New Moon is a good looking expansion to The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow (Asmodée Éditions). The box is the same size as the original gamebox. Inside the box are 36 event cards, 5 stickers and a rulebook. The stickers need to be stuck to Villager cards from the original game.

The rulebook contains some suggestions for adding ambiance, handling large crowds, and some other variants. Only about 1/3 of the rulebook addresses the event cards and new roles.

My opinion Some fun ideas. "Surely It Isn't Him!" is a voting variant, and "Writing On The Wall" allows players to write down anonymous statements to be read by the moderator. However, the rulebook is mostly fluff, and could have been filled with some more useful info.

The new roles are: Elder, Idiot, Scapegoat, Defender, and Piper. Briefly...

Elder survives first murder attempt of the Werewolves. If the Elder lynched, all villagers lose special powers.
Idiot survives if lynched, but can no longer vote.
Scapegoat eliminated if the vote ends in a tie, but may select certain players to lose their voting power the next day.
Defender indicates a player that is protected from the Wolves at night, but cannot protect the same player on consecutive nights.
Piper "charms" 2 players per night, and wins alone if only charmed players remain alive.

My opinion These roles are fine and fun. The thing that is missing is direction on how to introduce them into the game. Should it be random? By that, I mean that the moderator shuffles a bunch of "normal" villagers with the "special" villagers, then draws a certain # of cards from this pool. This is probably the best solution for the first four roles I listed above. But it seems the Piper would work best in a bigger game, perhaps 14 or more. I was disappointed in the lack of direction for working these roles into the base game. For us, the Elder and Idiot have been the favorites thus far.

There are 36 event cards. I've come up with 5 general categories to describe them.
Wolf Events - These are events that benefit the wolf team. They include: Backfire, Somnambulism, Executioner, Double Agent, and Burial. Mostly they cause a villager to transform into a new Werewolf or "Possessed". Some events cause roles to be disguised after a character dies, rather than have the role revealed.
Villager Events - These benefit the village team, and include: Touch of Death, Miracle, Woodland Gathering, and Spiritualism (x5). The Spiritualism cards allow certain questions to be asked of the dead players (assuming they are watching the action at night).
Vote Variants- These change the method by which voting happens, and mostly lasts for one day only. They include Influences, Great Distrust, Dissatisfaction, Nightmare, Enthusiasm, and Bleak Monday.
Vote and Kill Restrictions - These restrict voting privileges (and potential lynching victims) based on age or gender. Some also limit the Werewolves in certain ways at night. They include: Saturday Evening Ball, Flood, Gone hunting..., and Luncheon for Seniors.
Random- The effect of these cards is hard to anticipate. They include: Punishment, Pact with the Devil, Eclipse, Heads or Tails. These cards can protect a player, or put a player at risk.

My opinion The event cards are the heart and soul of the expansion. They remind me of moons in Cosmic Encounters' Eon version... pretty random without some good home rules, but lots of potential to increase player interaction.

I keep about 24 of the cards in play, and divide them into the categories above. I eliminate the Vote and Kill Restrictions cards. Why? I think these would only work well in a 14+ player game, which I rarely play in.
I randomly select the category with the help of a d4, but I don't pick from the same category deck twice before I've picked once from each category. Why? Two consecutive "Villager" or "Werewolf" Events would unbalance the game too much. As moderator, I reveal the event when it is germane. This has added quite a bit of excitement to the games in which we've used New Moon.

Overall, I am very happy with this new expansion. However, I think much more thought could have been given to the rulebook, and I suspect the game was not playtested enough. I would have liked to get new role cards instead of stickers. Finally, "blank" event cards would have been sweet! I already have some ideas for events I would like to work into the deck, and I'm thinking about just writing over some of the events we don't use.

We had a great game last night using the expansion. Here is the link for the session report -

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/266179


edited for grammar