Spellfire

Spellfire: Master the Magic is an out-of-print collectible card game (CCG) created by TSR, Inc. and based on their popular Dungeons & Dragons role playing game. The game appeared first in April 1994, shortly after the introduction of Magic: The Gathering, in the wake of the success enjoyed by trading card games. It was the second CCG to be released, preceding Wizards of the Coast's second CCG Jyhad by two months. More than one dozen expansions for the game were released, and the final expansion was released in October 1997.

History

After the successful launch of Wizards of the Coast's Magic: The Gathering card game in 1993, TSR entered the fledgling CCG market with their take on a fantasy-themed card game in June 1994. Spellfire was designed by Steve Winter, Jim Ward, Dave Cook, and Tim Brown. and Birthright booster series added many new dimensions to the game.

The fourth edition came in a red and black double-pack, and featured 520 cards pulled from each expansion set as well as the mainline set, with more than 200 new designs. ||Darksun-oriented

|Powers||September 1995|| || ||Avatar champion

|3rd Edition||October 1995|| || ||20 additional rares replaced from 2nd Edition

|The Underdark||December 1995|| || ||Attack-oriented

|Runes & Ruins<br />12-card booster packs ||Undead-oriented

|Dungeons||October 1997|| 100, plus 25 chase cards || 12-card booster packs ||Dungeon card

Gameplay

Spellfire allowed for any number of players without a need for any rule changes.

Scott Haring reviewed Spellfire for Pyramid #9, published in October 1994. Haring felt that the game was going to be "just the first of what is sure to be a long line of games trying to take advantage of the market that Magic opened", but found that he was "pleasantly surprised by Spellfire".

Chris Baylis reviewed some of the game's expansion sets for Arcane magazine, beginning with the Underdark booster pack, rating it a 7 out of 10 overall. He found that virtually half of the 100-card set was accounted for by its main deck-building features, namely the high-level clerics, the surplus of clerical spells, a heavy influence of powerful monsters, and the underground Realms. He felt that these cards "go a long way towards redressing the balance upset by Powers (set six), which made Psionicists almost insurmountable". Baylis comments that "The most interesting cards of the set are the unarmed combat holds, kicks and punches, presented in a very unusual oil painting form and carrying a clenched fist symbol not yet in the rulebook." Baylis concluded his review by saying: "Overall the Birthright expansion is of very little interest to anyone other than card collectors, with only one of the 100 cards immediately springing to mind for possible consideration as an addition to my personal gaming deck." He noted that this expansion was mostly researched from the Draconomicon handbook from TSR: "As you would expect with spellcasting Wyrms, it is accented towards magic, though the set is also bolstered by events and allies that are associated with Dragons and dragonkind." He found the pack "striking", considering the fourth edition to have "the instant eye appeal that none of its predecessors could muster."

History

Gameplay

Reviews

References

Further reading

External links