar event cards) or can add on to another player’s event meld, they play them face up in their respective play area. Players must discard a card at the end of their turn. What sets 13 Moons apart from traditional Rummy is the fact that the Moon card that corresponds to the actual phase of the Moon at the time of play provides extra points for that game. This ensures that players will have fresh talking and meditation points and new strategies nearly every time they play. While it is true that the game aspect of 13 Moons is nothing new by any means, it does put its own flavor and twist on the game. However, there are so many versions of Rummy that this is not what originally drew our attention to 13 Moons. Though players could ignore the second part of this game’s intention and purely have a go at the Rummy aspect, we found the thought points to be great conversation starters among friends.

Mira Blackman not only designed 13 Moons but did all of the art and illustration work herself! These stunning, foil-backed, tarot-sized cards are sure to catch the eye of anyone who takes a look inside the box – it certainly caught ours! Each Phase and Event card depicts a different Moon phase based on its numerical value. To coincide with these, there is a separate deck of Daily Moon cards, which have educational information as well as any metaphysical information or talking points listed on them. In a standard deck of playing cards you would normally find face cards, and sometimes other cards displaying art thematic to that deck, no card in 13 Moons is given artistic precedence over another, as all share equally depicted phases of the moon on their face. The standard version of the game comes in a sturdy box with a magnetic closure to keep all of the cards contained and secure. The deluxe edition, however, offers a wooden box and a stand for the Daily Moon card to help elevate the player experience.

In addition to the art and metaphysical aspects of 13 Moons, we love that this game is such a simple and cozy one to play with friends. Since it is based on the classic game of Rummy, it is easy to sit down at the table and carry on these deep conversations without having to worry about analysis paralysis, trying to form deep strategies, or other game-related distractions that would normally keep human interaction to a minimum. Though it could be said that one could use any deck of cards to play Rummy, depending on which set of rules you choose, this project is more than that. It takes a simple art style, deals it out on tarot-sized cards, and promotes thought and discussion points to address during a session. Our first point of criticism was that we would liked to have seen a pair of Joker equivalent cards to allow for other Rummy variant games to be played. The second is that the Daily Moon cards do not themselves have numbers on them to indicate the cards they affect during play, which made playing with some of our players a little harder as they searched their hands for the matching cards. Overall, we really enjoyed our time with 13 Moons and are excited to be backing this project so we can have a copy in our collection!

All photos of 13 Moons were taken and edited by Krista using a prototype copy provided for this review.