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Blue Moon City
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Next to the board is a needle where the offerings for the god Blue Moon can be done. These offerings are made in crystals that were previously earned in the completion of  buildings or the scoring with dragon scales. A player can make an offering when he moves his pawn to the central market place. The needle shows different values of offerings in crystals needed to be allowed to place a cube on it; of course a player will choose the lowest number first. By playing the necessary yellow card and paying the extra crystal(s), a player may make an additional offering for every card played and paid for.
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Apart from their value, the playing cards also have special abilities like the aformentioned extra movement, or the movement for the dragons, from an extra tile to three tiles, or at will (Look! They can fly!). The green cards ccan be played for every other colour; the brown cards with value one and two can be played in a pair (in any combination) to be used for every other colour with value three; and then there are the white cards that after playing enable it to play from one to four cards in any one colour and give it another colour.
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A player cannot use both the value and the special ability on a card. He has to choose to play a black ‘2’, for example, and use it to place a cube on a square with a black ‘2’, or use the card to move the red dragon up to three tiles.

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There has been put much effort to give the game atmosphere. The building tiles are splendidly illustrated, and it is a feast to turn over the sketch side, also impressive, and admire the art work of the completed building. They all are little gems, and this also goes for the people cards, illustrated by eigth different illustrators that are very rightfully mentioned on each card.
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Every turn a player can choose from various possibilities with the cards on his hand. Because he cannot use both its value and the special ability, it leads to the occasional groaning and moaning!
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On the negative side could be said that the game has little to none interaction. Each player tries to make the most of his turn with the cards on his hand, and with some bad luck with drawing or a bad position on the board he sometimes is forced to pass and just take his two cards for his turn.

Every player tries to go for the bonus for completing a building with the most cubes (or, in ties: the highest total, or the left most cube). The extra crystals, but sometimes extra hand cards or scales, are not to be missed if  a player wants to stay in the race for the offerings on the needle.
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Because they bring crystals, collecting scales must not be underestimated. Therefore it is wise to call in as much dragons as you can when building and placing a cube.
What else is there to say? That ‘Blue Moon City’ is a very attractive game with much atmosphere that will also attract the player who usually does not like a fantasy setting. Talk those sceptic players into the game: ‘Just pretend those dragons are tanks/colonists/the provost!’, and they will have a wonderful time too!
© 2006 Richard van Vugt

Blue Moon City, Reiner Knizia, Kosmos, 2006 - 2 to 4 spelers, 10 years and up, 60 minutes

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