Title: Blue Moon City
Overview: Player work to rebuild the crumbled city of Blue Moon, trying to gain the overwatching dragons’ favor. In so doing, they collect crystals and dragon scales that will be used to re-build the obelisk in the center of the city. The winner is the player who contributes most to the obelisk being built.
Components: Fantasy Flight continues its long tradition of gorgeous figures & pieces. The board consists of two-sided thick, sturdy cardboard tiles to make a modular board a la Zombies or Carcassonne (although the board is fully constructed at the start). Sturdy is key, since these tiles are going to be flipped over during the course of the game. The obelisk is made from the same material.
Pawns are represented by wooden…pawns, and players will have similarly colored wooden cubes to represent “contributions”. The color is pastel, which reflects the overall tone of the city: a “pleasant” mysterious place (rather than a dark, foreboding one).
The 3 dragons are sculpted plastic of different colors, although the same sculpt; this doesn’t detract from the game in the least as, again, the colors are aqua, bright red, and deep blue. Again, pleasantly magical.
There are also crystal and dragon scale chits. They are made of the same material as the tiles, and the scales are actually shaped like “dragon scales”, if there were such a thing. Also strudy.
The cards are standard sized playing cards, decorated with artwork representing the various races that live in Blue Moon. Along the top, for easy reference, are the cards attributes. They are easy to hold in one’s hand and reference is quick and neat.
Finally, the rule book is chocked full of pictures and examples. Fantasy Flight, known for producing poor rule books (see Arkham Horror), did a tremendous job of make this game easily to understand in a single read, which takes only about 10 minutes.
Mechanics: Set-up is done by placing the obelisk in the center, the 4 palaces orthogonally adjacent to it, and then randomly distribute the rest of the city to form the shape in the manual.
Then, players alternate turns doing up to 3 phases, in order:
1. Move their pawn. Movement consists of a set number of “steps”. Moving from one tile to any orthogonal tile takes one “step”. Players are allowed to move 2 steps per turn.
2. Make contribution(s) to rebuild a building. Players discard any number of cards matching the color of one of the unoccupied squares at the bottom of the city tile the pawn is currently occupying. For example, if there is an unoccupied square that has a red 3 on it, players can discard red cards totaling 3 (or more) to make a contribution to that building. They mark this by placing one of their wooden cubes on that number. They can do this more than once per turn. Once all the squares in a building are occupied by players’ cubes, the building is re-built and the tile is flipped over. Rewards are as follows:
• All players contributing at least one cube to that building get the reward listed below to the asterisk on the tile and rewards on any adjacent completed buildings.
• The player who contributed the most gets the reward next to the asterisk on the tile. Cube lying farthest to left wins any ties.
• If there is a dragon present when a contribution is made, that player receives one scale. When the scales run out, each player total his/her scales. The player with the most scales gets 6 crystals, ties get 3 each. If you have at least 3 scales, you get 3 crystals. Anyone who received crystals, returns the scales to the pile.
Players may also “contribute” to the obelisk pay paying the lowest open diamond cost in crystals. Doing so places a contribution cube on that diamond. Only one contribution per turn (see cards below for exception).
3. Discard 0-2 cards. Then draw a number of cards = 2 more than the number of cards discarded.
The cards’ rule: In addition to having colored numbers on each card for contribution, each card has a special power that can be used to “break a rule”, such as moving a dragon, moving your pawn, making more than one contribution to the obelisk, creating “wild cards”, etc.
Review of the Mechanics Themselves: The mechanics are easy to follow and the flow of the game is very quick, making this appealing for non-gamers, even though the genre is fantasy, which is typically more of a gamer genre. Similar to games like Catan, players will find themselves receiving bonuses when it is not their turn, so there is almost no down time; also a plus for non-gamers. Because the board is different every time, the replayability of this game is high.
Strategy: The strategy of this game comes as 2-fold:
1. Use the card’s value or use the card’s power. The mechanic is well known to gamers. The cards give you 2 choice of what to do with them, but you cannot have it both ways. While this mechanic is beautiful, the execution falls a bit short. You would think that the most powerful cards would be the highest valued cards, and vice versa. Instead, the cards with the lowest value have “bigger” powers. This make the “headache” of which half of the card to use easy: if it’s a low-powered, but high valued card, you are going to use it for the value, and vice versa. Had it been high power=high value, this mechanic would not have been wasted.
2. Geography. Since the orthogonally adjacent completed tiles generate rewards for the newly completed tiles, it is important to plan out what building get completed in what order, since that will generate you (or your opponent) more rewards. This is a brilliant mechanic and is wonderfully done. And since the board changes with each play, you can never use the exact same strategy twice. A real plus for a gateway game.
Does it work as well for few (i.e. 2-3) players compared to many (i.e. 4) players?: It scales nicely. The dragon scales themselves are scaled (pun intended) to the number of players. Since the contribution cubes are finite and when you run out, you run out, the fewer the players, the more you need to think about where you are going to be putting those cubes. While subtle, those changes make the scaling a slightly new game.
Will my non-gaming spouse/friends like it?: If they don’t mind seeing a few dragons and crystal obelisks on the board, the game play certainly is good for non-gamers. They will receive rewards when it’s not their turn, and each players turn is quick. The combination of these 2 things means there is almost no downtime. That and the rules are straightforward is quite appealing. The only downside is a few of the cards’ powers aren’t clear from the pictures and may need to be referenced once or twice per game.
Good for kids?: This is a decent game for children. The decision of how to use a card (power vs value) is a good one to get kids into gaming, but not so much that a “bad” decision will affect their outcome all that much. Again, little downtime means more attention capturing. Simple rules and fun theme should keep them interested. The downside, again, is keeping the cards’ powers straight.
Should I buy it?: You criteria to buy this game should include:
(1) Do you like games where the strategy is not the same every time because the board itself is different every time?
(2) Do high-fantasy themed games appeal to you (or at least not bother you)?
(3) Are you looking for a slightly higher gateway game? This game will not be a hard-core gamers game; if that bothers you, avoid it.
(4) Do you enjoy something you can pull out at 9pm on a weeknight to have done by a 10pm bedtime without too much brain power when you are “winding down” for the night?
If you answered “yes” to the above questions, then pick this one up.
Posted Mon Feb 11, 2008 3:27 pm
