Two weeks ago, Joe Gola published a review of Blue Moon, Reiner Knizia’s customizable card game. It’s been a game that’s been on my mind lately too. This week I ‘d like to take a step beyond Joe’s introduction (for which, see his article, or else my own review of the game), and instead dig a little deeper to discover what really makes Blue Moon tick, starting with a look at how it really is acustomizable auction game, not a CCG.
Blue Moon as an Auction
In my overview of Reiner Knizia I made the contention that most of his games are actually auction games, but from the comments on that article I could tell that my point wasn’t entirely clear. Fortunately, Blue Moon offers a terrific example of how an otherwise unique-looking game can be based on pure auction mechanics.