Blue Moon is a Reiner Knizia card game of battles between alien races. The base game includes two decks of cards that allow two players to play out duels between the Hoax and the Vulca. The Flit is the first of several additional decks of cards, each of which allows for the play of an alternate people, still using the base Blue Moon rules.
The Components
As with all of the Blue Moon decks, The Flit includes 31 cards, one leader plus a deck of 30 play cards, all printed on sturdy Tarot-sized cardstock.
The artist for the Flit is Jim Nelson. He's done work for some of the CCG circuit, including Magic: The Gathering, Harry Potter, Vampire, and War Cry. Some samples of his non-Flit artwork are available at i-spot.
Nelson portrays the flit as bright, somewhat alien, avian humanoids. Though many are brownish in color, there are also vibrant whies, blue, greens, and grays, usually standing out clearly against sky backgrounds of bright blue or pallid gray. There's nice detail to the cards, and also some good vibrancy, particularly in contrast. Some of the support cards, such as "Launch Fire Flash" and "Launch Dazzling Flares" really stand out, as do the brighter Flit, like "Proud Phoenix Phil". If I have one complaint, it's that the pictures are sometimes a little fuzzy, particularly the larger scale pictures like "Commence Mega Launch" and "Launch Rockdrop".
Overall the art in the Flit is good and the component quality and card usability are of the same high standard as the original Blue Moon. The cost-to-play ratio of The Flit is not quite as good as the original, though it's entirely reasonable for a supplement. I've given The Flit a Style rating of "4" out of "5", with drop from the original mainly due to the differing price point.
The Gameplay
The Flit comes with a new deck of 30 cards which can be used to play Blue Moon. It contains 3 leadership cards, 14 characters, and 13 boosters. This is less characters than either of the original two decks (which had 18 each) and is also the first deck which entirely concentrates upon a singular adjunct card (here, the booster), where the other two decks split between booster and support.
Notably the Flit also include 10 retrievable characters and 10 paired boosters. These card types make the biggest changes in the gameplay, so I've discussed them further below.
Looking at these notable elements from the deck-design point of view, two decent retrievable Flits ("Peckswift" and "Steepstoop") are each valued at 0 moons. Most of the rest are just 1 moon. The paired boosters, however, are all valued at either 1 or 2 moons.
Retrievable Characters: As noted, 10 of the Flits are retrievable. They can be taken back into your hand at the start of your turn provided they're still at the top of your combat area (meaning that your opponent hasn't retreated).
Steepstoop and Peckswift are respectively valued 2/3 and 3/2 and are the weakest of the retrievables. Three of the retrievables have a 4 in their higher element ("Squadron Leader Squeak", 4/2, "Flight Leader Squawk", 2/4, and "Wing Commander Razorfeather", 4/4). Several of the retrievables also have special power text which in various ways decreases the power of enemies, which is generally a good thing because the Flits max out at power 4.
Paired Boosters: The 10 paired boosters each start with the word "Launch", meaning that you can play any two of them together. They have values between 0 and 3 in each element, meaning that on a particularly strong play you could use a pair of boosters to add 6 to your character power, a good thing given the aforementioned low values for the Flits. The weakest boosters are "Launch Slippery Slime" (0/2) and "Launch Flaming Dust" (2/0). The best is "Launch Burning Earth" (3/3). One of the retrievable boosters ("Launch Itching Bugs", which is 1/1) is also retrievable.
The Leadership card "Commence Mega Launch" may be used with the paired boosters for a final overkill: it lets you play any number of booster cards together.
Flit Strategy
The strategy of the Flit is beautifully mirrored in their theming. They dive down and pull up in an arial dance, and sometimes they make large, sudden attacks that their opponents don't expect at all.
Much moreso than in the basic decks, it pays to generally play low when you're playing the Flit. Drop the lowest character you can, then retrieve it. Rinse, lather, wash, repeat. This will cause your opponent to waste cards while you're having no impact on your own card supply.
You almost always want to retrieve your retrievable cards. It does have some deficits. You'll won't draw new cards after your first retrieval. In addition, you're not building your combat area up to the 6 cards required for a double dragon reward. However, you can utterly bamboozle your opponent.
Be aware that you're going to eventually have to "sacrifice" some of your Flit, because when you win a duel the winning Flit is going to be discarded. If you have a choice, think about which Flit you don't mind going away. Also consider that you might sometimes want to sacrifice a Flit before the battle ends to ensure that you hit 6 cards. The easiest way to do this is to play a Flit with two boosters followed by a Flit with two boosters. It costs 40% of your paired booster supply, but if it gives you a two dragon swing, it's probably well worthwhile.
The boosters do work the best as pair, because they can let you make a sudden increase to a hard-to-match number. A 7-8 is quite possible, while a 10 is doable in a perfect world--but probably overkill.
Be aware that some of the Flit work particularly well with paired boosters. Cheepchirrup (2/2) limits your opponent to just 1 card play, and so is great if your opponent hasn't gotten out any support. Trillilling (2/2) ignores your opponent's boosters, Flitterflutter ignores your opponent's support, Tittertweet ignores your opponent's special effects, and Cark Kamikaze Crow doubles the value of his boosters. Various of these will be particularly effective against various decks, depending on whether they depend on boosters, support, or special effects to win
Ideally during a fight you'll want to bounce a few retrievable characters off the table while your opponent is playing early cards. Then, when you think you've seen his best hand strength hit him with one of the special characters and a good pair of boosters; between the special effect limitations and the high value he'll have a hard time matching you.
I've already noted the usefulness of "Commence Mega Launch" when used with the Flit boosters; it can also help you suddenly jump to 6 cards when you'd been idling. The Mutant, "Fel-nar-Gan", is another fun combo. You can bounce retrievables off the table for a while, not leaving anything in your combat area, and then the first time your opponent plays something you can't match with just a character, you can drop Fel-nar-Gan, suddenly changing the element of the fight.
Counter-Strategy: I'm generally not a big fan of card counting, but if your opponent is playing the Flit you must keep track of the retrievable cards that they've retrieved. Unless you're just trying to cycle your hand or increase your combat area to 6 cards you never want to play a card whose value is lower than or equal to a retrievable that you know your opponent is holding. Generally, if you can play medium-value characters (4+) rather than low-vlue characters (1-3) you have a better chance of keeping your opponent on the defensive. Otherwise, you'll just be watching him drop and retrieve cards as you edge the combat value up.
If you can keep the combat value at 4 or 5 you'll generally be forcing your opponent to either play boosters or drop out of a fight. However try and keep some support, boosters, or high-value characters on hand to defend against a sudden Launch.
Also don't be afraid to drop out of a battle just to kill one of your opponent's retrievables, particularly the better ones. They're a limited resource. Even if you lose a dragon you may be hurting your opponent's chances for the future.
Finally, be very aware of any anti-booster cards you might have, because if you can prevent the play of boosters or ignore them you'll greatly hurt a Flit player's chances to win. Consider those cards very valuable in a fight against the Flit.
The Game Design
Generally the new rules (retrievable and pairs) that are introduced in The Flit are simple to learn but meaningful. Beyond that the new deck offers interesting and different strategy and it's also very thematic for the peoples described. As such The Flit receives my best rating of Substance for a Blue Moon expansion: "5" out of "5".
Conclusion
The Flit is the first expansion for the Blue Moon expandable card game. It introduces two notable new game systems--retrievable characters and pairable boosters--and in doing so creates interesting new strategy for Blue Moon that also feel very appropriate for the peoples described.
