Players play characters or other helpful cards from their deck in an attempt to battle for control of the dragons, to win the game. |
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| Designer(s) | Reiner Knizia |
|---|---|
| Publisher(s) | 999 Games Kosmos Fantasy Flight Games Tilsit |
| Players | 2 |
| Age range | 10 years and up |
| Setup time | less than 1 minute |
| Playing time | approx. 30 minutes |
| Random chance | Medium |
| Skill(s) required | Trick taking, Hand Management |
Blue Moon, published by Kosmos/Fantasy Flight Games, is Reiner Knizia's most successful take on the collectible card game (CCG) genre. It is a card game for two players that bears some resemblance to the well-known Magic: The Gathering (by Richard Garfield), although the game mechanics are quite different. However Blue Moon is not a CCG; although each player has to use his own deck, there are no booster packs and, apart from a few promotional cards, all cards are sold in decks of fixed composition, so that there are no rare cards.
Based in a unique fantasy setting, Blue Moon simulates the struggles of the various peoples who live in the Blue Moon world. Each people has its own unique traits and gameplay mechanics, and is represented by a 30 card deck (plus a "leader" card).
The base Blue Moon game box contains a small game board, three small plastic dragons (used as scoring counters in the game) and two complete decks for the Vulca and Hoax peoples. Blue Moon cards are over-sized and resemble tarot cards: at the moment, it is quite difficult to buy card sleeves to protect them.
Additional peoples (to be bought separately) are the following:
In addition, two more decks called Emissaries & Inquisitors: Allies and Emissaries & Inquisitors: Blessings contain additional cards which can be used in at least two ways. Advanced rules in the basic set allow players more freedom in constructing their own decks, each based on a single people with imported cards from other peoples (limited by the cards' deck construction costs measured in "moons"). The Emissaries & Inquisitors decks allow additional deck building possibilities.
Many Blue Moon cards carry text to specify the cards' influence on the game (sometimes overriding the game rules). The game is therefore very language-dependent. Known available editions exist in English (Fantasy Flight Games), German (Kosmos), Dutch (999 Games, excluding the Buka Invasion), and (very incomplete) French (Tilsit). Artwork for game boxes differs. Some promotional cards have been released and given as gifts at various gaming events.
In 2006 Fantasy Flight Games published a Blue Moon-related board game called Blue Moon City: this is not compatible with the Blue Moon card game and is a complete German-style board game for 2 to 4 players, set in the same Blue Moon world. It also shares artwork with the Blue Moon card games, but (apart from some fairly tenuous thematic links) this is where the links end.
During the 2007 edition of the Lucca Comics & Games Italian comics and games convention, Reiner Knizia himself confirmed that no new decks for Blue Moon are under development, as the publisher is no longer interested in publishing them. So, the game should be considered "complete" with its current set of decks.