Quick Look: Ganymede and Moon Expansion

Let’s check out the contents of Ganymede and its Moon expansion

At the tail end of 2018, Ganymede was released. It garnered some buzz during the few gaming conventions it managed to appear in, but its time in the spotlight fizzled out and never really took off. It then flew under the radar for most of 2019 (and in a way it still does). A year later I happened to come by it via a small ad in the pages of Board Game Geek, liked the cool artistic aesthetic of its polygonal spaceships and decided to check it out. I dig it, but that’s a story for another day.

Ganymede was created by Hope S. Hwang with art by Oliver Mootoo and published by Sorry We Are French and Lucky Duck Games here in North America. Today I’ll be looking at its components, checking out its gameplay a bit, and see if this is something you should keep in mind when shopping around for a new game.

So, what do you get in the box, and is the quality up to snuff?

The Box and Art Work

As I stated before, what drew me to Ganymede was its cool, distinct art style. The color palette and polygonal aesthetic, the dark backdrop of space behind a stylized Jupiter, it all blends well—at least to me. The box quality is also very good with a fine linen finish, and standard card stock. Yet, this is the first negative I see with the game, as far as the overall package is concerned. The box is way too big for what’s inside.

Now let me be clear, I don’t think what you pay for is devalued by its box-size-to-component-quantity ratio, rather, I wish publishers would match box sizes to the demands of the components—specially when the components are on the smaller side of the spectrum. It’s silly to have box cavities be two-thirds empty (you can fit all the components into one space, minus the player boards). It’s a waste of space, and it needlessly increases its footprint eating up shelf real estate that could be used to put more games in your library. Ganymede suffers from this oversized box syndrome. I could probably see the necessity of having that extra space, as having it could make it easier to fit future expansions. Well, we'll see about that shortly.

Moving ahead with the components, what do you get with the base game and what sort of pieces, cutouts and player boards are in there?

Meeples in space

Bold colors. That's the first thing that pops into view when displaying all the pieces out. I like it. It's assertive. I think it's also a smart design choice considering the backdrop where most of these pieces lie will be in stark contrast to the dark player boards. The game offers these satisfying meeples. I say satisfying because the shape and size just seem perfect. The shape of these little guys are just different enough from the bog standard meeple you find in Carcassonne; their legs and arms are filed down little nubs. The size just a tad smaller, but they feel good when picked up, pinched between your index and thumb—Je ne sais quoi is apropos. There’s something about them that is innocuous at first glance, but when picked up they feel right.

Standard meeple on the left, Ganymede meeple on the right

The other components also feel right. The cards are linen-finished, with a good cardstock and vibrant colors. The player boards are thick cardboard, the recruitment tokens are made with a slightly thinner stock, but works perfect for the intended usage. Then we have four white cube markers, wooden, standard fare.

Overall, these are good, above average components. There is definitely more quality than initial inspection, but once you hold them in your hand and feel them, they do impress. At least that’s my take.

But there is one more box to open up, so lets take a look at it.

The Moon Expansion

The Moon expansion comes in a much smaller box, although it retains the same good standard of quality as the base game. The good thing is the expansion components will all fit nicely in the core game box. If you want to store this aside, you can, but I really like the art and it be a shame to tuck it away never to be seen again.

What you get in here is what’s important, though. Included in the box is a few more cardboard cut outs, player board extensions, and meeples. The cardboard used is, again, of good quality stock with the linen finish of the base game. The meeples added are two different types; two that are the same type of meeple from the base game, just one white and one black. The other four are of a new meeple design, slightly larger and painted grey. These go the opposite way from the base game pieces and have pronounced appendages, jutting out slightly more than even the standard meeple.

However, the real treat here is the art work reserved for the new councilors you can recruit. These councilors come in smallish, square, cardboard cutouts—sixteen in all. The designs for these new recruits are eclectic, juxtaposing some cultural hallmarks with futuristic fashion sense. I like it, and once I popped these cutouts I immediately gawked at them, inspecting each one to carefully appreciate the art style.

Aesthetically, everything fits with the base game. There isn’t a conspicuous error in style—everything flows together when placed next to the original game components. In short, it’s more Ganymede.

But that’s all cool and dandy, how does it all fit together and what is Ganymede, playwise?

A Brief overview of ganymede’s gameplay

The best way to describe Ganymede is a mishmash of pick up and deliver, set collection and combo effects. In short, you’ll be delivering settlers from Earth to Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede. How you do that is through drafting shuttle cards once you can fulfill their requirements. Some of these requirements are mostly specific settler colors and quantities. There are four color types of settlers: red, blue, yellow, purple. These settlers can be picked up when you select a settler tile of a specified color. Pick it up and collect the same colored meeple and place them on Earth on your player board. Then, as you collect more and more settlers, you’ll need to start moving them from Earth to Mars, to the eventual destination, Ganymede. In Ganymede you’ll have two settler ship cards, and these are the ones that give you points, the ones that will win you the game. Collect four of these to trigger the end game, and hope to have the most points when all is finished.

The small bit of nuance here is the amount of efficiency you must extrude from everything available to you. You see, a cool aspect of this game is that once you start collecting shuttle cards from Earth and Mars, you are also collecting bonus actions found in these cards that you can take and multiply their effects, as long as you match color sets. Suddenly, the mere act of collecting cards isn’t a singular action, but an additive one. Can you compound one card’s effect into multiple actions by having the right collection of shuttle cards? Can you multiply an effect to move your settlers through the cosmos more efficiently? That’s the key to winning here. More mental gymnastics to tumble through your brain.

I’ve heard this game compared to Splendor, and I have to agree there is overlap, but I feel Ganymede takes it a step further by adding different actions that you can do. It’s just a tad more complex than Splendor, but I feel you can’t go wrong with either one.

So there you have it. That’s what Ganymede is all about in a nutshell. The Moon expansion adds a few more steps to the equation by adding player specific powers from the councilor recruits, but I feel talking about that is better reserved for a review, since you wouldn’t buy the Moon expansion without first getting Ganymede proper.

If this is something up your alley, maybe check it out. You will be getting a review of Ganymede at some point in the future, but this is just a small quick look at what quality you’d get in the box if you’re thinking of purchasing this game.