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 Aqua is the fourth 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 Aqua includes 31 cards, one leader plus a deck of 30 play cards, all printed on sturdy Tarot-sized cardstock.

The artist for the Aqua is Lars-Grant West. He's done lots of work for Wizards of the Coast, including D&D, AD&D, and of course Magic: The Gathering. He contributed many of the black & white technical drawings of weapons & armor to D&D 3rd edition.

The Aqua depicts an undersea world and one of the most varied sets of characters found thus far in the Blue Moon sets. We have some humanoid amphibians, but also krakens, eels, crustaceans and others. This really makes individual cards stand out in a way that they don't in most other Blue Moon sets.

West's style is quite realistic. His characters in particular tend to be crystal-clear depictions of real-looking people in real-looking situations. They're outstanding and define the deck. There were a few support cards that I found kind of murky, but they were the exception, not the rule. On the whole the cards are wonderfully rich. And blue.

On the whole, I find Grant's Aqua art the most attractive of the sets that I've reviewed ths far, as well as the most varied (in an entirely positive way). Thus I've given it a full "5" out of "5" Style rating: excellent.

The Gameplay

The Aqua comes with a new deck of 30 cards which can be used to play Blue Moon. It contains 2 leadership cards, 15 characters, 5 boosters, and 8 support. This is a pretty average distribution compared to the other decks.

Among the special icons in this deck are 6 protected characters, 2 free boosters, and 2 free support. There are also 2 characers (Yin and Yang) who can add a free icon to a subsequently played card.

Looking at these notable elements from the deck-design point of view, protected cards are all pretty cheap, costing 0 moons for everything but the two best, which are 1 moon. However, they're all unidirectional characters, just possessing one of the two elements, so I'm not convinced they're too exciting. The free cards are more expensive, with the 2-point free boosters costing 1 moon and the 2-point free supports costing two. The best cards in the deck, which I'll discuss more in strategy, are actually individual cards without icons. They include Yin and Yang (1 moon each), the two Floods (3 moons each), and the crucial Adminster Water of Immortality (4 moons).

Protected Characters: Protected cards can't be discarded or otherwise messed with by your opponent. It's a nice balance to an otherwise weak card, but not something you can use very effectively in an offensive manner; you just have to hope they'll work against your opponents.

Free Cards: The free boosters and the free supports allow you to play more than 1 character + 1 booster/support on a turn. They're very nice to have around, though each is unidirectional (displaying just fire or earth values). Yin and Yang meanwhile give a free icon to the next card played, which can be a character, support, or booster. All told these can allow the play of quite a few cards in a turn.

Special Cards: A few cards are notable enough that they deserve a few short notes.

As already mentioned Yin and Yang each make the next card played free. Otherwise they're just a 2/0 and a 0/2 character.

The Tidal Flood and the Torrential Flood are each 1/1 supports that say "If I have more than one active Flood support card after the end of my turn, then you must immediately retreat". Clearly they can give you victory in a duel if you can get them both down.

(Contrariwise, one of the less useful cards in the deck is the very similar Drowning Rain Storm from the Terrah people. It's a 1/1 Support that gives the player a dragon if he has more than 1 Storm card at the start of his turn. Unfortunately, since it's from the Terrah deck, it's the only such card in this deck. There's another 3 Storms in the Terrah deck.)

The centerpiece of the Aqua deck is Administer Water of Immortality, a leadership card which allows you to reshuffle your draw and discard decks.

Aqua Strategy

The Aqua is a very strong deck, and it should be played as such. Often you want to hold back your strength in Blue Moon, so that you don't expend your resources too quickly. However with the Aqua deck that's not as much of an issue because of one card, "Administer Water of Immortality". If you play your cards right you'll be able to go through all your best cards twice.

Paired with this, the Aqua deck really allows for the easy play of cards fast and furious. This is because of the inclusion of those four Free cards as well as the Yin and Yang, which each make the next card Free. Remember that Yin and Yang don't make just make boosters and supports free, but characters too. Thus you can drop one of them down with one of the 5-point characters from the deck, totalling up 7 before you even get to supports and bosoters.

A good strategy is often to play your opponent along, just displaying lower cards through the first couple of rounds of combat, then all at once drop out 2, 3, or even 4 cards, resulting in a devastating attack number as well as a sudden jump to 6 cards, which will win you two dragons rather than one.

The Aqua deck also allows for one of the best killer combos in Blue Moon. Yin or Yang give the next card you play the Free icon. Meanwhile the Support cards Tidal Flood and Torrential Flood, if both in play, force your opponent to retreat after your turn. Thus, if you have Yin or Yang and the two Floods in your hand, you can play them all in the same round, forcing your opponent out of the duel. This is best saved until you're three cards into a duel so that you can immediately jump to six and take two dragons. Fortunately since this duel win doesn't depend on strength you can lead off with three wussy cards, if your opponent allows.

If you can't setup the Yin/Yang/Flodo combo, at the least never play a Flood until they're both in your hand. Save them up to play in the same duel, again preferably just as you hit a card count of 6.

The main weakness of the Aqua deck is that many of the cards are unidirectional. There are 4 characters, 1 booster, and 2 supports which only have the fire characteristic, and the same number that only have the earth characteristic. You need to watch this during play. If your opponent starts a duel in something that you're currently weak in, you should immediately bow out, rather than wasting your cards fighting a losing battle.

However, remember that even if they don't increase your strength, the wrong direction of unidirectional card may be used to help get you up to the 6 cards required to double-or-nothing a duel.

Counter-Strategy: The weakness of the unidirectional cards also provides one of the simplest counter-strategies to the Aqua deck. Watch which element an Aqua player is using. It's then often useful to immediately follow up a fight in an element with another fight in the same element, because your opponent is likely to have the wrong unidirectional cards taking up some of his card spaces.

Much of the rest of the Aqua counter-strategy is simply working against their strongest cards.

If you have cards that can take cards from your opponent's hand, try and use them to get the Administer Water of Immortality. The best time to try and get it is when your opponent is 50-75% of his way through his deck the first time, because he's more likely to have it, but probably won't have reshuffled his deck quite yet. If your opponent has been overplaying cards, and you get lucky and hit the Water, you'll probably cost him the game.

There's not a lot that can be done about the Yin/Yang/Flood combo. However, the Floods can be powerful on their own, and so you should watch for them. If you have anything that takes out a support card, hold onto it for when a Flood comes out. (You might also want to use such a card on the Irresistible Sirens, which are a support that force you to discard a character per turn.)

Beyond that, just remember that the Aqua can increase their strength pretty dramatically in a single round of play. If you've got pairs, high values, or Free cards, you might want to hold them in reserve unless you're confident of winning the duel yourself with them.

The Game Design

The Aqua deck for Blue Moon is a lot of fun to play. You can drop down large sets of cards without worrying too much about the consequences, figuring that you'll get to use them all again. As such it's also not the most cerebral of decks. You need to think about when you're not going to be able to win a duel (due to the unidirectional cards), and if you decide you're going to win you then need to figure out how to get 6 cards down into your combat area before your opponent rabbits. But that's most of the strategic play possible.

Nonetheless, the Aqua does still play a little bit more interesting than a pure brute force deck, and I've thus let it eke in a "4" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

The Aqua is the fourth expansion for the Blue Moon expandable card game. It centers on a few important card combinations, and allows for very aggressive play beyond that. As such it can be a lot of fun and somewhat freeing to play when, compared to some of the more careful strategies that may be required by other decks.