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Blue Moon is a customizable card game by Reiner Knizia.
Players: 2
Time: 20-45 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)
This is a review of the English printing of the game; it also appears in German, published by Kosmos.
The Components
Blue Moon comes with:
- 2 decks of 32 cards each
- 1 gameboard
- 3 dragons
- 1 rulebook
Cards: The cards in Blue Moon are all Tarot-sized. They're full-color and of medium weight with no texturing. Each deck of cards includes 30 play cards, 1 leader card, and 1 reference card (which just lists the various icons, most of which aren't used in these decks).
The majority of each play card is taken up by a large, attractive picture. There are two main artists in this deck, John Matson (who painted the Vulca race pictures) and Franz Vohwinkel (who painted the Hoax race pictures). They're both quite good.
Each card also features two combat values (fire and earth) and icons for special powers (only three of them, shield, stop, and retrieve are used in these deck; they're all quite intuitive). There's also a bit of extraneous information at the bottom of each card, used for constructing new decks, but it's small and unobtrusive.
Many cards also include additional special effect text at the top of the card. The cards use an odd descriptive method for the text, including the pronouns "My" and "You" referring to the two players in the game; I found it a bit hard to follow at first, but as long as you read the text of the cards aloud, it quickly clicks into place.
Overall the cards are very pretty, and quite easy to use.
Gameboard: This is a game that really doesn't need a gameboard (not unlike Lost Cities and other 2-player Kosmos games). Nonetheless one is included, and it does help separate different types of cards. The board is 3-paneled and linen textured. Helpfully it includes not just spaces for the two main types of cards (combat & support) but also a listing of all of the turn phases in the game. You could do without this board entirely.
Dragons: Three hard plastic dragons, nicely sculpted in red, dark blue and light blue plastic (though the last was apparently intended to be green, based on the picture in the rulebook). These are victory point tokens; as with the board, overly produced, but nice.
Rulebook: A 20-page, very nicely produced full-color rulebook. It includes a clear description of the game, lots of illustrations, detailed examples, and a good summary of all special icons.
It's worth noting that this game has been designed to be expandable. This initial set includes two decks of cards; 8 more are planned, each of which will retail for $10. The game is very playable with just these two decks, but is simple enough that I think more decks are required to maintain the game's replayability. Thus, this initial $25 purchase could easily turn into a $105 investment. It avoids the worst excesses of a true collectible game, but is still a more expensive purchase model than your typical card game. Caveat Emptor.
Overall the components of Blue Moon are probably all overproduced: the card size, board, and dragons are all more than are required for this game by a fair amount. However, they also look very nice and are well-done. Real effort has been made to create good value. I rate Blue Moon a full "5" out of "5" for Style, but more price-conscious consumers may rate it lower (and in fact may want to avoid the whole game due to the pseudo-collectible issues).
The Gameplay
The object of Blue Moon is to win the favor of plastic colored dragons through victory in a series of duels.
Setup: Each player starts out by choosing a deck--Vulca and Hoax. They then take their leaders and place them to one side of the game board, so it's easy to see who is playing who. Each player shuffles his draw deck and then deals himself 6 cards. The third plastic dragons are placed in the middle of the board to mark that no one has yet scored.
The Vulca. Each of the decks in Blue Moon is unique. The Vulca are perhaps the simplest. In general they have high combat values that tend to be better in fire. They have some offensive cards that can prevent players from playing cards, or force discards, but overall they're pretty staightforward.
The Hoax. The Hoax, meanwhile, are a bit trickier. They don't have combat values as high at the Vulca, but they have some nice retrievable cards which can be taken back into their hands at the start of the turn. They also have some strong support, and if they can manage to get out a good set of support cards, they can often defeat a more powerful enemy.
Special Icons. Each deck of cards tends to include certain special icons. There are three of note in these decks. The Retrieve icon appears on some Hoax cards, and lets them get used cards back. Each deck has some Shield icons, one on a Mutant in each deck and one on a Booster; these allow you to not match your opponent's total without retreating. Finally, each deck has a Mutant with a Stop icon, which means you can't play anything else that turn.
 Order of Play: Play goes back and forth between the two players. Each turn is made up of the following actions:
- Begin Turn
- Play Leadership
- Retreat?
- Play Character
- Play Booster/Support
- Announce Power
- Refresh Hand
- End Turn
The whole game really centers around the concept of a duel, however.
The Duel. Blue Moon is fought as a duel between multiple characters. A duel starts when a player puts out an initial character, and then declares an element, fire or earth. He then states the value that the newly played character has in that element (e.g., "2 earth").
His opponent (on his turn) must then match or exceed the first play's combat total, in the correct element, through the play of a character and possibly boosters and support cards.
Characters are used up after their one turn of fighting. So if the second player is able to counter, on his turn the first player must now play a new character and possibly a booster and/or support card to again meet or exceed the previous total.
The duel goes on, usually with the combat total slowly increasing, until one player can't match the total shown by the other player, at which time he reatreats. Immediately afterward, he gets to start a new duel by playing a new character and declaring the element of his choice ...
With that said, here's a better description of the phases in a round:
Begin Turn: This turn is only specifically noted because certain thinks happen at the beginning of the turn. In particular the Hoax have some cards that are "retrievable" (one character, one booster, and one support, to be precise). If they want to, they get them back in this turn, as long as they haven't been discarded.
Play Leadership: Each deck has three leadership cards, which tend to have big one-time effects. The Vulca have cards that: trade characters for dragons (Charm Holy Dragon); retrieve an active card, meaning not a character or booster card that's already been covered up (Summon Sorcerer); and discard all of an opponent's support (Cast Cataclysm). The Hoax have cards that: allow the playing of many support cards (Trigger Brainstorm); ignore an opponent's special effect text on cards (Enthrall Opposition); and allow drawing extra cards (Muster Reinforcements). A player may play one Leadership card at the start of his turn if he wants.
Retreat?: Next, a player decides whether to retreat. He must do so if he's not going to be able to match the previous combat total on his turn; he may choose to do so even if could.
When you retreat the battle ends. For more on Winning A Duel, see below.
Play Character: Next, a player plays a new character card. This could be to start a new duel, or to match the opponent's previous play, as described above.
Some character cards have special effects that give benefits to the player or penalties to his opponent. For example there's a Vulca card that lets the player discard an active booster or support card belonging to his opponent (Cinder) while there's a Hoax card that double the value of that player's support cards (Demegodas).
Worthy of note are the special Mutant characters. There's one in each deck. They can only be played when an opponent reaches a certain criteria (e.g., when you're faced with a 7+ strength combat value) and they change the element of the battle (fire to earth or vice-versa) and also have the special "Shield" icon which means that you don't have to match your opponent's total and the "Stop" icon which means that you can't play any more cards that turn.
Play Booster/Support. There are two other types of cards. Boosters are played directly on top of characters and tend to increase the character's value; they go away when the character does, on your next turn. Supports are played to the side and stay out for the duration of the current battle. Most of them increase your combat values, but each deck has some quirky ones too.
For example the Vulca have a booster that just adds a Shield icon if you're fighting in Earth (Infernal Armor), meaning that you don't have to match your opponent's total, while the Hoax have a support that limits their opponent to just playing one card each round (Brain Drain), which is to say a Character.
You can play either one booster or one support on a turn. You can't play a booster or support on the turn you initiate a new duel.
Announce Power: With everything played you now announce your total, e.g., "5 Fire".
Refresh Hand: And draw your hand back up to 6 cards.
End Turn: Again, the end turn is listed just because some cards have their effect here, after you've already drawn.
Winning a Duel: As noted, you win a duel when your opponent retreats. At this point the winner counts up the number of cards he has out (characters, boosters, and support, but not leadership or discarded cards). If he has less than 6 cards he takes one dragon, else he takes 2. Other played cards can increase or decrease this dragon total.
Only one player can have dragons at any time. If your opponent currently has dragons, you move one or two from his side of the table back to the middle of the game board; if the dragons are all already in the middle of the board or you have some, then dragons go straight from the game board to your side of the table.
After dragons are moved, each player then discards all of their played cards and the loser starts a new battle. (The loser may instead choose to discard 3 cards and redraw, in which case his opponent now gets to start the new battle. This doesn't happen much because cards are a very valuable resource.)
Winning a Round: The simplest way to win a round of play is to win more dragons than there are to win. Typically this means that you have all the dragons on your side, and you win a duel.
Less obviously (and somewhat more clunkily, though more commonly) the round ends when a player runs out of cards. He must retreat from the last duel, and dragons are moved accordingly. Then, whomever has dragons on their side wins; in the case of a tie, the person who ran out of cards loses.
Winning the Game: You can play a game as one round of play; alternatively the winner in a round scores 1 point + 1 per dragon he had, for a max of 4. The game goes until someone totals 5 points.
Customizable Play: Blue Moon also has simple rules for customizable play, wherein you can create a deck with a specific leader, and most of the cards from that race, but also include a limited number of other cards; each card shows a specific number of blue moons on it, to represent its power level, and thus limit the strength of decks. I susppose you could use these rules just to switch up these two decks, but I don't really think it becomes particularly exciting until you have more decks to play with.
Relationships to Other Games
Collectible Card Games, such as Magic: The Gathering (1993) tend to have three unique components to their play: many or most of the cards are unique with unique abilities; these cards are available for purchase in weighted, random distributions; and these cards can be combined in unique ways to form customizable decks. After the release of Magic: The Gathering many other collectible card games rushed in with the exact same play components.
However, some more traditional card games simply took the gameplay of Magic:The Gathering as inspiration and so put out new games with lots of unique cards. The Portable Adventures (2003) games are a good example of this type of play. Finally, and less commonly, some games have tried to mirror the customizable mechanics as well, as Blue Moon does.
Blue Moon (2004) is actually Reiner Knizia's second try and this sort of pseudo-CCG gameplay. The first was Scarab Lords (2002), which daringly included the customization as part of the ongoing gameplay--you got to swap out cards between rounds of play. On the whole, however, I think that Blue Moon provides a more cohesive gameplay system, is more evocative, and is definitely better supported. To date the Scarab Lords system just has one additional game out, Minotaur Lords (2004), while Blue Moon has already been supplemented by 4 more decks, with 4 more to come, and each of these have notably changed the gameplay of the base game.
At heart Reiner Knizia's games tend to be mathematical and thoughtful in a way that CCGs usually aren't, and Blue Moon matches this trend. In fact, the first time I ever played it, I called it Lost Cities: The Gathering. It's got that distinctive Knizian flare, despite its CCG trappings.
Finally, it's worth noting that Blue Moon is a very serious hand management cardgame. That term is often used to refer to gameplay where you're trying to make the best of whatever cards you happen to pick up. Here, you know exactly what's in your deck, and you only get to use each card once, and so you have to be really good about managing your strong cards, knowing when to retreat, and when to continue on.
The Game Design
I find some of the elements of Blue Moon a little rough. The idea of overplaying characters and the way the end game work in particular are a little complex, but once a new player gets through them, the game is quite simple, and that's one of its core strengths. The game is also very fast, particularly if you just play one round. At the same time, there's some very interesting strategy, almost entirely embedded in the afore-mentioned hand-management gameplay. You have to think not just at the tactical level ("can I win this duel?") but also at the strategic level ("would losing this battle that I could win hurt my opponent long-term by taking away his support? " "would staying in this battle that I'll probably win, though at great cost, be too expensive?"). Very quickly after my first play Blue Moon became one of my favorite games based on strategy-to-length ratio. There's a lot of very thoughtful play that can be very meaningful to your victory, but in a small package that allows for quick, exciting play.
The only notable complaint that I have about Blue Moon is that it can be somewhat repetitive. I'm sure you could keep playing these same two decks against each other, but at least with my own short attention span for repetitive gameplay, it'd get old. Even with using the rules to customize the decks, I can't imagine play with just these two decks earning more than a play a month in the long term. However, the expansions will geometrically increase that replayability, as each deck plays very differently, and each deck opposed by each other deck allows for very different interaction.
On the whole I give Blue Moon a "4" out of "5" for Substance, with the less-than-perfect score only the result of replayability issues. If you're planning to shell out the bucks for a couple of extra decks anyway (and at current I only have 2 extra decks, and that's enough for me for now), then it might reach to a full "5" because it's a clever, colorful game.
Conclusion
Blue Moon is Reiner Knizia's attempt to put out a pseudo-CCG, without the collectible trappings. On the whole it's evocative and it allows for some very clever & strategic gameplay. I do have some qualms about replayability, and you might not want to jump into this game unless you plan to buy a couple of the additional decks, but despite the higher price point that this results in, I think doing so is well worthwhile.
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