of Realms Champion Level

0              3
1              4
2              5
3              7
4              9
5             Any

This admittedly does make the mechanic a little bit more like MTG, but since there is no cumulative damage, and battle ends after an attacker loses one champion, there is no real possibility to become overwhelmed by a horde of small creatures. Also, you’re still able to play as many cards as you want, so this still fits with the spirit of the game.

Assemble all cards, sort them into the following categories and deal the following number to each player: 40 realms, 30 champions, 30 abilities (spells, psionics, blood abilities, etc…), 20 allies, 20 events, 20 magical items, 15 holdings, 10 artifacts, and 5 rule/dungeon cards.

Next, all players make a 55 card deck from the 190 cards they were dealt. Deck creation requires some skill, as you have to make the best of a few good cards and a bunch of less desirable ones. It tends to limit the number of OP cards that any player has.

Occasionally you’ll get a deck that is just way too under powered, but usually it seems to be fairly even.

The huge number of realms is due to the fact that there are so many common reams that are completely useless.

Play time is about 4 hours including shuffling, dealing, deck building, and actual game play.

I actually ended up pretty substantially revising the rules again with a friend, so maybe I’ll post those sometime soon.

I have been attempting to make Spellfire into a working solitaire game for a while now. I found an old article from Dragon Magazine that detailed a solitaire variant for Spellfire, and after tweaking it a bit, I think I’ve come up with something playable. After reading your new rules, it may be an even better solitaire game then before. Here’s what I came up with:

1. You and your (imaginary) opponent both draw from the same deck.

2. Instead of playing a realm on your turn, you start with all six realms in play. Your (imaginary) opponent is trying to destroy your realms, and you are trying to defend them.

3. If a realm is razed, you unraze it by defeating your (imaginary) opponent’s next champion on your turn.

4. Your (imaginary) opponent automatically attacks the next available realm on their turn with their strongest champion. You can choose to defend or not. If you do not, your (imaginary) opponent is “committed” for that turn and cannot defend on your upcoming next turn.

5. Your (imaginary) opponent is equipped and attacks in the most advantageous manner possible. This requires a bit honesty on your part….if you intentionally weaken your (imaginary) opponent, it just makes the game less fun for yourself.

6. You win if you have 3 or more unrazed realms when the common deck runs out AND either you or your (imaginary) opponent has no champions remaining.

Using your simplified rules make it easier to play with a single deck. It can be further simplified by removing all class and domain restrictions for adding spells, weapons, magic items, etc.

A hardcore Spellfire player would probably laugh at most of any of these rules adjustments, but I don’t really care. The chances of ever finding another person to play with is miniscule where I live anyway lol

Call it “Spellfire, but not really Spellfire, just something that sorta looks like Spellfire but is easier to play then the official Spellfire”.

As I get older, my inner geek is emerging in new and totally dorky ways!

Also, Gen continually berated the design of cards as being inferior to Magic‘s, especially because you have to remember what each card is or does from its icon (whereas Magic says whether it’s a Sorcery, Creature, etc.). And this is after I removed clerics/cleric spells and artifacts (and failed to acquire expansions introducing additional icons).

I realized after writing the above comment that I actually threw out my old anime wall scrolls when I moved in with Gen. And by “threw out,” I definitely don’t mean “found a special hiding place for.” Nope.

The first two new rules deal with the part of the turn where you put new champions and magic items into play (a.k.a. “Phase 3″). These simplify the rules for new players, I think, and make sure that one player can’t completely overwhelm the other with attackers.

Recruitment expenses. You may play one champion and one magic item into your pool each turn, plus any you add through spoils of victory. (And, unlike in the official rules, each champion may only hold one magic item, and magic items can’t be played in the middle of combat.)

Population control. You may only have up to three champions in your pool at one time. If you play a fourth, one of the original three must be discarded.

The second pair of new rules deals with the discard phase. Because there are two options during this phase and neither is the standard “discard to the discard pile” option we’d expect, these do potentially complicate things for a newcomer. Still, they really help a player with a crap hand, and they compensate for the fact that I didn’t have usable cards that would get stuff out of the discard pile. In teaching the game, I expect I’ll just explain that discards go to the loser, and you can draw a new hand if you have a bunch of bad cards.

Relinquish. If you have more than 8 cards in your hand during the discard phase, you must discard down to 8 cards and give the discarded cards to the opponent with the fewest face-up realms in play.

Explore. If you have no face-up realms in play and more than 5 cards in your hand during your discard phase, you may opt to discard your entire hand and draw 5 new cards.

I came up with some multiplayer rules, too, but it turns out they’re pretty close to the official multiplayer rules, even down to the number of realms needed to win in a team game (10).

Anyway, I find it hard to believe that anybody else out there is crazy enough to assemble their own Spellfire variant and then admit to having done so on a stranger’s (or, worse, friend’s) blog—but if you are, I’d love to hear what you come up with!