Gary Bradley
United Kingdom
Unspecified
Scotland
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Before beginning this review, a word on my card-playing background. After many years of playing Contract Bridge to a reasonably proficient level, I switched to Magic the Gathering as my card game of choice. Yes I am an old man who plays kids games. I’ve sunk a heck of a lot of cash into the CCG black hole that is Magic, spending 8 years filling a room in my house with bits of cardboard, then switching to the online game in 2002, and throwing all that cardboard away again. I’ve played the wonderful Magic Online (far superior to the paper experience) for approximately 30 hours per week for the past 5 years. I like my card games.
Blue Moon is a card game similar to Magic, but also very different. To get the similarities out of the way… Two players sit opposite each other and each brings his own deck of cards to the table. The decks can - and almost certainly will - be completely different. Players draw their initial hands, and then take alternate turns to put one or more cards from their hand into play, while drawing new cards from their decks. Each deck plays completely different to the other. And really this is where the similarities end. Blue Moon is not Magic of course, and old hands at Magic will find it a breath of fresh air, while being hauntingly similar too. I cannot imagine a Magic player who will not immediately enjoy Blue Moon.
First things first, Blue Moon is a NON-collectable card game. The Blue Moon cards are sold to you as a series of pre-built decks. While there are a few additional special “expansion” decks available, I will not touch on those in this review, mostly because I do not own them. What do I own is the base game and the 6 extra “people’s” decks that came immediately after. Each deck in Blue Moon represents one of the BM world’s warring peoples, or “tribes” if you prefer. A deck contains the 30 cards that make up your tribe, plus one leader card which is really just there for flavour, though can be used to randomised the deck each player will use (as I will mention later).
The base game comes with 2 such decks, the Vulca and the Hoax (more on the decks later), plus the basic rule book, a small cardboard board which, while pointless, makes all the various card zones clear and summarizes the turn order, and finally 3 plastic dragons (used to keep score). The base game will set you back approximately 20 pounds if you are in the UK. The additional tribe decks are sold as simple packs of cards: 30 cards plus the leader. These cost about 8 pounds each in the UK. Be warned that the extra decks do not contain the rules, though these are downloadable from the net. The game can easily be played without the little board or the Dragons, although it is admittedly “cute” to have these. Think of them like a Cribbage board and pegs. They’re nice, but you can always keep score on a bit of paper if you lack them.
So how does this game play? Well the rules of Blue Moon, like all the best games imo, are deceptively simple, but the strategies can take years to master. This is similar to Magic too, but since Blue moon is not collectable, it has a finite population of cards (8 decks x 30 cards = 240 cards in total). You can soon become familiar with every card in the game, and the variety of combo opportunities and “power plays” each offers. A Blue Moon deck consists of 4 types of card, as follows:
Characters: Representing people (and sometimes monsters). Character cards have at least 2 numbers on them: their power in the element of Fire, and their power in the element of Earth. But they can have special abilites (in the form of chunks of text) on their cards too.
Boosters: These attach to Character cards in play, but last for only 1 round. They often have Fire and Earth number values on them too, and in this case they add to those numbers of the Character they are attached to (hence, Boosting it). However, many Boosters have no Fire/Earth numbers, and instead confer a special power to their Character. An example might be a Booster which doubles the parent Character’s power numbers, or even one which reduces the power of enemy Characters in some way. Some Boosters may even have both additive numbers and confer some special power.
Support: These are identical to Boosters, except that they last for longer than 1 turn. In fact they stay in play until their owner wins or loses the current “fight”. In this sense they are typically more powerful than Boosters due to this on-going effect.
Leadership: Leadership cards are one-offs, comparable to Sorceries in Magic. You play them, they happen, they are gone. These cards can do all sorts of things, from drawing extra cards for you, to destroying enemy cards in play.
At this point it will be useful to outline how this game is actually played. The 2 decks face off to each other in a series of fights. Fights occur between Characters. The starting player will play an initial Character (which is usually all you can do when opening), and declare his power in Fire OR Earth. His choice of element will depend on his deck, his hand, his opponent’s deck and any tricks he thinks he can pull off in future plays. Either way, the chosen element remains until the current fight is decided. This ends the first turn, though in subsequent turns players can play more than 1 card per turn.
In response to this, the other player must play a Character of his own. In addition he can play 1 Booster OR 1 Support card to augment that Character, but either way he must match or exceed the enemy’s power in the chosen element. If he cannot, or decides not to, he must instead retreat. In this case, all played cards are discarded, the winner moves 1 Dragon to his side of the table, and the player who retreated initiates the next fight with a new Character, and in the new element of his choice. And thus it goes on, until one player wins the current fight while having all the Dragons on his of the table, at which point he wins the game.
In general, individual fights often go on for many rounds, with the stakes (and power) getting higher and higher. It is vital to note that on your turn, when your play your next Character, all the cards that you used to match your opponent last time in the previous turn are pushed under the new cards and are no longer in play. Thus, you must match the new power level with a brand new Character/Booster combination each turn. The exception is the ever-powerful Support cards which remain in play until the current fight is won or lost.
At the end of a player’s turn, he normally replenishes his hand back to 6 cards. Now that right there will make Magic players do a double-take. In Magic, players only get to draw one card per turn, and the acquisition of extra cards over and above this (often called “card advantage” in Magic) is a whole science in itself. Yet in Blue Moon, the more cards you play in a turn, the more you replenish.
This is because unlike Magic, Blue Moon has an end-game. The situation described above, where a player wins out-right by attracting all the Dragons to his side, is actually very unusual. It is more likely that the Dragons will bounce to and fro from one side of the table to the other as the fights progress, and each player gets to pick the element he wants to play in for the next fight. It’s kind of like tennis where a break of service is akin to attracting a Dragon in the opponent’s choice of element.
What is much more likely than this outright victory is that one player will soon run out of cards. At this point, the end game begins. Fights are still won and lost as normal, but one player will have a severely weakened position if he cannot draw new cards because he has exhausted his deck. Without careful planning for this phase, it is easy to lose 2 or 3 Dragons in very quick succession because a player with a full hand of new cards every turn, can easily dominate one with a limited hand and no deck. It is only when a player with no cards left in his hand or his deck is due to start the next fight, that the game actually ends. In this case, the player with Dragons on his side of the board wins, by a number of points equal to this number of Dragons + 1.
A glorious knock-on effect of the end-game, is that it adds a little resource management to the game. This means that a fight where you retreated (and thus lost a Dragon) can actually be a tactical victory if you spent considerably fewer of your 30 cards than you opponent did in the process. Or perhaps that should read that you managed to force your opponent to spend a lot more of his cards than he might have wanted to to win his Dragon. Keep this up, and hopefully the enemy deck will run out first, thus forcing him into the end-game (where the quick points are scored) in the weaker position. This means that retreating tactically, even when you could have continued the fight, is a perfectly viable tactic, and a common occurrence. It certainly adds a great deal of depth to this game.
But there’s far more! I mentioned earlier that the stakes get higher as a fight progresses, this is because as soon as one player has used 6 or more cards for the current fight, that fight is now worth 2 Dragons to him instead of the usual one. This allows a whole plethora of baiting and switching, where players try to lure the enemy into going into the 6 cards/2 Dragons territory while they hold a particularly devastating combination of cards in their hand. Furthermore, baiting the opponent into playing 5 cards, then tactically retreating is also a strong option as it burns as many of their resources as possible while still only rewarding the smallest prize of a single Dragon. Rest assured that there are a huge number of “gotcha” cards in the decks, specifically designed to bait players into committing 6 cards, only to steal their expected gains away at the last minute.
And now a short word on the 8 decks, just to give the reader an insight into the sheer variety of this game, and the tricks than can go on over and above what has already been described. One thing worth noting is that the fact that this game is not collectable means you can very soon come to know and love (or hate) all of the decks, and all of the cards. The decks have been play tested to be perfectly balanced. And while there is a light deck-building element in Blue Moon if one wishes to break up the base decks, I have avoided this and kept the decks pure. All of the tricksy play I mentioned above takes on a whole new dimension when you know precisely what the enemy deck is capable of, and are sitting waiting for their expected tricks and powerful combos. You rarely get this in Magic, whose card population numbers in the 10,000s. Unless you are facing tournament staple decks, the enemy deck is usually completely unknown to you until it reveals itself. Personally, I think that the predictability of a fixed card (and deck) population adds an extra dimension to the strategic potential in Blue Moon that Magic often lacks. Anyways:
The Vulca. Included with the base game, the Vulca are akin to a Magic beatdown or aggro deck. Their Characters are living flames, tall thin, spidery and with burning auras around their bodies. They are strong in Fire (surprise), and weak in Earth. This is a fairly “big dumb” deck, in that they excel at throwing out very large numbers in Fire, with very little trickery involved. A good deck for the beginner.
The Terrah. These guys are very similar to the Vulca, but heavily biased in Earth instead of Fire. Lots of big numbers and few tricks. They have a sort of American Indian stoical or perhaps Hawaiin vibe to their art work.
The Hoax. Also included in the base game. This race is basically a Fire deck, though their numbers are much smaller than the Vulca. They make up for this with tons of tricks and card combos that can mess with the opponent’s play. I always think of the deck as the equivalent of an annoying blue control deck in Magic. Their art depicts ancient sage-like old men using bizarre mechanical contraptions.
The Mimix. Controversial artwork alert! This tribe is made up mostly of lithe Amazonian women, wearing very very little. They are perfectly balanced between Fire and Earth. They bring a unique ability to the game in that most of their Character cards come in pairs. Each pair has a similar name (the name prefix much match for it to count as a pair) and a special icon on the card indicating it has the “Pair” power. This power allows you to play 2 Characters per turn, if you have the complete pair in hand. The power numbers are added together, which is a very powerful ability. The deck also packs a ton of extra card draw to help you maximise the chance of assembling as many Character pairs as possible.
The Flit. These silly-looking half-bird, half-human creatures are tricky to play. Again, they are balanced in the 2 elements. The gimmick is that every Flit character can optionally be returned to your hand at the start of any turn, allowing you to play it again on your next turn. To offset this, they have lowish power numbers overall, but they come with tons of Booster cards. All Flit Boosters have the name “Launch ” and all sport the Pair icon, meaning you can play 2 Boosters per turn if you have them in hand.
The Khind. Depicted as tiny, evil looking weapon-wielding children, this race introduces the “Gang” icon. Khind Characters come in one of 4 colours; each colour corresponding to one gang. The gimmick here is that you can play any number of Characters from the same gang in a turn, and as long as you add to the same gang on each successive turn, you do not need to cover over those members from the previous turns. Thus, the gang just gets bigger and more deadly. Individual Khind Characters have very low power numbers (none larger than 3), but collectively, they become deadly as all the little numbers add up as the full gang is assembled, and all the special powers of the Characters can become active at once. Again, the deck packs lots of card draw and tutoring effects to maximise your chances of assembling the complete gangs in your hand. A powerhouse deck, liked by most players due to this very interesting play mechanic. Very balanced in both Elements.
The Aqua. These fishy mermaid-like people have a very simple play mechanic which is entirely driven by one specific Leadership card in the deck. This Leadership card allows the Aqua player to shuffle his entire discard pile back into his deck, effectively doubling his deck size. This means the Aqua can not only afford to play as many cards as possible every turn with wild abandon, but can almost always dominate the end-game, if they live that long; which they do not always do, due to lowish and very skewed (i.e. lots of zeroes) power numbers on their cards. They also are the only deck to utilise the Protected icon on various cards, which means those cards cannot be tampered with in any way by enemy special powers.
The Pillar. These otherwise-human folk wear strange battle armour that makes them look like giant caterpillars. Indeed they appear to use tame Giant Caterpillars and Butterflies as their mounts. Game-play wise they pack a ton of interesting Booster cards, including Caterpillars which force the enemy to discard extra cards to meet certain requirements, or be forced to retreat. In short, they win by burning up the enemy resources as fast as possible. They are akin to a Black discard deck in Magic.
As you can see there is plenty of variety there. Even when you finally get bored of playing these 8 balanced decks, Blue Moon has light deck building rules to help players take it to the next level if they wish. I haven’t gone there, since as a Magic player, I already get all the deck-building opportunities I want. For me, the 8 balanced decks In Blue Moon are what keep the game “pure”.
As for the Leader cards I mentioned early on, when the wife and I play, we shuffle up the 8 leader cards and deal them out in order to determine which decks each of us will use for the next fight. I love this idea and it means you get equal exposure to every deck, and thus get a better grasp of the “whole game”.
And this concludes my review. All that remains is to mention that the components are particularly lush, with fabulous art work (other than the Flit, whose art is pretty poor, for me) printed on over-sized cards, which will sadly not fit into any card protectors you can buy. But at least they showcase the art. A different artist was commissioned for each tribe, and this lends each their very own distinctive look. The game rules are simple and clear, with plenty of examples. Finally, a huge FAQ is available online which covers just about every subtle card interaction that you could ever imagine getting confused about.
I love this game. I rate it 10/10 and never tire of it. It’s a refreshing change from Magic, yet has enough similarities to keep me happy. And my wife loves it too, which is perhaps the biggest bonus of all.
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Colin Hunter
New Zealand
Auckland
Stop the admins removing history from the Wargaming forum.
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great review!!! I've been trying to get my magic playing mates into it, so maybe I'll send them a link to this review.
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Tim Fiscus
Germany
Landstuhl
Armed Forces Europe (AE)
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Very nice review. Well written, and from a perspective I appreciate. You reminded me again how much I enjoy this game.
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Great Review!!
I use to love CCGs like Magic, but got fed up with the collectible aspect. Your review provides a very useful overview of the game. I have to get around to try this.
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John Harley
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
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Very thorough and accurate review.
I would like to see additional subjective comparison of the merits of both games since this tends to be a regular component of Blue Moon reviews.
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Mike Siggins
England
Cambridge
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Great review. I have found the opposite - that Magic players don't like it, but I am pleased that you buck the trend.
I picked up Buka Invasion on a recent trip to the States, so it should be here by now. This looks to add some even more interesting tactics.
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Gary Bradley
United Kingdom
Unspecified
Scotland
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sumo wrote: Great review. I have found the opposite - that Magic players don't like it, but I am pleased that you buck the trend.
Interesting. My wife, who loves BM as I said in the review, loathes Magic. Though sometimes I suspect that this is because she has burnt out on my enthusiasm for it over the years. 
Thanks to all for the positive feedback. I too have recently picked up the Buka, but we have not taken the plunge with this extremely interesting-looking new deck.
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Jens Hoppe
Denmark
Frederiksberg
What are you, like 80?
It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage.
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Very good review!
For 5-6 years back in the 90's I played Magic intensively, but quit eventually (meeting my future wife may have had something to do with that  ).
I think that despite having completely different rules, BM still has quite a bit of the same "feel" that Magic does. And I agree that the various BM decks feel like some of the various deck archetypes found in Magic.
While to me BM isn't quite the classic Magic was, I still find it a great game.
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Joost Kleppe
Netherlands
Nijmegen
Unspecified
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A propos Endgame: are you not forgetting that any player starting combat can give up 1-3 cards. Thus the end-game is often not very long, as the player with no draw-pile soon discards to 0. Or did I misunderstand the rule?
Very good review. I like BM, but for me it has a more 'constructed' and less smooth feel to it than Magic.
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Thanks,
lately I heightened my vote for Blue Moon to 10 too!
I have played many many games of it. Very often I played with the basic decks and feared, the deckbuilding aspect would ruin it for me!
Now I have entered the Blue Moon League here at South Tirol and I must say: This game is just as good with deckbuilding as without! WOW!
The Buka Expansion is great too!
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Ken B.
United States
Fayetteville
Tennessee
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sumo wrote: Great review. I have found the opposite - that Magic players don't like it, but I am pleased that you buck the trend.
I picked up Buka Invasion on a recent trip to the States, so it should be here by now. This looks to add some even more interesting tactics.
I'm a former Magic player who really digs this game...I would think there would be an overlap, but you never know about these things.
The Buka are great and quite unique--you should really enjoy them, Mike.
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Gary Bradley
United Kingdom
Unspecified
Scotland
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joostkleppe wrote: A propos Endgame: are you not forgetting that any player starting combat can give up 1-3 cards. Thus the end-game is often not very long, as the player with no draw-pile soon discards to 0. Or did I misunderstand the rule?
No you have it correct. But I simplified things a little. When you are down to your last 8 cards or so, you are actually close to endgame territory. Especially if the 2 unseen cards are not characters. Your choices become very limited (even if you don't know it). In the early game, for example, you can "afford" to play perhaps 3 cards to match the current power, knowing you will draw 3 more and likely pull a few Characters as you do and be ready for the next round. Not so when your deck has dwindled. You must be cautious. I have often find myself up 3 Dragons, thinking the game was in the bag. Then I notice my deck is about done, while my wife's is still fat. 2 mins later and she has won a 1 crystal victory.
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Christopher Dearlove
United Kingdom
Chelmsford
Essex
SoRCon 5 2-4 Feb 2012 http://www.sorcon.co.uk
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sumo wrote: Great review. I have found the opposite - that Magic players don't like it, but I am pleased that you buck the trend.
I've always felt that it's people who like Magic in principle, but found it "too much" (in one or more ways) who were the natural audience. But of course the publishers will be happy with Magic lovers, Magic haters, Magic agnostics and "what's Magic?" players (or, better, purchasers).
Quote: I picked up Buka Invasion on a recent trip to the States, so it should be here by now. This looks to add some even more interesting tactics.
I'll be interested in your comments.
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Christopher Dearlove
United Kingdom
Chelmsford
Essex
SoRCon 5 2-4 Feb 2012 http://www.sorcon.co.uk
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Peter The Rat wrote: Now I have entered the Blue Moon League here at South Tirol and I must say: This game is just as good with deckbuilding as without!
The one point about deckbuilding I would stress, but I haven't seen others do so (which doesn't make them wrong) is the controlled/constrained/restricted/whatever nature of the deckbuilding, the "take a deck and customise it" rather than the "take any combination of cards and form a deck" that's more usual in CCGs. I think it makes deckbuilding more accessible, you can start from something like "I like the Mimix, but I really could do with a couple of supports that make my opponent's life difficult" and work from there.
(With E&I playing Inquisitors the customisation can get quite significant, here I'm stressing the basic 8 decks use only.)
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Tim Fiscus
Germany
Landstuhl
Armed Forces Europe (AE)
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GaryB wrote: sumo wrote: Great review. I have found the opposite - that Magic players don't like it, but I am pleased that you buck the trend. Interesting. My wife, who loves BM as I said in the review, loathes Magic. Though sometimes I suspect that this is because she has burnt out on my enthusiasm for it over the years. Thanks to all for the positive feedback. I too have recently picked up the Buka, but we have not taken the plunge with this extremely interesting-looking new deck.
Can we please try to avoid calling this game BM? It just doesn't look right, from someone who works at a hospital all day. How about BMoon? BLM? ShaNaNa?
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Christopher Clark
Canada
Calgary
Alberta
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GaryB wrote: The game can easily be played without the little board or the Dragons, although it is admittedly “cute” to have these. Think of them like a Cribbage board and pegs. They’re nice, but you can always keep score on a bit of paper if you lack them.
I know you said you only had the eight races and didn't have the expansions, but I just thought I'd note: there are a few cards in the expansion packs that refer to the colours of the dragons, so they do become slightly more relevant.
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Gary Bradley
United Kingdom
Unspecified
Scotland
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Just an addendum to my review... on re-reading I realised I completely forgot to mention the Mutants. These are a pretty big element of the game, so please insert the following paragraph into the review, wherever you see fit.
Each Blue Moon deck also contains one Mutant card. Mutants are Characters with 2 special traits. Firstly, they all have a set of prerequisites that must be met before they can even be played. These vary from Mutant to Mutant and some are far easier to play than others. Secondly, play of a Mutant always changes the element of the current fight to the other element. In this way, the Mutants are often the biggest 'gotcha' cards of all, and very often are used as the big surprise in the 6-card plus fights that are worth 2 Dragons.
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Jan Couhig
United States
California
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The type of end-game you describe I simply have never seen happen.
You say their are more fights, but I think you meant more turns.
When one player is out of draw cards, but still has cards in their hand, the current fight, is the last one.
If that player, who is now out of draw cards, is in a lead position, there is effectively no end game, as they will spill out as many useless cards they can to get to less than 3 cards so that they can end the game.
In cases where they are more than 1 dragon ahead, they simply retreat, ending the game.
This is where I think the game is broken. The advantage always seems to go to the side which plays as hard and fast as possible, expending the most energy in each fight.
Any strategy that depends on combinations is only useful when that combination arises by chance. And even then if it is not used immediately, it will probably still be sitting in your hand, waiting for that big move, as your opponent glistfully runs out of cards.
In my circle, we have contemplated augmenting the rules, so that drawing the last card from ones draw deck pushes away 1 dragon (or opponent attracts 1 dragon).
This does change the game where players are more likely to be card conservative, but it doesn't seem to generate more combination ("trick") or strategic play.
I would love fore BM to be what so many want it to be, a non ccg magic. But in the end it doesn't offer the same thrill. I own the base box, and I will play from time to time. But I much prefer playing "pre-built only" magic, or even fairy tale.
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Christopher Dearlove
United Kingdom
Chelmsford
Essex
SoRCon 5 2-4 Feb 2012 http://www.sorcon.co.uk
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oqion wrote: When one player is out of draw cards, but still has cards in their hand, the current fight, is the last one.
Sorry, no. Fights continue until one player is totally out of cards, hand as well as draw deck (apart from early wins with four dragons of course).
Quote: This is where I think the game is broken.
Well, I suggest trying with the correct end game rule. It makes a difference.
Quote: The advantage always seems to go to the side which plays as hard and fast as possible, expending the most energy in each fight.
Up to a point. If you burn too fast (especially if you, for example, burn all your boosters and supports too fast) you can get caught. And the real endgame rules make a difference too.
Quote: In my circle, we have contemplated augmenting the rules, so that drawing the last card from ones draw deck pushes away 1 dragon (or opponent attracts 1 dragon).
Again, try playing with the correct rules.
Quote: I would love fore BM to be what so many want it to be, a non ccg magic. But in the end it doesn't offer the same thrill. I own the base box, and I will play from time to time. But I much prefer playing "pre-built only" magic, or even fairy tale.
You really need more than the base set to get the full experience.
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Matthew M Monin
United States
Branford
Connecticut
8/8 FREE, PROTECTED
513ers Assemble!
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oqion wrote:
This is where I think the game is broken. The advantage always seems to go to the side which plays as hard and fast as possible, expending the most energy in each fight.
Assuming that you are playing the game-end rules correctly and simply expressed them wrong, this is where I disagree most with you. Playing hard and fast is an option, but not the option. Running out of cards first can be great, but unless you have three dragons on your side you aren't clear of the woods yet.
If you disagree, try this in your next game: if you see your opponent rushing towards tossing all his cards, hold back some power and try to trap him in a situation where you retreat with him still having 5 cards or so left in his hand. Hit him with as high a power immediately as possible at the start of the new fight. He retreats. He should still have too many cards to simply run away so either way he's got another retreat in his future and will clearly run out of cards first and lose the game unless he had three dragons at that point (in which case he deserves to win for dominating you) or if he prepared for such a possibility. So if he didn't plan his endgame well, this trap costs him two dragons and probably the game.
Once you've pulled that off a few times, see if playing as hard and fast as possible stays the norm.
-MMM
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Gary Bradley
United Kingdom
Unspecified
Scotland
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Jan,
I over-simplified the end game in my review, and for that I apologise. The actual end game begins when one player is down to about his last 8 or nine cards (6 in hand only 2 or 3 left in deck). At this point the player with more cards than this has a disinct advantage (assuming he notices and has considerably more cards than this), and can really throw the other player about.
How many of those 9 cards are characters (this tells you how many turns the opponent can play out, and if you know the decks well and have been keeping track, you can know this answer, at least roughly)? Do you want to play small and slow or go all out to force quick (and likely) retreats etc. From there you can work them to your advantage.
And yes You have the rules wrong, which had obviously confused the issue some. With correct rules, even if you count your last 6 cards (in hand) being the "end game". This could happen:
Me: Fire 6
You: forced to retreat as only 2 of your 6 cards are characters and they are weak
Now you might still be up 2 dragons, but you still have 5 cards left so the game goes on. If you discard 3 and pass to me, you are almost certain to lose another Dragon because I will open and you will have only 2 cards left. If you instead play, you are are opening up to a really big reply from me which you will probably have to retreat from, and you still have 4 cards left. This means you still need to either ditch 3 and pass to me or play again. Hence likely to lose yet another Dragon. There is no good choice for you unless you planned for this and kept a really big play of your own in your hand to fend off these last attacks from me.
Ploughing through your deck playing cards as fast as you can can work for some decks (Aqua is the obvious example), but not others. And if you do it against very tricky decks, like the Hoax, you will likely be beaten badly in the end game.
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Matthew M Monin
United States
Branford
Connecticut
8/8 FREE, PROTECTED
513ers Assemble!
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The discussion that spun off of this review concerning rules ambiguities has been split off. You can find it here:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/167419
-MMM
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Gary Bradley
United Kingdom
Unspecified
Scotland
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Follow-up comment, half a year after my original review.
I felt I owed the game this much...6 months after the review and the wife and I still gladly play Blue Moon. It has lost none of its shine and remains our favourite 2-player game. Kudos to all involved.
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Craig Somerton
Australia
North Ryde
NSW
This text unintentionally left blank
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Hi Gary,
That was a sensational review. I bought the game itself a few months ago but my wife didn't like the first playing, largely because she couldn't immediately understand it (unlike Lost Cities or Battleline, which she adores). Your review will certainly help me better explain the game and hopefully resurrect it.
Cheers
Craig
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Eric Kuha
United States
North Dakota
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The review is great and has me considering purchase, however, just some constructive criticism: consider formatting your text a little bit. Set new sections of your review off with section headings in a bigger font size. It helps you to organize your thoughts, and it helps the reader to visualize the flow of the essay on the page.
Thanks again.
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