Despite hearing some bad things about it, I played Blue Moon City with Ray and Brian.

The Bits
The game is played on a modular board. According to the rules, you place the Obelisk tile in the center surrounded (orthogonally) by the Earth Temple, the Palace, the Fire Temple and the Water Temple tiles. However, since none of the tiles are physically joined in any way, you could layout the board in whatever way suits your fancy or even randomly. The game is played with cards that are beautifully illustrated according to the law of standard fantasy artwork. That is they depict scanty clad women and mythological creatures. I have often wondered how any women lived in arcane times without suffering mortal wounds or dying of exposure. The other bits include pawns, wooden cubes, plastic dragons and dragon scale tokens. The dragons are detailed but completely monochrome, so you talented painters could go to town on these. The dragon-scales are sturdy cardboard, but it would have been more fun if they were plastic like the dragons. The pawns are wooden pawns that look like towers or spires. And of course what Euro would be complete without wooden cubes. You just know there is a lobby group in Washington working to keep the flow of wooden cubes going. Anyway, these wooden cubes match your pawn color and are used to mark your contributions to rebuilding the city.

Moving Around
The game is played my moving your pawn (move phase) and then playing cards. You can move your pawn, orthogonally, up two places. You can also move via cards that allow you to jump to any board tile. After moving you can play any number of cards, but you cannot move again so "move cards" cannot be played for the rest of this turn.

Playing Your Cards
The cards can be played in two ways. The first way is to activate their special power. There are quite a few special powers such as: make an extra offering to the obelisk, summon a dragon, move a dragon, change the suit of a card, act as a wild card, etc. The second thing the cards are used for is making donations to rebuild a part of the city. This is done by playing cards for their numeric value.

Rebuilding The City
Each city tile (except the Obelisk) has from one to four numbered squares ranged from 3-5 and is color coded to a specific suit. These squares designate the donations that are needed to rebuild that tile. When you play cards, of the matching suit, for rebuilding you claim one of the squares with one of your marker cubes. One interesting aspect of the game is the watching dragons. When a dragon is in a tile when you make a contribution, that dragon awards you a scale. When all squares have been claimed the building is complete and the contributors are rewarded. The reward has two parts, the part for the majority contributor and the pat for every contributor, including the majority contributor. The rewards can be crystals, dragon scales, cards or any combination of the three. Each contributor can also receive a "proximity bonus." That is, when a building is complete its tile is turned over and a "proximity bonus" is revealed. Then, when another building is completed that is orthogonally adjacent, the contributors receive the "proximity bonus" along with the regular rewards.

The Value of Rewards
Getting cards is always a good thing as it opens possibilities not only for donations but for their special abilities. Crystals are collected for donations to the obelisk, which is the ultimate goal of the game. Dragon scales are collected until the supply is exhausted. When that happens the majority holder receives a large reward in crystals while others holding a minimum number get a small reward of crystals.

Scoring
The winner of the game is the player who makes five crystal donations to the obelisk. To make an obelisk donation you must be on the center obelisk tile. Unlike the city donations that can be made in any order, the obelisk donations are made in ascending order. The donations range from seven (4 are available) on the low end to twelve (only one available) on the high end. You are only allowed to make one obelisk donation per turn. However, one of the card special abilities is to allow another donation but at a cost of one crystal.

Game Flow
The game flow is basically: move around making donations, finishing buildings and claiming rewards (crystals, scales and cards) and making crystal donations to the obelisk. The one random element is the draw of the cards. However, unless you get a remarkably bad hand, the combination of card value and special abilities makes your hand very playable when coupled with creative play. Hand management is important in the game. At the end of each turn you only get two cards to restock. So if you play a card to summon a dragon, a special ability and make a donation your could be down quite a few (5+) cards, with only two coming during restock.

Opinion
So were the critics right? Is this game worth playing? The answers are no and yes. I think the critics were wrong, this is a good game and well worth playing. The cards are so diverse that it is very rare to only have one good play. The game does become somewhat of a race at the end, but you can see it coming and plan accordingly. However, there is little that you can do to hinder your opponent. You can jump into the city-building donation lead and take away his majority, but that is about it. There were one question that came up during play, what do you do if a player is to receive more dragon scales than there are in stock? Well despite the race and the question, I say of Blue Moon City, GAME ON!

I'd have to agree with your final thoughts on this game. I too very much like playing it, and can feel like I'm in the race until near the end. Ultimately, I think everyone can see when a player is one, maybe two moves from ending it, and there is little you can do about it. However I don't think this takes away from Blue Moon's playability. A good game.

In the game Mr. Morgan describes I got terrible cards the whole last part of the game. I had a perfect storm of bad cards. Cards can be played in so many ways and lots of cards change the suit of other cards so you are always able to do something. Unless you had the cards I had.

And even after all that I was only 5 crystals from winning when the game ended and I had a lot of fun. I also really liked the color palette and how it refrained from dark colors and earth tones. I'd like to play this game some more.

Good review John. I got the game for Christmas and we've played it lots and every game has been enjoyable and close. On the Dragon Scales question, if you run out, then the player who should have received the extra scales counts these missing extra scales towards his total when you do the immediate total up. We've had a couple of games where this made a difference to who won the 6 crystals.

Is that a house rule or an offical rule?

That would be the official rule.

I was unaware that BMC had been getting any bad press. Every critic I've read has had good things to say about it. It was a SdJ candidate, after all.

Yep, it's official - it's in the rulebook.

Good deal, so Brian take note it's in the rulebook!

I just finished my first game and I too had a run of bad luck in terms of card draws. It was only until after the game was over (I lost) that I remembered that I had the option of discarding up to two cards at the end of my turn and drawing those cards plus two. That might have drastically changed the endgame in which I didn't have any cards that matched the last few unbuilt buildings.

I enjoyed the game a great deal, and I am looking forward to playing it again.

Did you keep your hand size up? (my guideline would be about opening hand size after drawing). Did you discard two cards every turn?

If the answer to either is no, then you did it to yourself.