Spellfire
Spellfire is a trading card game developed by TSR based on their popular role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons . The first cards hit the market in 1994, shortly after Magic: The Gathering was released . Officially, no new cards have been released since 2000.
Story of the game
The first edition of Spellfire was quite simply designed, many motifs were taken from Dungeons & Dragons and edited slightly. Nonetheless, the first edition was very popular among D&D fans. At first there were only the starter sets, consisting of 110 cards that were randomly shuffled together from 400 existing designs, and booster packs that contained 15 cards. These packs mostly contained cards from the already known 400, with the exception of a few new ones. In every booster pack there was a rare card, the so-called Chase Card .
The second edition of the starter sets corrected some typographical errors and replaced about 20 cards, but was essentially the same game as the first edition. When purchasing the cards, most players concentrated on the booster packs of the Ravenloft , Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms series, which were released shortly afterwards .
The third edition of the starter sets made slightly more significant changes to many of the cards, but kept most of the names and artwork. Further booster packs followed: The Artifacts, AD - & - D-Powers, Underdark, Runes - & - Ruins and Birthright series. These made the game far more complex and added many new character types and abilities.
However, by the time the fourth edition was released, the game's popularity was dwindling. This was also due to the fact that the future of the publisher TSR was uncertain. The appearance of three more boosters (Draconomicon, Nightstalkers and Dungeons) could not change the demise of the game. Neither of these sold well, and when it was determined that TSR was being acquired by Wizards of the Coast , it was determined that there would be no more Spellfire cards.
Since no new cards are produced today, fans are still developing more cards that are published on the Internet and (partially) playable in private tournaments (they are stuck on other cards).
Frequency of cards
A distinction was made between:
- Common Cards
- Uncommon Cards
- Rare cards
- Chase cards
These differed in their print run. While common cards were relatively easy to get, chase cards were all the more rare. However, that didn't mean that the Chase cards were better, some only had a collectible value and were as good as pointless for the actual game.
goal of the game
The goal of Spellfire is to be the first player to establish six kingdoms (lands). Only one empire can be built by each player per game turn. At the same time, players must try to destroy the kingdoms of their opponents with the help of characters and their skills.
There are different characters:
- Heroes
- Wizards
- Clerics (clerics)
- monster
- Psionicists
- Regents
- Thieves (thieves)
These characters can perform spells, use magical items and artifacts, as well as blood abilities and unarmed combat cards . Countries can also be attacked with event cards. These in turn can be made more resistant with the help of holdings .
Spellfire in Germany
In German only the very first edition appeared in the game. All other editions were only available in English. German cards were therefore traded as rarities.