SFR, Inc.

[mliguori]

I know this is going to fly in the face of a lot of what the game is, but that's why its in the variations section.

I'm trying to make the game a bit easier to new and causal players in my gaming group and play a bit faster. I'm starting my making the dreaded jump to cards with SAIs for each rare and monster, and cards for each dragon with he faces on it (honestly in the long run not that different that the playmats that I use normally, but just with the information the player needs for the specific dice they are using in their army.)

The real out there thing I am going to try is instead of having access to the entire spell deck, each player would have a certain selection of spells from the colors of the army that they are playing with that they can use (again I would make cards for each spell for ease of use, currently I have a spell sheet for each army that I use and track the spells that have lasting effects via matching colored bingo chips I place over the spell on the sheet and on the die affected).

I am not sure if the number of spells would be static, or is it would be affected by the number of mages in an army, or by point total. That would obviously take play-testing. Summoning would be a static spell that everyone has access to, and if I really wanted to make some waves I would see if there are any other spells that seem logical to be "universal" that all armies would have access to regardless of color and you wouldn't need to use your own spell cards for.

Also I would need to change the way the standing stones work, lots of options there.

Has anyone else played around with a variant like this? I know it's a move from a deep tactical game to something a bit more casual, but I think it has the potential to keep the general feel of the game without the weight that can be a bit of a turnoff for new players.

[mliguori]

Playing around with the idea I think the best way to go would be for each player to "buy" a number of spells according to casting cost equal to the total number of health of the mages in their army. It keeps things simple to remember, and that would give a 36 point army 3 to 4 spells if you focused on large ones with max magic users, or 5 to 6 if you picked small spells. The higher overall size of the army the larger the spell pool you would have access to obviously, but the game in general becomes more complex at that point anyway.

I'll be play testing this a bit in the next few weeks and report back how it feels.

[dougelf]

makes me think of an interesting idea.

Print out all the magic spells for each race(s) the players are using on cards you can use the Avery.com site and 8350 card stock they have for an example. Each player shuffles their spells and Draws 5 cards.

You can print off up to 3 of each spell and have them in the deck and you can only cast the spells drawn once per card. At the end of your turn you can discard and then draw to get back to a size 5 hand.
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