We finished up with a first playing of Blue Moon. We struggled through the rules, making a few mistakes, and ended up in a draw, with Steven attracting my final dragon in the last battle, as I had only a single card left. Then, in his usual Steven-attack, he found a rule saying that in case of draws, whoever doesn't go out of cards wins, winning himself the game. Blue Moon is a series of fights, no unlike Magic, the Gathering. In each fight you put out cards with power in either fire or earth. The opponent matches that power or retreats. If its matched, you play again matching his power. Eventually someone retreats, and the winner "attracts" a dragon. Three dragons start in the middle. If you win, you can get one (or more) dragons on your side, or if your opponent has dragons, move one of them to the middle. You win if you have all three dragons, and attract a fourth. In a fight you play an optional Leadership card, a character card (mandatory) and a support or booster. The characters have power in Fire or Earth. You pick which the fight will be in and announce your total power, like: Character 2 in Fire, plus a 3 Fire booster, for 5 Fire. The trick is that, on each round, the Leadership, Character, and Booster cards change, but Support cards remain for the whole fight. Leadership are only good for a round, and Booster cards are played on the Characters. Because you must play a new Character each round(or retreat) the previous Booster(s) go away. There are currently four different decks out, each having 30 cards about like: Vulca 4 Booster, 5 Support, 3 Leadership, 18 Character Hoax: 3 Booster, 6 Support, 3 Leadership, 18 Character Interestingly, my Vulca deck includes cards from: Mutant, Aqua, Mimix, and Khind. The Hoax deck includes cards from: Pillar, Flit, Terrah, and Mutant. The cards are oversized and very pretty. So far the game doesn't seem really very deep, but its quick and somewhat interesting. It isn't a good sign that the single game we played ended with a draw. We will have to try more games to see how good the game is. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 5 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com