The race to the moon and the lunar landing missions were events able to catalyze the attention of world media for many years. Unlucky it was before the era of modern boardgames and it seems that this topics hasn’t be able to excite designers and publishers fantasies until this year when the whole Cranio Creations crew decided to open a new era of Lunar missions.
For a strange coincidence Neil Armstrong, the first man landing on the moon, left the earth for his last voyage this year so 1969 seems a great present to his memory.

1969 is a real german games with a well working mechanic, a good connection with the theme and a bit of randomness in mission tests rolls and Intelligence Cards draw.

Up to 5 players compete in the race for the space from 1963 to 1967, completing missions. Actually been able to accomplish the great lunar landing mission (Moon Mission in the game) is not necessary to win the game but it really grants so many prestige points (victory points) that it is almost impossible to ignore it.
To have an idea of what I’m telling you I go into the details: the game is played in 7 turns and each turn a player can complete just one mission: normal missions bring 5, 10 or 15 victory points, the Moon Mission 35.

In the beginning of the game each player select just one nation (Canada, German, URSS, France and USA) and take a rocket, 8 flags his two research sheets, than the game begin.

During the game you will get money to acquire scientists (cubes) of different kinds, allocating on research boxes that confer different bonus that helps you in better completing missions that give you prestige points. The one with more prestige points in the end wins. The winner usually is the player able to find a good strategy to better manage his money hiring the right scientists and placing in the right places to complete the mission. The interaction between players is only in the use of intelligence cards and spies: it apparently seems small but, for my experience, is usually much more important than the random factor in the test mission dice rolling.

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