Moonstone: The Arising

The Arising is a 176-page expansion book for Moonstone. It carries rules expansions and worked examples of play, rules for linked campaign games, nine new story scenarios, 55 new character profiles, and close to a hundred pages of lore and storyline.

Who needs it: anyone playing Moonstone regularly. Fifty-five character profiles is a large slice of the roster, and if you own more than one troupe box you will be looking things up in here. The nine scenarios matter more than the number suggests, because a four-model skirmish game lives or dies on having something worth fighting over, and a fresh set of objectives changes how a familiar troupe plays without a single new miniature.

Who does not: someone who has just opened a two-player starter set and played twice. The rules pamphlet in Dusk till Dawn or Life & Death Struggle is enough for a while. Come back once you have decided Moonstone is your game.

The campaign rules here work alongside the Moonstone Campaign Deck (Complete), which supplies the physical cards a linked campaign runs on. The book explains the structure, the deck provides the upgrades and events, and most groups that get into campaign play end up owning both.

Nearly a hundred pages of lore is unusual for a skirmish game, and it is a large part of why Moonstone's characters read as characters rather than as stat lines.