In reviewing this deck, I am assuming that the reader is familiar with the basics of how Blue Moon is played. I will attempt to give an idea of what it is like to play with this deck, its strengths and weaknesses, and what makes it different than other decks.

Artwork:

The artwork for the Flit is quite nice, with bluish backgrounds. The Flit themselves are anthropomorphic looking birds: they have wings snd feathers, but also have arms and legs, and no beaks. I don't find the artwork terribly interesting, but it is pleasant enough to look at.

Play:

Not including the mutant, the Flit only have 13 character cards, but 10 of them are retrievable. They have no suppport cards, but have 13 booster cards, 10 of which, sharing the same first name, can be paired with each other. The Flit are definitely the most unusual deck, and the most challenging to play. You have to consider carefully what cards to retrieve, whether or not to pair a booster, and when to let a retrievable card go to refresh your hand. So on the one hand you need to conserve cards, because you have few character cards, but on the other hand, you need to get rid of cards in order to draw more.

The boosters in this deck are quite good, and necessary to boost the rather low character values, but when you start pairing them up to make them very powerful, you can run through them very quickly. The special power text in this deck can be very powerful, and it definitely helps to know what is going to be the most effective against the race you are playing.

This deck is the most interesting, but also the least forgiving. I like the challenge of playing this deck very much, although I am by no means a success at playing it. If you like finesse, and until you get used to playing the deck, don't mind taking a bit of a pounding, you will really enjoy the flit.

What follows is a description of the cards found in this deck:

Character Cards Without Special Power Text: Only six of the character cards have no special power text, and all but one of them are retrievable. The highest value is four (4/4, 4/2, 2/4), and the non-retrievable card has values of 0/0, with a shield on earth. So the real power of the Flit deck is not in these cards, although these cards form a good base for boosters.

Cards With Special Power Text: Seven character cards have special power text, and five of them are retrievable. Of the two that are not retrievable, a Terrah traitor (1/2) forces your opponent to discard two cards and is a great card to make your opponent squirm; the other has values 0/0 but doubles the values of your booster cards, which in this deck can make for a pretty high score.

The retrievable character cards with special power text are where the Flit's power lies, even though they only have values of 2/2. The power text can sometimes cripple your opponent's attack because it can be retrieved and played repeatedly. The texts are as follows: you can discard an active character card if there is more than one; you can prevent your opponent from playing more than one card into their combat area; you can ignore their support cards; you can ignore their boosters; you can ignore their special power text.

If a deck relies on having more than one character card (Mimix, Khind), then you want to retrieve the cards that prevent or blunt that type of attack. When support or boosters are running up the score, the card that ignores them is what you want. The booster that ignores special ppower text can stall any race in the right situation. Of course you don't always have what you want, but, in general, making intelligent use of the retrieve icon of these cards is essential. This also means not retrieving the ones that are not very useful against the race you are playing.

Boosters: Of the 13 booster cards, all but two of them have the pair icon. The two that do not have it boost your earth score: one of them up to 7, and the other doubling your character cards earth value.

Only one of the boosters is retrievable, and the paired ones have values ranging from 0-3, meaning a value of six is possible if paired. One of the paired boosters has special power text, which reduces your opponent's victory to one dragon if you retreat.

Playing the boosters can be quite tricky, especially deciding whether or not play them as a pair, but they are especially useful with the character cards with special power text. As the text may already reduce your opponent's score, a single booster might suffice for blleding your opponent white.

Support: None

Leadership: The Flit's three leadership cards are all good. One forces your opponent to attract only one dragon, and is an excellent card to play before retreating from a long fight. One allows you to play any number of boosters, which can send you score very high. The other allows you to attract a dragon at the expense of three character cards, which is a great way to get a fourth dragon and end the game.

Mutant: The mutant has values of 0/0, and can only be played if you have no cards in your combat area. It is useful to get the fight into the element you want near the beginning of a fight, or if you have been doing a lot of retrieving.

Strategy/Tactics:

This is a finely tuned, highly tactical deck. As mentioned you will want to hang on to the special power text that is most useful against the race you are playing and use its retrieve icon to your advantage. You will lose these cards if they are active when your opponent retreats, so you need to make them count.

Equally important is letting go of the retrievable cards go so you can draw new cards. Your boosters are not retrievable, and you need them to back up either your text or your score, so you shouldn't clog up your hand.

Like the Mimix or Khind, it is sometimes better not to worry about the pair/gang icon, and use individual boosters. The pairing is essential for a high score, but sometimes a single booster will do the job. If all your boosters that can be played as pairs are played as pairs, you drop from having thirteen booster cards to effectively having eight.

Much like the Pillar, there are lots of ideal combinations or just good cards to have at just the right time, but you're not going to get them all. You just have to know when to capitalize on what you do have, and this may mean more tactical retreats than what you are used to with other decks.

Conclusion:

This can be a very frustrating deck to play, and after a few dozen plays (with or against the deck), I still get the feeling of realizing how I could have played it better. More important, its not the illusory feeling of wishing for different cards.

This deck does not allow for much human error, so if you like every decision to be of significant importance, you will like this deck. While I don't believe that knowing the decks extremely well is of that much importance for the other decks, it is quite important for the Flit.

There is a bit of the winetaster feel about this deck which I quite like: you need to get things right to succeed with this deck. I give this deck a 9.